Apifera Farm - where art, story, animals & woman merge. Home to artist Katherine Dunn

Apifera Farm is a registered 501 [c][3]. #EIN# 82-2236486

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©Katherine Dunn.





Thursday, April 04, 2019

We will Birdie On! Final Barn Addition!

We need to add one final addition to the barn. This addition will house some equines to take pressure off the current equine area. This will not only provide a safer area in the winter [it gets a bit crowded at present in winter, and feeding can be a challenge in winter and rain], it will allow us to manage mud control better in spring, helping equine feet issues which we are experiencing for the first time since having them. And, this addition will provide loft space for 1/2 our hay, meaning the current barn will have freed up space and get hay into lofts versus on the ground/pallets. Martyn and I will be doing a lot of the work on this barn, the ground prep, siding, loft finishing and interior details. We are slated to get going July, and hope to have the frame and trusses up by August. Then Martyn will do the siding before winter.

The addition we did last year became the physical therapy suite for our beloved Birdie the llama, who died after trying so hard for two months to make it. We are so devastated as are many of you that we didn't have a different outcome. But, we learned that that area is necessary to have as an emergency area -now complete with a 500# lift should we ever need it again. I feel Birdie there all the time, and I asked her to find me more llamas [a hard thing in Maine]. I talk to her all the time. I began looking for llamas knowing it would take awhile and that they would be out of state. I didn't want to rush it, but didn't want to wait so long that a whole year went by. Birdie gave me so many things, and one was she taught me what llama love is all about. Well, low and behold, I found a woman through a woman through a woman who is like a mentor to me in my heart and we have brought home an elderly llama, and a young male we have named Arlo who is going to be a wonderful therapy guy-I've been working with him.

When I go into the suite where Birdie and I tried so hard, I feel her smiling, telling me to BIRDIE ON! We are naming that area the Birdie Memorial Llama Love Room. While the llamas will live there, it is also a good gathering spot for events and therapy visits for able bodied people. The wall I put up planning to make it the wall of hope for Birdie, is sitting there blank...but I think that is fitting. It is a clean beautiful white wall, white like Birdie, white like the clouds she floats in, and that wall can be filled with extensions of her-stories that will be coming as we add our next llama family.

It is a whopping $20,000 to get this final addition up. If you are interested in doing a matching donation, let me know.


If you prefer to send a check make it to Apifera Farm Inc.
315 Waldoboro RD, Bremen ME 04551
You will get a receipt immediately after arrival if you send me your email, and a written one too.

Our EIN # 82-2236486