Educational Ambassadors

1 Comment Posted on Educational Ambassadors, Fundraiser

Duck Duck Group!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Donkey from Pandora sanctuary now taking virtual meetings (also pigs, peacocks and more)

PANDORA—Does your virtual office need a captivating key-note squeaker? The Quarry Farm Nature Preserve & Conservation Farm, Pandora, is inviting business, organizations, schools and senior living facilities to pull out a virtual chair at their video conference meetings and events for one or more of our farm animal sanctuary residents. We call this fun experience “Duck Duck Group” even though our peaceable kingdom is also home to donkeys, pigs, goats, turkeys, ducks and chickens. None of them wear pants, so the will fit right in at your next webinar.

Are your whiskers twitching? Call 419-384-7195 or email thequarryfarm@gmail.com to schedule the time and date of your “Duck Duck Group” experience. We can use any virtual meeting software you prefer. You will be asked to send us a link during the scheduling process. We will join your call and do a quick introduction of The Quarry Farm. You can ask us questions about particular animals or experience a virtual gallop through the whole herd.

The cost is $50 for a 10-minute “Duck Duck Group”. All “Duck Duck Group” proceeds support the work of The Quarry Farm by:

· Making it possible for the sanctuary animals, many of whom began their lives in fear and neglect, to reside here in peace with proper shelter.

· Providing species-specific food and bedding for sanctuary farm animals and fostered wildlife.

· Maintaining the nature preserve trails and control invasive plant species on the preserve and in the Red Fox Cabin gardens.

· Helping to provide quality educational programming in science, the arts, Ohio history and critical thinking.

· Contributing to the development and installation of interpretive signage.

The Quarry Farm Nature Preserve & Conservation Farm is a 501(c) 3 non-profit organization. For more information, visit www.thequarryfarm.org and The Quarry Farm on Facebook and Instagram.

Leave a comment Posted on Educational Ambassadors, Public Events, Quarterly newsletter

‘Gotta Get Gund’

The headline of this post is a slogan from some years ago. The toymaker Gund used it to promote sales of their plush animals. It’s borrowed to encourage Easter bunnies to place toy rabbits, chicks and ducklings in baskets this Spring and to discourage everyone from giving live animals as gifts.

Brownie is our resident spotlight in the Spring 2020 Quarry Farm Newsletter which you may download by clicking on the cover to the right. Brownie rules a small flock of Rouen ducks in The Quarry Farm farm animal sanctuary. This expressive lady even took under her gentle (but firm) wing a young Canada Goose placed here for release by Nature’s Nursery. The gosling, creatively known here as “Baby Goose,” is so enamored of Brownie that she sleeps with her in the hen house at night, even though Baby Goose is now fully-feathered and can fly.

Brownie was surrendered to us by someone who acquired her as a duckling. Although Rouens look very much like large Mallards, Rouens are a heavyweight breed of domesticated duck that originated in France sometime before the 19th century. While Mallards are wild, lightweight flyers, Rouens weigh between 9 and 10 pounds and can only fly short distances. Brownie prefers to waddle-march around the sanctuary, sliding nimbly under the paddock gates to attend to whatever piques her considerable interest.

We spotlight Brownie here not only for her charming personality but as a reminder to refrain from purchasing live rabbits, chicks and ducklings as Easter gifts in April. Each year, Easter pets die cruelly from neglect or mistreatment or are surrendered to animal shelters that receive a surge of unwanteds. These animals are given up after owners lose interest or become unable to care for them. Others that are not taken to shelters are “set free” into the wild where they have no knowledge or experience at foraging or evading predators. Death is inevitable. Those that may survive become part of feral colonies of domestic and hybrid birds that cause problems for native wildlife.

Statistics indicate that within the first weeks after the holiday, 30 percent of all Easter pets die, and another 60 percent to 70 percent are abandoned or turned in to shelters. Instead of a Brownie, fill your Easter basket with a fuzzy toy and gelatin-free jelly beans.

3 Comments Posted on Educational Ambassadors

A gift to be read aloud

A Field Trip for Beatrice, the very first book in what we hope will be a library of Quarry Farm stories, is now available for purchase. If you have visited the farm animal sanctuary, you have undoubtedly had the pleasure of making Beatrice’s acquaintance. You may have given her a scritch, an apple slice, and, if so, you know that the resident ‘Queen’ of this peaceable kingdom is a love whose story must be read aloud and treasured, just like Queen Bea herself.

Order yours today. Maybe your friends would like a copy, too.

24 pages, heavy paperback with full-color illustrations.

A Field Trip for Beatrice

While only she knows the exact details of Beatrice’s first six months of life, we do know that she outgrew the welcome at her first home. We also know that she loves a good apple and ‘scritch’, especially when they are delivered by visiting school children. "A Field Trip for Beatrice" is the story of one of those visits, with colorful 3-D watercolor collage illustrations of the day included in the tale.

$12.00

Leave a comment Posted on Educational Ambassadors

Scouts honor

Things are greening on The Quarry Farm now. Dutchman’s Breeches have bloomed and gone above the “Cut-off” oxbow, shaded by the oldest trees on the nature preserve. The farm animal sanctuary residents trim new leaves and grass while outside the fences the grass grows and grows. Much of this spring so far has been wet and cool to cold. Arthur the Rooster stands in an alcove of the front porch, glowering at the wall with his spiking wet ruff raised around his feathered ears. On rare sunny days the roosters crow and the pigs stretch out, bellies hitched high for maximum exposure to warmth.

The floodplain has been awash with the merging of Cranberry Creek and Riley Creek as floodwaters ebb and flow, from April now into May. The footbridge, so beautifully engineered by David Seitz, is still with us; the longest-surviving passage from west to east banks over the Cranberry. David watches it rise and fall from internet feeds, using stretched cords to monitor where it settles when the water drops. A new bridge project is underway several meters upstream of the old one. David is at the helm; more news on this to come. But I’ll take this May moment to catch up on April.

Before April showers changed from gentle mist to a series of gully washers, Girl Scout Service Unit 221 from Ada and Kenton spent the better part of April 13 cutting bush honeysuckle. They needed 70 potential hiking staffs to carry home. They tackled the ridge and bottom on the east edge of the stone quarry wetland, lopping their way through one of the densest growths of this confounded invasive woody plant. As well as making way for shagbark hickory and swamp white oak seedlings, they helped us release a woodduck drake who had flown down the Red Fox Cabin chimney.

The following Friday was rainy and windy—just the perfect sort of day for Sophie the Potbelly to go for a car ride. She didn’t think much of the idea; she never does until she is in the back seat and the car is rolling. Sophie, Tyree the Cornsnake and Gerald the Rooster were invited to attend Spring Break Day Camp at the Girl Scout Camp in Lima. Once there, I parked outside Rose Marie Duffy Lodge, leaving the car door open while I carried Tyree and Gerald into the conference room. I heard laughter behind me and turned to see Sophie marching up the Lodge steps, ready to greet her newest fans and to accept accolades as only stars of her caliber receive. She hoovered up the spoils of a snack break while I shared why we do what we do here with those that share this Back 50.

Thanks to Katlin Shuherk for sharing her photos.

Leave a comment Posted on Contests, Educational Ambassadors, Public Events

Never met a fake runner

Mosaic

Mosaic

Llamas can reach speeds up to 35 mph. No humans kept that pace during The Quarry Farm 3rd Annual 5K on October 6. Chablis and Mosaic, llama dams who arrived at the farm animal sanctuary the night before the run/walk, didn’t run that fast either. Instead, the matronly camelids watched people trot past on the south leg of the course (more to come about the llamas in The Quarry Farm 2018-2019 Newsletter.)

I woke before dawn on Saturday to the sound of a torrential downpour, lightning and thunder. My alarm went off a few minutes later. I pulled the covers up and over, sure that we would be cancelling the 5K. The clouds lifted briefly so I set off for my own run at 7 a.m. and got drenched for my efforts. By 8:30, blue sky peeked through gray clouds, cleared by a breeze from the west. Remembering that Gran always said to look out for wind from the east (attributed to “When the wind is in the east, ’tis neither good for man nor beast”) we set up parking signs, registration, coffee and cookies.

20181006_101438

Upstream view from Mallaham Bridge, October 6, 2018, 10:15 a.m.

The west wind remained true. By 11 a.m., 21 participants had passed the first tree in the Road 7L catalpa corridor, crossed over the historic Mallaham Bridge (and smiled for my camera), turned around at Bridenbaugh Schoolhouse and crossed the finish line in front of Red Fox Cabin.

By noon, we had coffee dregs, three lemon cookies and plenty of photos to help us remember. We had our four first finishers: Jeremy Haselman, Christine Meeker, Martha Erchenbrecher (5K Birthday Award) and (under 12) Asher Haselman. We also had three lessons for the 4th Annual 5K:

  • Keep the color run option, but don’t use the little gel paint balls. They don’t break unless you really bean your target (not a good idea.)
  • Ask Steve to make more French macaron with blueberry, lemon and raspberry curd.
  • Get the word out early (mark Saturday, October 5, 10 a.m. start on your calendar—spread the word.)

Thank you to everyone who turned out and to anyone who crosses their own finish line to raise funds in support of what we do here and in educational settings in Northwest Ohio.

 

Leave a comment Posted on Conservation Farm, Educational Ambassadors

in his own sweet time

The Fall newsletter included a brief about Mister Bill. That isn’t the first time that giant Boer-crossed-with-something (likely giraffe) Billy made The Quarry Farm quarterly news. Several years ago, Doug and Sandy Downing brought Bill here to join the Marsh, S’more and Buddy herd. He was such a huge presence—not just in size but in attitude and personality—that he of the magnificent curled horns was featured in the next newsletter. In the Fall 2018 piece, we talked about his August trip to the Ohio State University Veterinarian Clinic’s Farm Animal Services. The diagnosis was megaesophagus. The muscular tube connecting his throat to his stomach had become enlarged, probably due to an injury. His appetite remained big, but the food wasn’t getting where it was supposed to go. The vet prescribed penicillin injections for aspiration pneumonia and a diet rich in soaked in alfalfa pellets, fed from buckets elevated enough to keep his throat as upright as possible.

20180828_184536Bill took to the increased menu with relish. After a week of antibiotics, he was strong enough to say no way to the syringe. He licked his bucket clean before joining the other goats to nibble tall goldenrod and mulberry leaves in the lowland. But there was more going on inside his barrel chest, after all. Several days ago, Billy couldn’t stand. It took two of us to walk him to a bed under the pines where he could be in shade and good company. Dr. Babbitt was scheduled for a Friday house call. The plan was to fill Bill’s red bucket with taste treats before a final injection and release.

As always, Mister Bill had a mind of his own. Last night, as I was mowing the south paddock, I saw Rowan cross the lawn to Bill, His bucket was a few feet away and his body prostrate. He was panting and panicked. Steve and I sat with him and stroked his long nose until he calmed. Rowan was with him when he died 30 minutes later. He was buried in a 6’ x 10’ grave, a hole that seemed small for such a mountain of a goat. In the end, it was too big for what little remained.

But this story isn’t about us, even though I’ve spent three windy paragraphs about what us humans did during Bill’s end days. It’s what the animals did, what they always do. We only skirt the edges of what it is.

As I sat on the ground with Bill, swatting and spritzing biting flies from his legs and mine, Nemo worried around us. Funny, since Bill’s megaesophagus was probably caused by a winter food skirmish with the huge pig. Last night, Nemo quietly lay down under the pine nearest Bill, even though there were fresh apples just on the other side of the fence. I walked away. Nemo stayed. In ones and twos, the other goats, pigs and donkeys came. Each stood over the body for a bit. Elora bleated. We waited. We buried him, digging the hole just a little deeper to make way for the massive right horn. I looked out the front window after dark and could see S’more and Elora sparring near the bare soil.

Steve said, if he were to write this, he would concentrate on what happened after Mister Bill died. He also said that what did happen was very much like what happened when Marsh died, except this time was quieter. “They fought me when I tried to fill the hole,” he said. That’s because the one who fought most was Mister Bill.

Bill

Leave a comment Posted on Conservation Farm, Educational Ambassadors

‘Further up and further in’

Heron

Look overhead, above Paul Nusbaum’s bridge over the quarry channel. Do you see who’s watching?

Summer 2018 Newsletter CoverThe humidity today says it is summer in Northwest Ohio. The calendar says it’s spring. We’ll go with the weather and release the Summer 2018 issue of The Quarry Farm Newsletter. Click on the cover to the right for your copy.

There is only so much information that can be included in an 11″ x 17″ newsletter. There For instance, on the first weekend in May, we drove across five states to Save-a-Fox Rescue to meet a potential education ambassador . Google Maps advised us to travel south to U.S. Route 30 to begin our Northwest journey. That didn’t make sense, so we took SR 15 North. We saw flat land bisected by rivers flowing into unglaciated parts of Williams County.

Westbound Indiana was a I-80/90. Enough said.

I slept through most of Illinois, but Steve regaled quotes from billboards, including one promising “All the Liquor…None of the Clothes.” We stopped at the Belvidere Oasis, a six-lane-spanning travel plaza on a stretch of 1-90 dubbed the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway, east of Rockford Mile Marker 54.5. We planned on buying bagels. Instead, we pounced on a food kiosk selling cucumber salads and falafel. Aside from the usual food chains, Mom-and-Pop vendors were hawking jewelry and fudge. 

Wisconsin is a very tall state. We drove its full height. Motorists can enjoy scenic wetlands, glacier-carved sandstone formations interspersed with theme parks, yellow-and-black “Beef Jerky Outlet” billboards and signs advertising a ‘gentlemen’s club’ called “Cruisin’ Chubbies.”

Interstate 90 connecting the La Crosse, Wisconsin area to rural Winona County, Minnesota is breathtaking. We added another jerky outlet sign to our list when, suddenly, the Mississippi River stretched before us, banked rocky cliffs and green. Google Maps flashed an emoji of the late musical artist Prince to tell that we had arrived in Minnesota, the Land of 10,000 Lakes (and Purple Rain.)

20180531_200157My ears popped as we climbed out of the Mississippi River Valley and rolled through greening hills and fjords toward Rice County, Minnesota. On the evening of May 4, we arrived at the place where silver, red, and roan foxes roost in trees rather than in the cramped, fur farm cages. Alexis at Save-a-Fox describes foxes as “those mythical creatures you read about in middle school.” We are learning just so from Quinn, the vulpine ambassador who made the return trek to Ohio.

Leave a comment Posted on Educational Ambassadors, Milestones

Smelling spring with new fingers

20180509_095537This land that we two-leggers call The Quarry Farm has been in family hands for a long time. I remember walking up the trail toward what we still call ‘The Cut-Off.’ My Uncle Carl led the way. He was a teenager and I was pretty sure he would get us home. This wetland, an oxbow severed by 1950s-era engineers from the free-flow of Cranberry Run, was the outer reaches for me. I had faith that teenage Carl, a grown-up to grade-school me, would know the way back.

20180509_100344Around the time that Carl and I took that walk, I decided that my mission was to preserve this 50-acre island. I know how lucky I am to have this memory. After adult years of looking for my purpose in life, I realized that my small self was right.  I came to my senses in time for my child to create her own memories among the native flowers, trees and cricket frogs that sing of wild spring here. Luckily, My Steven agreed.

There are lots of reasons why we do what we do here. In my mind, the best thing we can do is give people of all ages the opportunity to connect with the natural world of Northwest Ohio as we do every day. If you’ve seen a baby dragonfly with your own eyes, touched its budding wings as an emerald-winged adult snatches a whining mosquito from the air around you, you’ll remember that and want to see it again and again, here and in your own backyard.

20180509_094706Last week, we introduced The Quarry Farm to children, teachers and parents from Patrick Henry Preschool. On May 9 and 10, they made lasting leaf shirts from the foliage of blooming buckeye trees. They took a “Smelling Hike” of Red Fox Cabin gardens to enjoy the scents of mint, costmary, and viburnum. They saw the inhabitants of Cranberry Run and were greeted at the farm animal sanctuary gate by pigs Nemo, Carlton and Beatrice.

Before they did any of these things, the visitors met Tyree the Cornsnake. Small fingers brushed his smooth skin, described as “ripply” by one boy. Never would have thought of that myself, but that young man is spot-on. Teacher Cheryl, a self-professed ophiophobia, stretched out her own hand and touched the snake’s red-orange scales. She’d never touched a snake before.

That’s what we’re talking about.20180510_091636

2 Comments Posted on Educational Ambassadors

Changing of the color guard

Four beautiful bronze turkeys were part of the flock here on the farm. Fezzik, Inigo Montoya, and Humperdink are now part of everything, having lived out their lives on the ridge above Cranberry Run. All three rode down I-75, from various points in Lucas County by way of Nature’s Nursery, in a hatchback.

The fourth, Miracle Max, arrived in similar fashion, and he still walks the grounds. Two weeks ago, Max was greeter as schoolchildren and scouts entered the south gate. Since Humperdink died earlier this spring, Max has been blue. Quite literally, as his skin was a pale blue: the blue of loneliness and the fear and discomfort associated with losing his band of tom-turkeys.

(About that: Turkeys’ heads change color to express their emotions. The blood vessels lying directly under the skin of the wattle (that strange unicorn appendage between their eyes) are surrounded by long bands of collagen. When the turkey gets upset, the blood vessels contract, exposing more of the collagen bands. University of California, Berkeley scientists have actually developed a synthetic toxin sensor based on the turkey’s color-changing technique.)

When the April visitors walked onto his acreage, Max flushed a deep red, puffed his feathers, and thrummed the balloon of his chest. Instead of two-stepping away from anyone who came within arm’s length, as is his habit, he allowed a few of the kids to touch him briefly. And when his guests closed the gate behind them at the west gate, Max glided beside them from the other side of the fence, becoming paler as the kids moved further away. One little scout insisted on going back to console him.

On Saturday, three lovely ladies took up residence here. A family in Michigan raised three Brown Orlopp hens with the intention of serving them on a platter. “But the girls loved them,” the dad said. Indeed, his three young daughters helped load them in our carrier. The eldest skipped and told us about naming them all ‘Waddles.’ Her younger sisters weren’t quite sure of our intentions, I think, judging by their tears as we drove away toward the Ohio line.

So this one is for you three girls to the north, for entrusting the Three Waddles to us further south. It’s also for a very happy, very rosy, Max.

turkeys

2 Comments Posted on Art, Educational Ambassadors, Public Events

Branching out, under bright lights

20170419_143537You know that tingling excitement you get when you try something on for the first time, especially when it fits and what looks back at you in the mirror looks pretty good? Yeah, you know. That’s kind of what last week felt like.

The week’s events started last fall with an email from Quarry Farm Friend Robyn. The trails here are not new to her or her family. In fact her son Zane is one of our best advisers during programs. Zane is kind of a barometer—if he’s happy with the program’s progression, we go with the flow. Anyway, Robyn is a Findlay teacher who recommended us as a field trip destination. So back at the start of School Year 2016-17, her co-worker Alyson scheduled a spring field trip.

After the ball dropped in January, Ada Girl Scot Leader Cathy called to schedule a three-badge (Hiker, Bugs, and Animal Habitats) for Brownies and Juniors. A month later, I entered Erie Conservation District‘s “2017 Recycled Runway: A Clean Water Cause” on behalf of The Quarry Farm.

None of these things are truly new. We raise our hands all the time. In fact we all but shout, “Pick me! Pick me!” in order to fulfill our mission statement. What was a stretch is that all these things were set to happen in the same week in April 2017.

20170419_142307On Sunday, we fortified ourselves with chocolate and other Easter basket contents. From Monday to Thursday, 218 Findlay preschool students, their teachers, parents and bus drivers made lasting-leaf t-shirts and followed the Cranberry Run Trail to meet the farm animal sanctuary residents before making the bus ride back to Hancock County. The mornings were cool and afternoons exceedingly warm, but Miracle Max the Bronze Turkey was always the gate greeter for every group even if the other animals dove for cover.

Fearless Girl

Fearless Girl from “200 Years…Same Shoes”

Friday night was the big Sandusky runway show. Recycled Runway was a fundraiser to restore Lake Erie’s Big Island Preserve on the eastside shoreline off the Cedar Point Causeway. Since everything done upstream (here) impacts downstream (Lake Erie) the Fabulous Sarah wrapped herself in repurposed pop can tabs, plastic shopping bags, snack bags, mesh fruit bags, plastic bottles, plastic caps, plastic straws, bubble wrap, and feed bags and walked the red carpet in our Regency/Roaring ’20s/2020 Fearless Girl time-warp entry “200 Years…Same Shoes.”

We made the Final Four (whoo Hoo!) and they raised $10,000 towards increased water quality. Check out the media photos.18034077_1524536627558995_2990400833246355312_n20170422_110444

Saturday morning, the Ada scouts reused bush honeysuckle to make hiking sticks, hiked habitats, tasted garlic mustard, and met the animals. Max was red with happiness.

2017-04-23 16.12.32Today we rest. So does Mister Bill. Looking in the mirror, or at the photos and videos on our cells, and through the perspectives captured by others who shared the stage of the day, we’ll still keep raising our hands.