Buddy Buck Show

Buddy Buck (00:00)
Hi and welcome back to another episode of Community Connect. I'm Buddy Buck where we have real conversations with real people right here in And today I am with Nicole Dempster. We're going to get to her in just a second. But first of all, I want to say today's Community Connect is brought to you by Zeeks Pizza, locally owned by Ryan and Carly. They have incredible pizza, also deliver beer and wine. And my go-to orders are the John Candy, the Dragon, or any custom pie. So thanks Ryan and Carly and thanks Zeke's Pizza.

All right, Nicole, how you doing?

Nicole (00:42)
well, how are you?

Buddy Buck (00:44)
Awesome, see you got some friends back there. Where are you

Nicole (00:47)
So I'm over at Enchanted Farms, we're in Duvall on the border of Carnation. I got some of my friends over here, they're kind of my support animals because being on an interview is a little nerve-racking. And they're a lot more fun to look at. Hopefully they'll start running around.

Buddy Buck (00:57)
Hahaha

That's totally fair and I'm glad you brought your support team.

my gosh, yeah, everyone will just be watching them the whole time. So what, is that behind you? What are people looking at right now? What can they see back there?

Nicole (01:12)
We have a few alpacas. This is like part of our little picnic field. They're just, I mean, they rolled in the dirt, but let's see. We got some of our babies and moms. We have Starfire right here. There's Pocahontas. She's one of our bottle babies. Her mom, Princess, over there didn't really want to nurse her. So she's extra sweet.

Buddy Buck (01:33)
Gotcha.

so alpaca, so I did a little research. cause you know, people say llama, alpaca. Most people kind of just say llama, probably because it's easier to say, but there's an obvious difference between an alpaca and a llama, right?

Nicole (01:45)
Thank

Yeah, so llamas are bigger. They like to spit. We joke that they like to listen to Norwegian death metal. Their fiber is not as nice. They're really cool animals. I've been trying to convince my husband that we need a llama or two. But alpacas are smaller, gentler. They don't spit as much. And I mean, their fiber is lot nicer. They don't spit, really. It's mostly at each other's, but they feel like little clouds.

Buddy Buck (01:53)
Hehehe.

You

As much, yeah.

That's cool.

my gosh, that's so funny. So my wife and I was just talking to her just earlier today. We went there for, think, a picnic. was years ago now, like a handful of years ago, but we had so much fun. And obviously, you you saw in the last episode of Duvall TV, I put that little clip in there that I took on my phone and they're coming right up to me eating out of my hand. their teeth were all crazy and cool and funny and like they were awesome. I love the hair.

It was quite an experience. is that kind of a thing you still do, is the picnics?

Nicole (02:43)
It is we do them year round for private tours and then we have the ones that you can book just like one or two or five tickets into a group and they start typically in the spring because a lot of people don't like being out when it's raining here.

our picnics are two hours. We increased it from an hour and a half, and it includes being able to go in with our other animals as well if you want to, or you could just stay with the alpacas the whole time. We have too many donkeys. They're really sweet. It's mom and daughter Lucy and Pearl. And we have a couple goats.

And then we also have Angora goats and then we have babydolls out down sheep. They look like little Ewoks and they're the sweetest and they'll all eat right out of your hand.

Buddy Buck (03:30)
wow. you can, okay, this is the marketing here. We can have an Ewok eat out of your hand. That's all I heard. I mean, I would definitely pay for that.

Nicole (03:35)
Yes! Or little teddy bear

Buddy Buck (03:40)
do they know you? are they less scared of you than maybe me or some other customer that comes onto the farm?

Nicole (03:46)
Not really. They... I am the one that does a lot of their shots and their nails and...

They kind of are suspicious if I start coming close. They're like, what do you want? They'll come right up to you. Yeah. They're like, no, it's not. It's not doctor time. And they're like, is that coming out? What's going on? But they're so used to people. They'll come right up to you. They'll eat out of your hand if you have some food over there.

Buddy Buck (03:57)
Yeah, I'd imagine. I would be too. ⁓

Nicole (04:13)
They're really sweet. When we first got alpacas, they were really nervous of everyone, even me. And we'd have to sit out in the field with them for hours and they'd come over and smell you and you couldn't move because you didn't want to scare them. But a lot of our alpacas were born here and they know that it's a good place and they're safe and people are really nice and they feed them. And so they really like people.

Buddy Buck (04:28)
my gosh.

Yeah, well that's really cool. I love that.

Nicole (04:39)
They might come up and just

start smelling me at some point. Being like, hey, where's my food?

Buddy Buck (04:44)
That would be awesome. Yeah,

let's get some food. That'd be fun. Duvall, right? I know you know, I'm a real estate agent in town. My wife and I just live in the Victorian community. So for people maybe watching that are considering like, hey, I wanna maybe move to Duvall or either just visit or, you know, pop in for the weekend or the day.

if you had a perfect Saturday, what are a couple of things you love to do and do of all that maybe other people should be like, yeah, cool. I want to, I'd like to check that out.

Nicole (05:11)
we love starting our morning at Rest At Cabin. It's one of our favorite places to grab coffee and they have really good food as well. I like to save their food for lunch. I love their wraps. There's this like cranberry walnut wrap is just amazing. And then Corey's Cafe is really, really good if you want, more of like a diner kind of thing. I mean, Carnation Cafe is also really good. There's so many good places. It's hard to choose.

And then we really like going to the river. Toad McDonald Park has an amazing river and it's where two rivers intersect. we have a little friend.

Buddy Buck (05:37)
Yeah.

Nicole (05:46)
I I missed where she was. And she did come over to me. But my kids will take little floaties and they'll kind of float down this like mini little rapid. And it's just really fun. It's like a little water slide. It's little, but it's really fun and I feel safe while them doing it. And then we kind of like play on the beach and.

Buddy Buck (05:47)
hey little friend, ⁓

you

Yeah, yeah.

Nicole (06:09)
My niece lived out here for a while. She's in her twenties and she would go down there all the time. It's just really nice no matter how old you are.

Buddy Buck (06:17)
Yeah, totally cool. I know that we love the river too. it's really cool to be able to leave from where we live. It's about six minutes and we're on the river. it's so cool. Just living here in general is awesome too. You already know that, but you know, people that don't know, like, so we, grew up in Tacoma, moved to Seattle, went to University of Washington. Then we went, my wife and I lived in Seattle, like Lake Union. Then we went to Kirkland, then we came out to Duvall.

So like we kept going east and then we found, well, I found this place for the first time because she had done a softball clinic out here at Big Rock Fields and was like, we should go look at Duvall. And I'm like, where the heck is this? And we saw one house and bought it and totally fell in love with the city and the town and the people and the community. so what has that community been like for you with the farm? how long have you had the farm and how has the community played a part of the farm?

Nicole (07:05)
We love it out here. It's a small town. You get the really nice charm of it. And everyone's been so nice and supportive. I mean, we'd even go out of Duvall and like people would like recognize us for the farm. But everyone, I don't think we've met like a single mean person here, which is crazy. It's like a little family and

Everyone kind of needs their village and I feel like Duvall really is that. We lived in Bothell before which was completely different. It just feels like a really big community here.

I don't know if I answered your question.

Buddy Buck (07:42)
Yeah, you did,

I totally agree, totally agree. back to the farm. what's kind of happening right now? So we're in early February at the time of filming this, but what's kind of some things that people should come out and check out that's you have a lot on your website, a lot of things to do.

The website's beautiful by the way, what is something like one or two things that you really think people should check out the first time out?

Nicole (08:05)
So we're gonna have lambs as early as March and that's really fun. We like bringing people up close with the animals. It was just such an amazing experience when we were first able to be around animals and we love seeing people's faces light up and their excitement.

And we're going to have lambs march through early summer and we'll offer lamb holding experiences as well. You can even get like a professional picture taken with them. It's really cute. We're going to have alpacas born as early as I think June, maybe May. You'll have to follow us on social media. We'll post it.

And the babies are so amazing being born during picnic last summer, as well as during camp. And also during a farm tour, we've had babies being born. So people got to see it firsthand, which was really cool. And the babies are up and walking within an hour. And it's just amazing.

Buddy Buck (09:00)
Wow.

my gosh, an hour? That's crazy.

Yeah.

Nicole (09:10)
⁓ Kush was maybe Briar Rose. She was up and sitting within 20 minutes nursing on mom and then walking around 10 minutes later and like running, like not just walking. She was running. It was great.

Buddy Buck (09:22)
my gosh.

So when you saw that for the first time, there was a first time for everything, but when you saw that, how quickly they kind of got up and acclimated, were you just like, whoa.

Nicole (09:30)
Yeah, and I knew a lot about it already. So it wasn't a surprise, but just seeing it firsthand was just pretty incredible.

Buddy Buck (09:38)
Yeah.

Nicole (09:39)
There's nothing like it. It's amazing. They're such sweet creatures. They all have their own personalities. Some of the most amazing moms ever. We have one girl, she would actually want to help the other moms out and be like a little nanny. It's really sweet.

Buddy Buck (09:54)
that's cute. That's really cute. my gosh. So fun. Well, cool. yeah, speaking of socials, where can people follow you?

Nicole (09:58)
It is.

So we're on Facebook and Instagram. It's enchanted underscore farms underscore w a I think. and then we do have a Tik Tock The username is probably the same and same with YouTube. I'm trying to get more active on there. I really like just being out with the animals. Technology isn't my forte. and then we have a website. So you book your experience on our website.

Buddy Buck (10:19)
Nice.

Nicole (10:27)
We are a small family farm. We're not like a big corporate farm or anything, so we can't support a lot of people at once. So booking in advance is important. And it's just enchantedfarmsduval.com. And then we have summer camp. So we do have summer camp. Yeah. Yeah, can book, your kids can go to summer camp for a whole week. You can book multiple weeks if you want. We had a lot of people do that last summer.

Buddy Buck (10:41)
Enchanted Farms Duvall.

Yeah, tell us about the summer camp.

Nicole (10:52)
And it's a lot of time with the animals. They'll learn to walk in alpaca. They will spend a lot of time working with fiber, doing fiber crafts like felting. crafts. work with clay and painting. They can make a little animal sculpture or something else if they want.

And it's a lot of running around playing. There was a lot of flag football last summer and some other like relay races and just other active outside screen free fun for the summer. And it's going to be awesome.

Buddy Buck (11:25)
Screen free

fun. I love that. When is the window of time they could book the camps?

Nicole (11:30)
We just opened it up for booking like two weeks ago, so it's available now and ads are gonna go out on like parent maps. So I would probably book it sooner than later. Cuz it's limited. We're not like a huge camp. There's not that many spaces.

Buddy Buck (11:46)
Gotcha. Okay, cool. Last couple questions here and then we'll wrap it up. I know you follow Duvall TV and like Instagram, YouTube. So if you could wave a magic wand, Nicole, and like enhance Duvall TV or add something or, you know, make it cooler or whatever you would do, do you have something suggested or do you have an idea that we could do?

Nicole (12:06)
No, I think you're awesome. I don't really know anything else.

Buddy Buck (12:09)
Cool, no, that's all right. don't, yeah, I mean, we're awesome is a good answer, so we'll just roll with that, that's good. Yeah, cool, well, I'm glad we could do things like this too, so we can, I really want people to get to know more people in the community, however we can do that. That's just something that I feel like I've been called to do, is just to try to bring people together and get to know people in our town, because I just, I love living here just like you.

Nicole (12:12)
Yeah, I don't know, you're doing great.

Yeah, I know so many people know who you are and we all appreciate everything you do for our community. You're awesome.

Buddy Buck (12:39)
Thank you. That means a lot. I appreciate that, Nicole. Okay, we're gonna wrap it up. Last thing, we're gonna put you on the hot seat, okay? You ready?

Nicole (12:48)
Okay.

Buddy Buck (12:48)
All right, so here we go. The hot seat, coffee or beer?

Nicole (12:50)
Okay.

Coffee.

Buddy Buck (12:53)
sunrise or sunset.

Nicole (12:54)
Sunset.

Buddy Buck (12:55)
Tacos or pizza?

Nicole (12:57)
Tacos.

Buddy Buck (12:57)
Mountain or the River?

Nicole (12:59)
The river.

Buddy Buck (13:00)
Okay, early bird or night owl?

Nicole (13:02)
Night Owl.

Buddy Buck (13:02)
Okay, last two, text or phone call.

Nicole (13:05)
text.

Buddy Buck (13:06)
And last one, alpaca or llama.

Nicole (13:10)
Of course.

Buddy Buck (13:13)
Let's go, right on. Well cool, well thanks so much for joining, Nicole. Appreciate you and ⁓ we'll see you and your support animals next time out at the farm. So thanks for all that you do.

Nicole (13:15)
You

Thank you, buddy. We appreciate you.

Buddy Buck (13:29)
You got it. All right, so that's it for another episode of Community Connect. Buck, peace.

Nicole (13:30)
Alright, have a good one.