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by Marcia Passos Duffy

PHOTOS ALL COURTESY OF QUIVER FARMS.

Mini Zoo for You farm tour exhibits nine smaller animals at retirement homes and rehabilitation centers.

Deborah Messina arrives at Quiver Farm in Pennsburg, Pa., every weekend day at 10 a.m. There, she feeds and mucks her day away, administering medicine when necessary, or simply offering tender love and care.

She did some research on her own and called the Philadelphia Zoo when the farm’s peacock’s eggs weren’t hatching.

This morning, Messina, points out a cantankerous calf she says is complaining about his service. “He didn’t get his food or water yet, so he’s getting rowdy,” she says.

For Messina, Quiver Farm (www.quiverfarm.com) is a relatively short geographic distance from her native Brooklyn, but it’s a long, long way away in lifestyle. “This is a pretty neat place,” she says. “There’s a nice variety of animals, and everybody is happy.”

“That’s because Debbie feeds them so well,” says Becky Mart who runs the farm along with her 71-year-old parents, Peg and Larry Hailey, though they’ve retired.

Together, with 14 employees who work 30 to 40-hour weeks and as many as 75 to 80-hour weeks during the busy spring, the family runs an educational agricultural business called Quiver Farm Projects, Inc. Intent on sharing our nation’s agrarian values, they operate an 11-acre animal farm, but also run various live animal projects, like chick hatchings, in schools, particularly in Northeast corridor urban areas like New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore. Springtime brings about 100 scheduled school and community projects a week.

Bustling with Life

Not counting chick hatchings, which can have 700 to 800 chicks a week, Quiver Farm averages 200 births a year. Feed runs anywhere from $400 to $600 a month. It keeps Mart, who wakes up at 6 a.m., busy.

A farm tour reveals two peacocks, a female and a male, the scenario in every pen whenever possible. There are two donkeys, Ezekiel and Miriam. Two llamas come along on their Christmas projects. “They play the camels,” Mart says.

There are two kinds of sheep, Karakuls and Finns. Messina named two Karakul lambs Batman and Robin because of the mask-like markings.

There’s also Henry, an aggressive Sebastopol goose.

As for the pigs, they’re wallowing in the mud. Like others, they’re part of the farm’s educational projects, then raised for meat after they exceed 50 pounds. “We can’t use them in our programs if people can’t pick them up,” Mart says.

Pygmy goats, emus, skunks, barn cats—the farm has it all. However, Mart takes the most pride in her Quarter/Arabian mix horse, Riot, who gave birth to a filly named Daisy.

Springtime brings about 100 scheduled school and community projects a week.

The genesis of the idea

Peg and Larry have five natural children, one adopted child and over time they have fostered 42 others. The farm and business take their names from Psalm 127: “Children too are a gift from the Lord … Blessed are they whose quivers are full.”

“We always thought our quiver was full,” Peg says.

Peg was working with Montgomery County 4-H in Creamery, Pa., when she overheard a telephone conversation, an explanation that the center didn’t involve itself in chick hatching projects for preschoolers. At the time, the Haileys owned a farm in Horsham, Pa. There, Peg started chick hatching projects.

In Horsham—“Yuppyville,” says Becky—the neighbors’ feathers were getting ruffled. The property wasn’t zoned agricultural. Now, in more rural Pennsburg, they can access the Turnpike, then head south to the Blue Route into Philadelphia or to I-95 into Baltimore. From Routes 663 and 309, they can head north up into the Lehigh Valley or into New York.

The family moved here in 1996. The property was a horse farm, but previously a cow farm in the 1960s. Well before that, the original 1710 log-stone home was once an American Indian trading post, then a stagecoach stop.

From beneath a larger-than-life-sized, framed rooster jigsaw puzzle in the offices in the barn, Peg says she was always fascinated with farm life. Then, in nursing school, she saw a cow for the first time. It changed her life.

Even with all the birds on their property, her husband Larry didn’t think the business would fly. He called the proposition a “go-nowhere” business. When asked if her father was wrong, Mart simply says, “Yes.”

On the road again

When the show goes on the road, Quiver covers a main chunk of the Northeastern corridor: “We’re all over the place,” Mart says.

Of course, the problem in New York is parking.

“We’re just a bunch of country folk,” Mart says. “This has gone over big in Manhattan.”

So much so that she’s working on a plan for trips to the Big Apple by bicycle, instead. The bicycle will haul a light trailer to transport materials and gear for up to four projects. “It’s just an idea,” Mart says.

Peg, who is a licensed rabbit and guinea pig judge and breeder who attends shows all over the country, says she never thought Quiver would or could do 75 to 100 projects a week.

“Where can we continue to travel?” she asks. “Can we keep going to New York? But, kids there absolutely never get to see anything agricultural.”

Sixteen programs in Quiver’s stable

Quiver Farm’s mission centers on educating children and adults about farm life and its animals. The company’s motto is “Farm Education That’s Fun!”

By far, the number one project is its two-week chick-hatching program. It begins with a short introduction to a live hen and rooster. Larry, or another staff member, will then transport a dozen pre-incubated eggs to a site a week before the eggs should hatch. Once they do, usually on a Monday or a Tuesday, the classroom students spent a couple days with the chicks, then Quiver picks them up at the end of that same week and returns them to its farm.

“It’s a shortened version [of a hatching process that takes 21 days],” Mart says. “They get to see it, but over a shorten span of days.”

Among Quiver Farm Projects, Inc.’s other projects:

Bee Keeping: Students get to check out the honey makers from a safe distance, try on the bee keeper’s suit, use the fogger and taste natural honey.
Charlotte’s Web: The characters in the book—a piglet, a tarantula and a rat, too—visit a school classroom.
Creepy Crawley Critters: This features a story about nightlife on the farm, including two skunks [descented, of course].
Little Miss Muffet: Quiver brings a milking goat, and makes “butter, curds and whey the traditional way.” Staff members teach about milk and milk products.
Mother Goose: An adventure story about the life of goslings on a farm. A Toulouse goose is the star.
Apple Cider Press: With an apple press in tow, Quiver makes natural, pasteurized apple cider. The project includes animals that love apples; they snack on the leftovers.
Bunny Kindling: Within two days of a mother bunny giving birth, Quiver delivers her, along with a nesting box and supplies.
Spinning Wheel: Learn how to spin wool into yarn.

For the holidays:

Pilgrim: A Pilgrim visits with a live turkey and tells the story of the first Thanksgiving. The program includes a sampling of other foods the pilgrims would have eaten as well as tools they would have used.
Star of Wonder: Quiver brings sheep, a llama and a donkey, then dresses up everyone in the class to tell the story of the first Christmas.
12 Days of Christmas: The staff brings along all the creatures in the song, dresses the class and coordinates a sing-a-long.
Olive Oil Press for Hanukah: Quiver brings olives and a press to extract oil as students learn about the different types of olives, harvesting and pressing the product. The program includes a sheep, a goat and a dove—all animals that love olives.

Another program, Traveling Farm, includes 21 animals Quiver brings like a mini-zoo. All these animals can be pet and fed. “It’s a hands-on thing,” Mart says. “We’re about stimulating the five senses.”

If Traveling Farm is too big, a smaller version is Mini Zoo for You. A farm tour guide exhibits nine smaller animals at schools and retirement homes and rehabilitation centers, too.

Interested parties can also schedule a farm visit. At Quiver, farmhands guide guests through four different farm activities, then have lunch in the picnic grove.

Ah, farm life

When Messina moved to Pennsburg, she brought 15 dogs. There was a U-haul for the furniture, and another for the animals. A former secretary, she was cleaning houses when she saw an ad for Quiver Farm. “I’d rather pick up poop than clean people’s houses,” she says now.

Messina’s father had owned a farm in Sicily, Italy. Growing up, she says all she remembers him talking about was the farm.

“I always thought, ‘What’s the big deal with the rooster crowing?’” she says. “He made such a big deal about it—but now I see why he enjoyed it so much, and there are so many kinds—and they don’t all cock-a-doodle-do, you know.”

In fact, a strand of Japanese rooster at Quiver, Messina swears, crows like he’s saying, “I’m annoying … I’m annoying.”

Everyday at Quiver, she says, is a learning experience. She’s continually amazed. For example, when she sees a turkey puff its feathers for show, she thinks, “God made a fan before we made fans,” Messina says.

While she has no intentions of giving up her job, the animals needn’t worry. Her top assistant is a bit of a gosling herself, Mart’s 6-year-old daughter, Hailey [her mother’s maiden name].

“She’ll be the feeder if Debbie leaves,” Mart says.

The author has been published in national and regional magazines as well as daily and weekly alternative city newspapers. A gentlemen farmer in Quakertown, Pa., he writes about people, social trends, historic preservation and 18th century America, agrarian culture, land use and sports and recreation topics. Comment or question? Visit www.farmingforumsite.comand join in the discussions.