2024 Year in Review

This YEAR IN REVIEW update follows the adage that “Life happens while you’re busy making other plans!

We say this every year, so we are getting better at accepting, staying in the moment, and adapting while always asking “what is the best path forward for our animals and our mission?”

Here are some of the highlights of 2024.

Our Residents
While our large animal groups are stable this year, we did lose our sweet Snowberry (an Alpaca) suddenly, and death is never easy at the sanctuary. Our Alpaca herd honored her passing, staying with her until until the end. Such graceful compassionate animals. We would like to welcome more Alpacas this year. Every year, we do lose a barn cat, either by their roaming or to death, so we are looking to re-home a few more cats to our barns this year as well. We also lost 2 Chickens and a duck this year. Our chicken coop is predator proofed, so our animals have a longer life in general, but as with all life, none of us are guaranteed a certain age, and it’s never easy. Manchi, our duck, liked our big pond so much! We let the ducks swim there, often with them refusing to come to shore in the evening to return to their enclosure. We honor their wishes, and Manchi passed peacefully in the grasses by the pond, much to our sorrow, but at least leaving us with the knowledge that he loved where he was.

Open Houses
Our open house Saturdays were a big success in increasing community awareness, and because of them we received many more donations of food, treats, and follow up inquiries to volunteer!

Programming

• Our volunteer program has grown – we have more than doubled this year to include people tending to the animals and helping at the farm

• We have been able to provide jobs for “community volunteer hours” needed by educational and assistance programs.

Events

• We have already begun planning for a couple of community events to bring the donkeys and/or goats this summer!

• We have been supported with sponsorship of our organization by individuals and businesses in our community and are forming some community partnerships to bring more programs here and to the area.

• We have developed an event committee to help in planning and working events, and are creating a fundraising committee.

• We held our annual Blessing of the Animals here on St Francis day, which is always so heartwarming for us as well as our fur and feather babies!

  Facilities

• We completed a parking area by our permanent PfH SIGN and will increase it before we open again next year!

• In addition, we are working to formalize our needs and wishlists on our website.

Fundraising

• There have been numerous Facebook fundraisers created by YOU in addition to direct donations in memory, in honor of birthdays and weddings, and monthly sponsoring of the care of specific animals here at the sanctuary

• While our Spring Kickoff was a general outreach event, Our summer concert series to “Build the Barn” was a smaller effort this year with 3 shows total. The music was fantastic, the evenings were special, and the audiences were very generous in supporting us. We raised close to Two Thousand dollars last year through the concerts.

• We now have a GO FUND ME page https://gofund.me/5afb8f10 Please feel free to share in your networks so we spread the word further and further!

• We have also created a wish list on Chewy – which you can check out by searching under the give back tab on their home page – with our main animal feed and treats, and will add supplies and other equipment as needed. We will post these links on our social media as well.

• Friends in Chicago hosted our first ever fundraising event in Chicago last fall Halfway to St. Patricks Day! It was a big success, and we hope it becomes an annual event!

• Union Pier Social has partnered with us to host a weekly Bingo game at their restaurant on Tuesday evenings! It is a fantastic community outreach and fundraising event, and we are having so much fun meeting more people in Harbor Country through this experience! Hope you can join us on a Tuesday soon!

If you are already involved, we thank you, we appreciate you, and we need you more than ever to keep caring for our animals and growing in our connections with PEOPLE!