Claire and Jude
The green pastures of Lancaster County have some thorny terrain when it comes to rural legends of puppy mills and poor treatment of farm animals.
But since 2017, a dedicated team of animal advocates at Lancaster Farm Sanctuary (LFS) rescues and rehabilitates farm animals deemed “non-standard” or “not for farm use”— animals that otherwise may have been discarded.
Spanning 23 acres (and counting), LFS isn’t easy to find—down long and winding roads, tucked behind neighboring farms. A volunteer directed me down a maze of driveways confusing enough to turn around twice. At one point, three chickens literally crossed the road in front of me.
If my life were the movie I sometimes imagine it is, I would be starring in a classic fish-out-of-water story. My low-rider car isn’t for off-roading. I wore designer sneakers instead of boots, the more sensible choice to side-step animal scat. I brought hand sanitizer instead of accepting that organic things would stick to me.
LFS’s co-founder and executive director Sarah Salluzzo sniffed my trademark intensity right away.
“It’s nice to just be here with the animals,” she said. “Even people who volunteer here for one day let go of their stress. They tend to become more Type B.”
She was right. It’s relaxing when you can tap into non-verbal communication to bond with animals, stroking their fur in a hypnotically Zen state.
Then I met Salluzzo’s partner, Jonina Turzi, LFS vice president and co-founder. Like every other animal fanatic I’ve met, she will tell you everything about every animal she’s ever known. Some of the animals are even tattooed on her arms.
In addition to sharing the heartbreaking circumstances that brought the pot-bellied pigs to the sanctuary, Turzi wove fun backstories, spilling the tea about their friendship. Meanwhile, pot-bellied pig Pumpkin roamed the expansive pen with her first friends ever, having escaped filthy conditions, infections and eventual slaughter. LFS is their happily ever after.
Turzi and volunteer Amie Adams shared many general stories about common practices for animals raised for food:
- Pre-pubescent chicks restricted to small spaces and fattened to the point that their legs couldn’t support their obese bodies.
- Male chicks killed after birth by egg farmers before they can fertilize any eggs.
- Animals’ ears and tails cropped without giving anesthesia.
- Babies taken from their mothers immediately, before they could nurse.
- Animals of all kinds found in puddles of their own waste, their own feet rotting underneath them.
Just to name a few.
Many animals came to LFS as the result of human cruelty cases, and some from police seizures. Many were rescued from the farming industry or from being turned into dog food. Almost all had outlived their usefulness as agricultural commodities.
“They would have been destroyed,” Adams said.
Pet Causes
Somewhere near the middle of all the spacious pens with pigs oinking, ducks quacking, horses neighing, and sheep baa-ing, Salluzzo and Turzi have their own little farmhouse. In addition to their sweat equity and resources from their nonprofit sanctuary, they estimate that their 30 to 40 volunteers donate some 36 hours per week to help run LFS.
They are fortunate to count a veterinarian as one of their volunteers. Although there are a few nearby vets for farm animals, sometimes they need to consult specialists in other counties.
“It’s telling that in an area as animal-saturated as Lancaster County, veterinarians are so scarce,” Turzi said.
In addition to LFS’s animal activism, their pet (pardon the pun) causes include veganism and LGBTQ+ rights. LFS believes strongly that rescued animals will find and choose their own families. They do not allow them to breed because there are way too many animals to care for already.
“There is an academic counter-argument that altering the animals removes their reproductive rights,” Turzi said. “But out here in the real world, we have to turn animals away every day.”
Most LFS residents felt content to chew everything in their immediate surroundings, respecting the humans’ personal space. But not all the animals on my two-hour tour were docile, or even happy to meet me. Adams warned me about the ducks not being super fans of humans. But no one warned me about the enterprising goats, Max and Kevin.
To be clear, Max and Kevin liked everyone else, accepting coos and scritches from over 20 other visitors. But every time I came into Max’s view, something pinged inside his brain, much like the Terminator’s computer brain chip on red alert. No matter where I hid, Max wove his horns through the crowd to find me, repeatedly ramming my thigh. Then when I thought I was safe, his friend Kevin took a bite from my notebook, just before delivering me fresh fertilizer.
Turzi reasoned that my notebook looked a lot like their food dishes. Totally logical. Until then, I was convinced goats just didn’t care for journalists.
So I had to get my mammalian affection from two very sloppy kissers, two cows rescued from the beef industry. Claire’s face is half paralyzed, her purple tongue darting in and out on one side. With Jude’s cleft palate, he can’t quite close his mouth, so his saliva drips everywhere.
Whether you are an old hand at farming, are a fellow fish out of water, or somewhere in between, you can learn the origin stories for the 80 rescued animals that live at LFS. And you can follow the animals and their antics on LFS’s very active social media sites.
Lancaster Farm Sanctuary is located at 1871 Milton Grove Rd., Mount Joy. For more information, visit www.lancastersanctuary.org or social media sites like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
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