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Warning: Harsh reality ahead

Funny story. A man crafted a pretty little flyer that he thumb-tacked to the check-out bulletin board at the neighborhood market. The ad simply stated that he liked to tinker with old lawnmowers and was looking for a new project. The posting included his address and phone number.

He came home from the grocery store and found a half-acre-full of lawnmowers in various conditions on his half-acre of land.

This is why we do not share our address prominently on this website, on Facebook or any other easy-to-locate location.

BobThis is Bob. Bob is happy. Carlton is standing behind him, as are several hens of various histories and ages. They are happy, too. When Bob came here, he was not happy. He was recovering from abandonment, starvation, frostbite and likely a whole other host of horrors. Some of those chickens came with him. They survived because they found shelter from the coldest winter of the decade under the frozen carcasses of their flock. Carlton was abandoned by someone anonymous. We’re betting that they found out piglets–even pot-bellied minis–don’t fit in the palm of your hand forever.

If our address was easy to find, we would have more Bobs, Carltons and chickens that we could care for, no matter how hard we try. By no means whatsoever do I mean to suggest that Bob, Carlton, Beatrice, Lucy, Buddy, Freckles or any of the animals here on the farm animal sanctuary on the same level as a lawnmower. Lawnmowers we can load up, take to recycling and use the recycling funds to pay for food and medical care for the animals. These animals, however, trust us to provide for them for the rest of their lives, lives that we pledge to be existences of peace and contentment. That’s the least we can do to make up for what some of our fellow human beings have put them through.

So…

If you call us and we don’t answer right away, please leave a message. We will return your call as soon as everyone is tucked in or a scheduled program is completed. If you have an animal that you cannot care for, we will refer you to someone who can if we are unable. That is part of our mission.5K logo

Better yet…
Join us on October 1 for the first ever Quarry Farm 5K (registration info is listed under Events) and be part of that mission! You’ll walk, run or bicycle right past the gate.

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Living from the dead

Four years and six days ago, we watched a wall of white march across the field, a roaring mass that stretched from north to south as it blew southeast. We weathered the June 29, 2012 derecho from a basement window, watched the trees bend and debris fly over their tops.IMG_1532

In the end, several hardwoods fell on the nature preserve. Only a few fell over trails, so the others remained where they fell to provide habitat and host. We lost more pines than anything, their shallow foundations not suited to the soil and winds here. Four years later, the Fourth of July weekend provided the right conditions for us to break up the dried pine and safely burn.IMG_1533IMG_1540

We moved the brush to cleared ground, shaking loose pill bugs, millipedes and a garter snake that is blind as it prepares to shed a worn skin. Old stumps were broken up to make way for school bus parking. A cluster of mottled gray fingers clutched the base of one; a toe pointed skyward against another. I’ve never seen fungi Dead Man’s Fingers in the flesh before today. Makes the delicate jewelweed blooming in the floodplain that much more brilliant in contrast–but what a thing to see.

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The bridge to a bridge

IMG_1434This was Wednesday’s view looking west across the footbridge from the preserve-side of Cranberry Run. The photo wasn’t taken Wednesday, but Antioch College Intern Emma snapped it a couple of weeks ago. Since it was dry as a bone from before that point until Wednesday night, the photo could have been taken three days ago.

A fox squirrel probably lifted the pine cone between then and then, but you get the picture.

Historic records and reminiscences indicate that Cranberry Run, known affectionately in these parts as the Little Cranberry, was a trickle narrow enough for a skip and a jump to cross. The rush of water, sped via human ingenuity north through the Allen County and the southeast corner of Putnam, has accelerated the bankfull width to a current 10 to 15 feet as it falls to Riley Creek.

That’s a little more than a hop to cross. The first Cranberry Run footbridge (in my memory) stretched from the west to a landbridge between the stone quarry and the Run. After channelization in the 1980s, before the Army Corps theoreticized and modeled this ineffectual practice away to leave a native waterway to do what native waterways do best, another bridge was built at a bend 100 yards south. When that gave way, the most recent bridge was engineered downstream again.

IMG_1481This footbridge spans the little creek about 1/8 of a mile upstream of the confluence with the Riley, itself a tributary to the Blanchard River. The structure was built nearly a decade ago and was designed to allow floodwaters to pass through widely-spaced slats. Each end was boxed around trees on opposite banks. Chains were attached to the telephone pole bases, buried and stretched to anchor to other trees.

The bridge held fast until last year when the weathering effects of floodplain fills and heavy windfall from the 2012 derecho carved away enough bank that the anchor trees caved. In 2015, volunteer David Seitz winched and wrangled the structure back into shape, but he knew this was a stop-gap. Sure enough, Wednesday’s 3 to 4 inches of fast, hard rainfall swelled the stream into a fast-moving lake. This morning, I parted the black raspberries along the path and saw that the bridge now angles northwest to southeast rather than due east.IMG_1487

“Am needing a ride this PM,” said David after he saw the photos. He tells me that moving it to another location will probably require disassembly and rebuilding, as well as a lift. Yet, “Possible,” is how he signed off.
Sounds promising to me. Anything is, after all.
Any takers?
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good morning

This morning before work (so sometime between 6:30 and 7 a.m.), Anne came in as I was going out. Well, intending to go out. She wouldn’t let me leave, wanted to show me something.

And she did.

chick

Welcome, then, to this little chick; the first live domestic birth here on The Quarry Farm.

 

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Virtuous reality, deliver us

I dig deep down to find my soul, or something to revive hope, some days.

There’s an election that lends itself to a soulless outlook, and the loss of a young primate, totally out of place in his life but unsuited to a natural existence–one with an unpromising future anyway. Lots of fingers are pointing.

There’s a disconnect. We, the human sort of we, are a lonely species. Every other living thing of which we are aware speaks the language. They know who is in and out there as well as what each other is saying, even if it’s, “Mine; go away.”

I sat in the dark last night, drank my tea and pointed an angry emotional finger at all the people out there who, in my opinion, are wrong. There was lots of screaming and name calling. Finally, there was a whole lot of sad.

Then I heard a bizarre puffy sort of clicking whine (that’t the best I can do to describe it) to the west outside. With no moon through the windows, it took a bit to find my way to the front door where I could see three dark shapes near the fence line. Something had the attention of the bronze turkeys. Since the donkeys weren’t sounding the alarm and no two-leggers, in cars or on foot, were in sight, I went back to the dregs of my tea, nearer to sleep because of the distraction.IMG_1275

This morning, Humperdink, Inigo and Miracle Max still stride up and down the barrier, feathers puffed and air bladders booming. The geese are there, too. Bob grazes nearby, his dulled tusks not quite reaching the ground. Outside, her long neck poking up from a lavender patch, stands a hen turkey. She sees me, ducks back under the comfrey, lavender, sorrel and whatever else we’ve sandwiched in over the years.IMG_1366IMG_1361

June blooms around the cabin, spring pinks become intense oranges and burgundies. Still pink, yet befitting summer with their Rubenesque excess, peonies.

Below in the floodplain, blues flag the quarry, cricket frogs creak, catbirds mew. A raccoon washes, reaches under the duckweed for larvae, small fry and crayfish.

Listen.

The sad’s not gone. Because I am human and caught up in our human insular world, there will always be some sort of turmoil spinning around inside. Thankfully, a peace is just outside, my soul a little further up the path.

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Photos by Emma, Album #4

The Quarry Farm’s Spring 2016 intern has been working with us for seven solid weeks now. Last week, I suggested that she might like a nice t-shirt with honeysuckle leaves imprinted across the front. Her response was to fall forward on the ground and curl her dancer-like frame into a fetal position.

But Emma has made a break in the invasive’s hold on the forest of The Quarry Farm. She’s shed her long sleeves in favor of cool Ts as the temperatures rose from the 30s to today’s high 80s, so she no longer has to roll up her sleeves to pull bush honeysuckle seedlings. The exposed skin has made her more vulnerable to insects and an overprotective goose, but this Antioch College first-year has accepted the challenge.

Along the way, she’s taken a few photos. You’ll already know that, though, if you’ve been following along. Here is the latest album.

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Photos by Emma, Album #3

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Last week’s rain really brought out the frogs and fungi. It also made for lovely photos, with many fauna raindrop- and puddle-jumping from path to flora.

20160505_154432IMG_6168Then the sun came out. It was like a shade was raised, drawing life toward the light.

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And winter undercoat from Lucy.

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It’s raining again today and the clouds, wet and call-for-thunderstorms are not due to clear until Friday, just in time for a visit from the third grade students from 20160505_154702Pandora-Gilboa Elementary School. Emma is sure to take photos in between activities. We hope she shares the frames.

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Family Day happened

Ruddy gold turned gray
Light rain muddled brown with green
Yet filled cars still came

IMG_0833Haikus aside, who needs sunshine when you can turn a garbage bag into a raincoat, there are cookies in the pavilion and a lit fireplace in Red Fox Cabin?

The rain meant that the raptors couldn’t stay. T-shirts weren’t painted since days-ahead of rain would keep them wet. But cars still arrived on Road 7L for today’s Family Day. Thank you to all who helped get the word out. We’ll do this again in June, while the wildflowers still bloom.

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Photos by Emma, Album #1

IMG_6006Can you find the cricket frog above? There’s a free Quarry Farm t-shirt in it for the person who comments here at http://www.thequarryfarm.org with what kind of cricket frog it is.

While Intern Emma has pulled invasive bush honeysuckle this week, she has also been snapping photos. Shuffle through the mosaic below to see at what she has documented in her first two weeks here.

(FYI: that’s a number sign in the title, not a hashtag, although you may see some of this on Twitter. More to come, I have no doubt.)