Waterbury Center sanctuary farm offers horses freedom, safety, healing
Dec. 2, 2021 | By Cheryl Casey
Sometimes, a new venture doesn’t need a business plan or even much forethought to blossom into a full-fledged operation in just a year. Such was the case when Olivia Alcorta and her husband moved to 18 acres overlooking Kneeland Flats on Perry Hill and Alcorta impulsively purchased a rescue horse.
Just like that, Storeybrook Farm Sanctuary and a new mission in Alcorta’s life began.
Relocating from Seattle in the spring of 2019, Alcorta, then heavily pregnant with the couple’s first child, had grown up on a horse farm in Connecticut and wanted her daughter to have a similar experience. She also wanted her own childhood horse, a retired show jumper named Woica, to live out her remaining years on the new family farm.
After rescuing that first horse, Abe, in January 2020, Alcorta considered that with five stalls to start, she would commit to rescuing one horse per year. Today, she has about 25 on site, including Woica, two boarded horses, and miniature ponies among the rescues.
“There was no business plan. No grand idea,” Alcorta admitted. “As fast and as many as we can take is not even a drop in the bucket,” she added.
In early September 2020, Alcorta posted on Front Porch Forum, seeking a barn manager to assist with her quickly-growing stable of horses. Lauren Simmers, a Waterbury resident since 2004, answered the call. “Thank goodness for local resources!” exclaimed Simmers.
Simmers was newly unemployed after being laid off from Vail Resorts in Stowe. “I knew I didn’t want to be tied to a keyboard anymore or a screen,” she said. Growing up in Western Pennsylvania, Simmers developed a love of animals and rode horses from time to time. “Nowhere near where I would say I’m a horse person growing up,” Simmers explained, “but I think my desire to learn and my want to be outside” drew her to Alcorta’s ad for help.
“When I started, it was just six horses, five stalls. I’ve grown along with her [Alcorta],” added Simmers.
An extra benefit for Simmers has been the opportunity to bring her 6-year-old daughter to spend time at the farm, “especially during last year when school was so remote, she was able to be here some days” and learn a lot, Simmers explained.
“Goat wrangling, mini-pony wrangling, she’s something else!” Alcorta chimed in.
For both Alcorta and Simmers, what they’ve learned about the logistics of saving horses and the treatment some horses have endured – “It’s a pretty scummy world,” said Alcorta – only motivates them more.
Simmers said that the second rescue to arrive at Storeybrook was the catalyst for her commitment to the sanctuary. Beauty, a skinny, overworked 19-year-old horse was probably their worst case, according to Alcorta.
“Lauren is the heart of the rescue in the sense that she has a lot of emotions when it comes to [the horses], and I kind of had to tell her, like, ‘Buckle up, because this might not last the night, or the week, or the month,’” Alcorta recounted.
In the next 364 days, Beauty’s condition worsened, then improved long enough for her to enjoy a bit of time on the farm before her body gave in to having been overworked too hard for too long. “It was like a flip book of what rescue is. You get them in bad shape, you give them the best that you can, and then you give them the ending that they deserve,” Alcorta said. “Most horse people don’t see what we see.”
Horses face a complicated end of life
Traditionally and legally, horses have been considered livestock. The Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, signed into federal law in December of that year, reinforced this classification. According to the American Horse Council, the law provides a “revised statutory definition that excludes equines from a blanket definition of ‘pets.’” Livestock, in turn, are subject to different criteria when it comes to things like cruel treatment, compared to those animals, like dogs and cats, classified as pets.
Many people treat their horses as companions, and in such circumstances, horses live 25-30 years on average. However, the horse’s role as a domesticated working animal – whether it be on farms, for transportation, for warfare, on the racetrack, or for show – is deeply-rooted in American history and society.
According to Craig M. Smith at the Animal Legal & Historical Center, University of Michigan College of Law, “horses are expensive and resource intensive, and are likely just as often treated as financial investments or livestock as companion animals.” When the practicality of that investment runs its course, horses may be rehomed, neglected, or “placed in equine rescue, rehabilitation or retirement facilities. Some are euthanized by a veterinarian at the owner's request,” as explained by the American Medical Veterinary Association.
Another option is to send the horse to a slaughterhouse, especially as “there are more unwanted horses than can be accommodated by the other options,” the veterinary association reported. When federal law led to the closure of horse slaughterhouses in the United States in 2005, horse owners adjusted by shipping their horses to either Canada or Mexico for slaughter. The logistics of transporting the horses over long distances have raised alarms for those concerned about animal welfare.
One of Alcorta’s goals with Storeybrook Farm Sanctuary is to raise “awareness to end the export and humane slaughter of American horses,” as stated on the farm’s website. This includes calling for Congress to pass the bill H.R. 3355, the Save America’s Forgotten Equines (SAFE) Act, which would both prevent the export of American horses for slaughter and cement the banning of horse slaughter in the United States.
Advocacy, action, rehabilitation
Alcorta’s strategy combines advocacy with rescue and rehabilitation. Most of the horses that come to Storeybrook Farm Sanctuary worked either on an Amish farm or a racetrack.
In a blog highlighting the people and culture of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, writer Chris Zook explained that the centrality of horses to Amish daily life requires that the horses be well cared for. A horse is considered a serious, expensive purchase, and thus must be treated to last. At the same time, they are also treated for work.
Alcorta noted that “coming from the Amish, [the horses] don’t know human empathy and affection. [Lauren] spent like a month cutting up apples and putting them into a horse’s mouth that had never had treats, that didn’t know what was happening. Now she’s a huge treat monster.”
Like any group, the Amish community contains some members who are cruel and abusive to their animals, as does the racing industry, which has been linked to systematic patterns of abuse and performance-related medication by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and other animal advocacy organizations.
In 2014, NBC News interviewed a veterinarian whose decision to specialize in treating racehorses “turned into an agonizing career choice – one that she says forced her almost daily to wonder if it’s possible to do her job and still adhere to her professional oath to protect animals and prevent suffering.”
At Storeybrook Farm Sanctuary, Alcorta and Simmers tend to horses that need both physical and mental healing from their past work. While the “medically intensive horses are very stressful,” acknowledged Alcorta, “the emotional scars are way harder to fix.” However, she said her favorite moment is “the first time they don’t flinch when you go to pet them. It’s addicting to see them go from bad to better.”
Simmers agreed, describing her favorite part of this work as seeing the horses “be free and feel safe. You can sense it in their bodies.”
This past summer, local volunteers started helping out around the farm, and there are now half a dozen regulars spanning all age groups. “Everyone gets their own benefit from being here,” explained Alcorta. “It obviously benefits us immensely, but everyone has their favorite, everyone gets excited to see [one of the animals],” she elaborated.
Some horses at Storeybrook Farm Sanctuary are adoptable, while others will be there for the rest of their lives. A handful have been adopted so far, finding forever homes both locally and out of state.
“One of our best resources is our vet. He’s helped us place a few,” explained Alcorta, referring to Dr. Joseph W. Wagner of Sugar Run Equine Veterinary Services based in Waterbury Center. She confessed though that it’s not easy. “Lauren will back me up that I’m not very good at letting them go,” she said.
Once rescued by an organization such as Storeybrook Farm, horses are required to stay in quarantine for a month “because they carry a lot of illnesses. You don’t want them to come to your healthy barn,” explained Alcorta. “We advertise them at their quarantine location to kind of broaden our range.”
Expanding the mission
To facilitate adoptions across the country, Alcorta has begin using the hashtag #SaveAHorseSunday on Facebook and Instagram to feature three horses each week that are waiting in kill pens. She says about 300 horses are saved from kill pens every year.
This work comes with many challenges beyond the stress of scarred and mistreated horses, said Alcorta, particularly on the business side of things. Never intending to be a business owner, Alcorta acknowledged “that’s the worst part of it for sure. I hate everything that has to do with the business besides the horses.” She added, “Obviously, fundraising is always hard.”
Storeybrook Farm Sanctuary, Inc. became a nonprofit in January of this year, and Alcorta has applied for federal tax-exempt status as a 501c(3) corporation. Despite not having so much as a business plan when this all started, the farm has become home to a variety of animals, not just horses, in less than a year. There are two miniature cows that Alcorta rescued – “also an impulse purchase,” she confessed – fittingly named Ben and Jerry, five goats, three dogs, a donkey, some ducks, and a mini house pig named PuffPuff.
The infrastructure has also expanded to include a “pony palace” and a goat shed, with a quarantine barn on the drawing board. Alcorta’s dream is to get more space to help as many animals as she can. “If we have an acre, we will fill it,” she insisted.