The best place to start a story is at the beginning. This is who we are and how our story began…
Who We Are
Doug is a Marine Corps veteran. He has a degree in electronics and works in the telecommunications field. When he’s not at work, he’s busy building enclosures, maintaining the property, taking care of the animals, and making project designs come to life.
Tabitha is a certified Master Herpetologist and a full-time Phi Theta Kappa student at the state college where she is studying zookeeping. She works part-time at the third-best zoo in North America. When she was fifteen years old, she co-founded Save a Soul Animal Rescue. She’s always in contact with people looking to surrender or adopt animals through the rescue. She spends endless hours rehabilitating animals, cleaning enclosures, researching best animal husbandry practices, and designing new enclosures. When she’s not studying or working with animals, she’s fighting monsters and gnolls in the alternate world of Dungeons and Dragons.
Debbie stays at home during the day trying to keep one step ahead of the animals. She loves everything having to do with animals, nature, and farm life.
Ariana and Taylor are two of Tabitha’s best friends. They’re in a lot of our stories because even though they’re not related, they are family. They’ve been with us during all of the ups and downs of living on the farm, and they always come back even after the not-so-fun and messy times!
As a family, we love playing games and watching movies together. Since getting away from the animals is hard, even for a day, one of our favorite things to do is grab some popcorn, turn on a movie, and spend time together. Running the homestead and the rescue is a lot of ongoing hard work, but at the center of everything we do is family. There’s no better way to spend time together as a family than with a round of Monopoly or with a hot bucket of popcorn and a good movie!
How Our Story Began
Our family is made up of three humans, one angel, and hundreds of feathered, scaly & furry critters. We didn’t plan on living the life we do, we just sort of found ourselves in the middle of it.
Doug and I always thought Tabitha would be one of those few kids who grew up in the house she was born in and who would eventually bring her own kids home to see where she grew up. We loved our house and yard and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. The house was right in the middle of a subdivision in the city with one of the largest yards in the area, 9,200 square feet. When we bought the house, it was surrounded by fill dirt left behind by the builder. After fifteen years of hard work, we turned the house into our home and the yard into a private, park-like, retreat, full of fruit trees, flowers, vegetables, and wildlife everywhere you looked.
Tabitha has always had a unique connection with animals. She’s been able to connect with them in a way not often seen. We had two cats when she was born, Amber and Jasmine. Tabitha’s first word as a baby was “Amba”, after Amber. Amber had a special connection with Tabitha and Tabitha loved her so much. As a young child, Tabitha always had to have animals at her side. When most preschoolers are asked what they want to be when they grow up, they say a ballerina, a superhero, etc. Tabitha’s response was always “I’m going to rescue animals” That determination has never wavered. Most people spend a lifetime trying to figure out their purpose in life. She’s one of the lucky ones who was born knowing what her purpose is. Living in the city made it challenging, but she rescued who she could every chance she had.
The week before her last day of elementary school, Doug and I surprised Tabitha with three newly hatched chicks. We immediately fell in love with the chicks and, little did we know at the time, our homestead journey began the moment we brought them home. The city allowed us to have six chickens as long as none of them were roosters. Three chickens were so much fun that we had to get three more. Like with the first group, all of the day-old chicks were guaranteed to be hens. One day our worst fears were realized when one of the new chicks began to look like a rooster. We took him to the vet who, through blood tests, confirmed he was a rooster. It’s a cruel joke really. You love and nurture these tiny birds for several months and all of a sudden you find out you have to give one up. We were devastated. Our Trixie had to go and there was nothing we could do about it. We called everyone we could think of from family farms to the local zoo. Even family members got on board with our “Save Trixie” campaign. Everyone we contacted about taking Trixie said they could take him, but he’d be dinner. We couldn’t believe that there wasn’t anyone out there who could take him and not eat him. After realizing we had to accept his fate, one of Doug’s coworkers was able to get in touch with his neighbor who said she could take Trixie, and not eat him. We were overwhelmed with gratitude but also felt sad because we knew we couldn’t be the only ones in such a difficult situation with their baby rooster.
As all of this was going on, we had just started our homeschooling journey. Tabitha’s last day of elementary school was her last day of formal classroom education. The beginning of homeschooling was exciting, scary, and full of possibilities. It was one of the biggest, and best, decisions we had made for our family up until that time. Since homeschooling didn’t keep us tied to a school district, and we were still feeling the loss of Trixie, we came to the realization that we didn’t need to, or want to, stay in the city. We searched and searched and found a home on five acres in a rural community. We loved the new house, the yard (which was another blank slate), the cottontail rabbits running around and playing, and we especially loved the sound of the neighbor’s roosters filling the house. We knew we would never have to give up another rooster again. Shortly after we moved into the new house, Doug’s coworker talked to the kind lady who took Trixie in and made arrangements for him to come back home to us. Everything felt right again when Trixie came back home. Sadly, after a couple of years back home with us Trixie passed away. I don’t think he understood how much he changed our lives. Because of him, we moved out of Tabitha’s childhood home in 2012, Tabitha’s life mission of rescuing animals was made official when we founded a 501(c)(3) nonprofit farm animal rescue in 2015, and countless numbers of city roosters have been able to happily live out their long lives on our farm. Trixie showed us how one small soul can change everything.
So, that’s how our story began. We don’t know how it’s going to continue. We just know we’re thankful for each chapter it brings us to.