This story by Liberty Darr was first published Aug. 17 in The Citizen.
“I don’t really half-ass anything and I don’t think my team does either,” Era MacDonald, owner and operator of Merrymac Farm Sanctuary, said as she leaned against a pile of hay, her warm voice and laughter lulling the nearby goats into a peaceful sleep.
The farm on Lime Kiln Road, a rural dirt road in Charlotte, is home to nearly 80 animals of all different varieties and breeds — pigs, sheep, horses, ducks, goats, chickens, donkeys and bunnies — each carrying with them their own unique story of how they reached the sanctuary.
For MacDonald, Merrymac Farm is an extension of her natural-born instinct to help animals and her sixth-sense ability to communicate with them. Wherever MacDonald goes, there is sure to be a long line of farm animals following behind her, weaving in and out of her legs, waiting for a loving pat on the head.
“I’ve always been a huge animal lover and I was always bringing animals home. I’m not really like Doctor Doolittle, but sort of,” she joked as she put out her hand toward a pig named Eli. “I really am a stray magnet.”
The mission of the animal sanctuary is to provide abandoned animals with permanent, healthy homes where they can live free of abuse or cruelty, while also providing education for the local and broader communities about the well-being of animals and to promote a culture of equity between animals, people and the planet.
“I’ve always at the heart come back to education,” she said. “The only way that I feel like we can make some change in the world is to educate, letting people see animals that they don’t usually get to see in a world where they’re not being raised for meat or being used for some purpose. They get to just live here.”
Although the farm has been running as a nonprofit sanctuary for less than a year, the group has been part of the rehabilitation process for two of the most widely recognized neglect cases seen this year.
The first situation concerned the deplorable living conditions for a group of baby goats at a farm in Charlotte last year.
“Our goats came in from the Charlotte case,” MacDonald said. “They have what’s called CAE (caprine arthritis encephalitis). These goats in the normal goat world would be put to sleep.”
The goats that Merrymac Farm received were in such severe condition with foot rot and other diseases that they were forced to regularly walk on their knees.
“You’re only going to get that if you live in such deplorable, gross conditions,” she said.
The second case happened just last month when two severely starved horses, Honey and Romeo, were rescued from Leicester, a situation MacDonald and vets on site said was the worst starvation case they had ever seen.
“The ranking of starvation goes from one to nine and basically, below one, you’re dead. Honey was a one. Realistically she probably was like a point three, but they don’t do that,” MacDonald said. “Romeo was a two and a half. They both had heart murmurs and they both were severely dehydrated.”
Even though the horses now remain in the farm’s care, the road to recovery is just as difficult and worrisome as the day they arrived on the farm.
“You can kill them by rehydrating them too quickly,” she said. “You can kill them by giving them salt. You can kill them by feeding them too quickly. So your instinct is always to help things and feed them right away, but the whole process is a very slow process.”
With the help of a vet and steady rehabilitation efforts, Honey and Romeo are both gaining weight, but MacDonald said they’re not out of the woods yet.
“The last few nights are the first nights I’ve actually almost slept through the night,” she said in an interview two weeks ago. “Yesterday morning was the first day I came out here and Honey had some shavings on her body and I think that she laid down and actually got up on her own.”
A sanctuary for everyone
The farm runs with the help of minimal staff and a whole lot of volunteers. It’s a true labor of love, not just from MacDonald, but also those who help out with everyday maintenance.
With dozens of volunteers funneling in and out every month, MacDonald said that, multiple times a week, some volunteers come in just for their own mental health.
“It’s become not only a sanctuary for animals, but it’s sort of a sanctuary for people as well,” she said. “We have a lot of volunteers in their 60s and 70s, and I’m always like, ‘Look, if you’re having an off day, or your body doesn’t feel like it, you can clean stalls, just come and bring your coffee and spend time.’”
She’s learned that, although the animals on the farm need lots of care and attention, more often than not, people come in because they need the animals, too.
“There were teenagers last year that were coming from Champlain Valley Union just to sit,” she said. “Life was telling them that they needed to come be with the goats and, of course, the goats needed them.”
State process
As far as the state process regarding animal neglect and cruelty, it is complicated, said MacDonald.
“The game wardens or the police cover it,” she said. “Basically, it comes down to calling 911.”
Some counties and towns have an animal control officer to investigate cases of neglect, but the positions are oftentimes on a volunteer basis and if they are paid, it is very minimal.
“It’s a dangerous job, honestly,” she said. “It’s not a sought-after job, because you’re literally knocking on someone’s house to, like, ‘Do you have a dog license for your dogs?’ Or, ‘Are you feeding your dogs?’ You’re not a law enforcement person; you are a volunteer or minimally paid person that we should all be grateful that anyone wants to do.”
For MacDonald, she said the first steps to implementing change is statewide education, awareness and mustering support from residents. She said she is aware of multiple grassroots projects calling upon the Legislature to make needed changes.
“The Honey case has proven that people absolutely care about the welfare and the awareness of cruelty to an animal,” she said. “People have come out of the woodwork to support her.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misattributed it to another publication. This story has also been updated to reflect that not all towns have animal control officers.
