A Little Chinchilla Story

These are Chinchilla. They are often kept as pets now but decades ago they were kept as any other animal might be kept/bred on a farm. If you haven't had the pleasure of touching a Chinchilla, their fur feels as though you are touching a silky cloud. It is incredibly soft.

I got this old sign from an auction many years ago where we used to live. It hangs in our hallway. There were a number of chinchilla farms as well as mink farms in Eastern Ontario. I still have, tucked away somewhere, a photo of the ranch from which the sign comes from.

At the same auction, I also managed to pick up a number of Chinchilla tubs. Chinchilla do not get wet to bathe. They bathe in dust. So, these are the tubs that the animals bathed in. We had quite a number of them at one time. My mom sold a bunch at her booth in the antiques market. These are what's left. Time to sell them too. If anyone is interested, just drop me an email. Not much room in the Milkhouse for them.

My friend Sue put together a workshop and a few of us got together to paint some up.

As an aside, the house we used to live in was once a mink farm. The fellow who built that house worked on the railroad and had a wooden leg-railroad accident. Her father farmed mink until one morning he woke up to find them all stolen.

He was older when he finally married and raised his family in that house. Not too long before we moved away we had the privilege of meeting his youngest daughter, then almost seventy. She took me on a tour of our home and told me how it was originally and wonderful stories of growing up there.

Thanks for listening to my story. Have a good week, what's left of it.