Farm sanctuaries offer a safe forever home where animals are free to enjoy their lives.
Farm sanctuaries are vital havens for rescued animals, providing them with safety, care, and a chance to live free from harm. They also serve as powerful spaces for education and advocacy, inspiring compassion and helping people connect with the stories of individual animals.
In this month’s episode of The Informed Animal Ally, Janeanne from The Alice Sanctuary, Diane from the Happy Herd Farm Sanctuary, and Yvonne and Lianna from Kitchensink Rescue Farm & Sanctuary share the ups and downs of running a farm sanctuary.
Note: This written discussion has been edited for length.
The Alice Sanctuary
Janeanne: Hi, my name is Janeanne and I am the founder and guardian of the Alice Sanctuary. We’ve been an active farm animal sanctuary here in Alberta for just under 11 years now.
Successes
Throughout the period of time that we’ve been here, there have been multiple successes and highlights. But the one that I really would like to acknowledge here would be the idea that two thirds of our rescues or surrenders have come directly from farming families reaching out to find resources or alternatives for one or more of their animals living on their farms.
Now, this can be for a number of reasons. It could be aging of the individuals who are caring or tending the animals. It could be medical needs of the animals themselves and they cannot afford them, but they still want to see these individuals come to a safe landing or a loving place. For that, I would perceive sanctuary becoming more legitimized in a province that’s really engrossed in animal agriculture.
I like the idea that when we have companion animal rescues, many people know that they can have friends or relationships or conversations if something happens to one of their companion animals, they know that they can take them to another place and hopefully find a new home for those companion animals.
What we don’t have are resources for farm animals. And I would love to see sanctuary become a place where it is non-judgemental and a safe environment for families who are in farming to find a soft landing for one or more of the individuals that they have connected with. And so that’s really important for me to discuss and to recognize.
Challenges
Challenges in sanctuary are abundant. If they’re not day to day, then they’re, you know, accumulating to month to month to year to year. Seasonal challenges are always things that we need to face too, especially now that we’re seeing climate change really impact our environment and our weather systems, which then impact our ability to find feed and source out hay and source out bedding like straw.
All of these things are interconnected with one another because it’s not like going to a grocery store and knowing that a tomato is going to be on the shelf, right?
So when we are feeding round bales and for the Alice Sanctuary, we do need to order at least 300 round bales a year now because we are feeding hay year round due to poor pasture and grazing environments because of the shorter grass that we’re experiencing because there’s not a lot of rain. So, it’s incredibly harder to source out hay that isn’t also exponentially priced.
For instance, last year, we did get all of our hay from Montana because they had a better season than what our province had here. And when you did try to find hay here, it wasn’t existent because there just wasn’t a good hay crop, hay field this year.
So, these are all challenges that we have to navigate and thankfully we have a few people on our team that help us out with finding the hay. We have a great hay broker that we’ve been working with for years. Things like this are really beneficial.
Other challenges that I think all of us are facing would be the fundraising aspect of rescue and sanctuary.
Economy is becoming more and more unpredictable. Household incomes are becoming lower and tougher to manage on a week to week basis. So extra dollars usually are kept so there’s a form of safety and security in the home. Whereas before, if you had an extra $5 or $10, donating it to your favourite charity or not for profit wouldn’t be as scary, right? So now incomes and economy has become a little bit more insecure.
So fundraising has become tougher. It’s been something that we’ve had to adjust to. Thankfully as a charity, we also have access to grants when you can find them. And hopefully people who operate foundations can also help you out in that and encourage you in that area too.
Opportunities
I think as years go on, I have accumulated many, many conversations and I really like to talk to people about personal responsibility and accountability for the choices that we make on a day to day basis and how this really impacts not just the world for animals and sentient beings, but also impacts our communities and the health of our communities and it impacts our neighbours and it impacts, you know, newcomers and temporary foreign workers and it impacts our environment and it impacts our planet on a large scale.
It even impacts our economy because again, billions of dollars are being spent to prop up multiple failing industries that are also very misleading, misguiding and damaging most of the structures that we are in and that in turn affects our pocketbooks because that would be our tax dollars.
So these are the kind of conversations that I am really looking forward to having with people going forward into the world of sanctuary as well as immersing myself in the love and the joy that we have with our residents here and the people who want to come in and volunteer with us and enjoy the time that they have with us when we do tours.
Those are things that are really quite motivational because you know that there’s an impact to it all. And it’s bringing happiness to people. It’s bringing love and healing to animals that have been immersed in trauma. And also being able to open up to aspects and perspectives that are around you that typically in the past, many people would be not willing to have.
And it’s been really kind of a good move for us to move into our future idea about sanctuary
The Happy Herd
Diane: This is Diane from the Happy Herd. For those of you who don’t know us, we’ve been in operation for about 12 years.
Successes
Lots has happened. There’s so many ups and downs in this field. And we’re going through one of our up days.
We have a little Icelandic sheep named Noodles, who came to us last spring at two weeks of age. His mother had abandoned him because he has a neurological issue. The vet looked at him, said there was nothing they could do, and gave us probably one to two months of life. He’s going on 19 months.
And he still falls down. His back left leg doesn’t work all the time. He makes a lot of circles. But he’s the happiest little boy you’ve ever met, and he loves children. When children come, he comes running as fast as he can. Sometimes he doesn’t stop, but he’s just happy to be around.
Challenges
So those are your highs when you have an animal like him come into your life, and the hard times are when you have them leave, like this spring we lost both Lucy, one of our first pigs, she was about 800 pounds, and Baby the donkey, who had been with us for 26 years. So losing two animals like that and close together just rips you apart and it takes a long, long time to heal. And I don’t know if you ever do heal. But you look at Noodles and you still smile.
Opportunities
So, what are we looking forward to in the next year? We’ve got a big project that we want to undertake. We want to pave most of the driveway and some paths and make the farm more accessible. We get busloads of seniors drive through and they all have mobility issues so they stay on the bus.
And then we have kids who are in Canuck Place come out and get to hug an animal. We have health care workers who bring their clients with them to meet farm animals. And we’re transitioning more to that because it means so much to everybody and seeing a kid smile.
So that’s where we’re going and that’s where we’re so happy to have you joining us and being part of our Happy Herd family.
So looking forward to doing the Giving Tuesday with you again and just looking forward to being around. Thanks very much.
Kitchensink Rescue Farm & Sanctuary
Diane: Yvonne: Hi, my name is Yvonne Lewis, and I’m a board member from the Kitchen Sink Rescue Farm and Sanctuary in Roberts Creek.
Lianna: And my name is Lianna Corsini, and we want to acknowledge that we are currently recording from the unceded territory of the Skwxwú7mesh and shíshálh Nations.
Yvonne: We’re here to talk a little bit today about some of the challenges and highlights of running a vegan sanctuary in the Lower Mainland area.
Successes
Yvonne: One thing that we would say is that this year, and it’s almost complete, we’re really excited. It’s a big dream come true, is that we have been able to successfully build a barn. Thanks to some grants that we wrote, and we’re funded by Vancouver Foundation, and also the Sunshine Coast Credit Union, and also some of our successful fundraising events that we’ve had over the last couple years.
We’ve had some significant challenges, through the heat dome and needing to allocate some resources to some different things with COVID and cost of living, prices of lumber, all those kinds of things. So it’s been quite the challenge to get this barn complete and we are so close. Animals are living in it and some of the rest of them will be moving into it very shortly and it is an absolute dynamite dream come true.
Lianna: It’s pretty exciting and it couldn’t be more timely today as we’re speaking to you. We’re experiencing very high winds that have caused a lot of debris and damage on the farm today. So, the earlier part of the day has been spent cleaning up and making sure that all the animals have a safe place to be and stay.
And as well, we’re experiencing record high rains. So, having a barn really is a dream come true. And it’s just such a wonderful space for the animals to be able to shortly move into before the actual weather arrives this winter.
Challenges
Lianna: One of the things that is a bit of a challenge in sanctuary work is having consistent volunteers.
We so appreciate everyone that has come out and continues to come out. We have a lot of inquiries and unfortunately a lot of those inquiries don’t always amount to regular and consistent volunteering. I think it’s really important to remember that there are a lot of different jobs that people can do on the farm.
Yvonne: And it’s really about not overtaxing yourself. So if you think you can do one afternoon every two weeks, we would be grateful to have you and any help is great help. And I think people get really keen and maybe sort of burn themselves out or whatever. So just any farm that you go to and any sanctuary that you help out with, just, you know make sure you’re not putting yourself under too much pressure, but also being able to enjoy the work and have a bond with the charity that you’re giving your time to because it’s so important.
One of the other things that we would say is definitely a challenge sort of as a charity and definitely as a farm charity is just ongoing sort of stable financial support, monthly donorships and things. I mean, we understand that that stuff changes for people and it’s not always possible. But even just thinking to yourself, like, you know, five dollars here and there or five dollars a month would just be fantastic or once a year let us be your Christmas thing and I mean to know that some people are thinking of it and kind of constantly being able to do it is just, it’s a huge help to us, it’s a huge stress reliever and it helps us know what we can afford and how many animals we can take in and feed and continue to help with sort of our ongoing funding needs.
Lianna: I think people don’t realize that even, like, one Starbucks really, over a long period of time, can amount to quite a bit of funding for the animals.
Yvonne: Absolutely, yeah, that would mean, average bag of feed is about, you know, between 20 to 25. So, if five people gave up one Starbucks drink a month, that would buy one of my bags of food for the animals and that would totally help.
Lianna: Would you say it’s about $3,000 to feed the animals over a month?
Yvonne: About that. Approximately about $3,000.
Lianna: One of the campaigns that we’re running right now is fill the barn with hay for winter. So, if you are thinking of how you might support, as Yvonne mentioned, some Christmas gifts or holiday gifts.
You can do that and you can find that info on our website.
Yvonne: And of course we’re a registered charity so there is a tax receipt applicable to any donations that come our way.
Opportunities
Yvonne: One of the big main events that we’ve been able to put on is our gala that we do every year in July. It’s the second week of July.
This year it will be July 12th, which is Saturday afternoon. It has been growing and it is wonderful for community partnerships, for community awareness, for animal awareness. for highlighting, you know, what these animals go through and how you can help and what ends up happening when somebody does rescue them.
What does the rest of their life look like? So it’s, it’s a great sort of education piece as well as being able to have people come to the farm, spend the afternoon, hear the stories meet some of the animals and see what their day to day life is.
It’s also a really fun event. We’ve had Persephone’s Brewing and also Gourmet Girl supporting us for the last two years. They continue to do so, but that’s something that it gives a community members and also community businesses an opportunity to join in and everybody speak up for the animals together. So it’s a wonderful event.
We encourage anybody who wants to come, the tickets will be on our website, you know, probably mid May.
Lianna: It’s a really fun afternoon and the gala itself is also a dream come true. It was put on hold by the pandemic. So when we were finally able to host it felt really great to welcome everybody onto the farm again and to be able to socialize.
And it’s just really fun to dress up and put on your gumboots for an afternoon. And meet with the animals and meet other people who are just simply like minded.
Yvonne: That’s about all. We don’t want to take up too much of your time, but we wanted to say thank you very much for having us.
Thanks for listening. If there’s any inquiries for us, please reach out.
Next episode
Please join us next month as we discuss the importance of polling data, and how it can be used in animal advocacy!