28/06/2024
It's taken me a long time to write this because it’s weighed very heavy on my heart, but we have some big news to share.
Once upon a time, since a young girl in fact, I had a dream of owning land and running an animal sanctuary. It started small - wildlife rehab, raising and fixing up squirrels, volunteering at other sanctuaries, and bugging everyone I knew with constant fundraisers for many charities. When I moved back to North Wales, that dream began to come true. We began taking in retired chickens, orphaned lambs and retired sheep, goats, pigs, and even cows.
We quickly hit and exceeded our capacity, and so began to reach out; and appeals for help, though met with beautiful support, always fell short of the goals needed. The overwhelming expenses, challenges and pressures tested us to our limits, and still do, impacting our finances, well-being, mental health, and family.
We decided we needed to close our doors to any new intakes and sought support to become a charity or CIC. However, our continued efforts and money spent on organisations to help us, only led to more and more hurdles, adding to our stress and financial losses. Last year, a good friend struggling with mental health needed support, we gave him a place to stay whilst he tried to recover but he also had animals including sheep, goats, chickens, guineas fowl, geese and ferrets - their fate was bleak and so we took them in too. A few short weeks after saying ‘no more’ we took in over 50 of his animals, doubling our numbers overnight. The whole process was also traumatic, with some animals passing before they reached us and we’ve been more desperate then ever since then for support but without the time capacity to reach out for fundraising / volunteers etc.
During this time, I was also going through some major health concerns that knocked me sideways and reduced my physical capacity for the workload massively, not to mention my own mind beginning to crumble. I’m great at knowing what to do for self care, and even helping others to but I’m still learning to practice what I preach. These big decisions are part of that learning.
After 4 months, our friend, broken himself, took his own life, we were heartbroken and in shock as we really believed he was recovering. The grief was huge, but with the huge amount of daily work to be done here, there was no time to slow down, process, forward plan or recover whatsoever.
Despite our very best efforts, the physical and financial demands became too much. Health concerns, family responsibilities, and each running a business added to the strain. Ignoring calls and messages, stuck in crippling overwhelm, became a way to avoid saying no to more animals in need, but it’s unsustainable.
After months of turmoil and physical health issues reducing my capacity to function properly and also impacting my income (which goes to the animals), I reached a breaking point. With my husband's help, we reached out to a lovely lady and her team for support. They have more land, volunteers, and resources and have been established over many more years, and they dedicate their lives to the care of animals. Marion, Christine and Gill are 3 of the loveliest people I’ve ever met.
They offered to take some of our animals on a long-term foster basis, allowing us to recover ourselves and the land, while ensuring the animals receive the care they need. The land we have has needed sorting for years - it’s been impossible without somewhere to move the animals to during the process and without the thousands of pounds needed for the groundwork.
Honeybee Sanctuary remains open for our current animals here, but closed to any new intakes for the foreseeable future. Not forever I hope, but certainly for now.
Sponsorships and fundraisers have dropped dramatically unfortunately, they used to raise about 40% of our monthly expenses but have now dropped to about 15%, everything else we cover ourselves (we know everyone’s struggling but when a monthly payment gets declined, the whole sponsorship is automatically cancelled, I can not manually reinstate them. If you think this might be a mistake and you’d like to re-sponsor, please do at honeybee-sanctuary.co.uk ) Bruce and Denzel are still at our site we rent in Chester, most of our goats, piggies and birds are still all here for now but we may still move some more, but 7 sheep, 2 goats and our beloved Wilma Wonky have moved to greener pastures not too far away. Wilma now has the space to play that she needs and can make new friends, something she couldn’t achieve here (sheep were scared of her and Bruce and Denzel are 3 times her size so with her spinal deformities, it wouldn’t be safe). As tough as it is not to see their faces here at our home daily; we couldn’t be happier for them and more grateful to their new caregivers.
Our promise of sanctuary to these animals will always be maintained. Any remaining sadness is purely because we miss them. Any remaining sponsorships will continue to go towards all the animal’s expenses, and as soon as possible we'll be focusing on fundraising for our amazing team mates at Riverlink Donkey Sanctuary and The Cabbage Patch. We want to show our gratitude to them and find ways to support them too but for the time being we’re just taking things slowly, we’ve got to find ways to recover and get back to full health in lots of ways and of course there’s still a lot of work to do daily and huge, constant expenses.
As I recover, I'll be helping at both sites, my incredible and supportive husband has been building new shelters at the new sites, and my wonderful daughter, Lily (who just received a student of the year award in her animal care college course) will also be supporting them. Our young volunteer, Jack, is willing to help too.
As a family we are immensely grateful to the support we’ve received from the other sanctuaries but also excited for the future of us all collectively and finding ways to return the support to them also. Community and collaboration is where it’s at, always. We’re in a tough transition period that we truly hope we’ll make it through but no matter what, the animals will always be safe, loved and cared for!
We really hope you continue to support us through this transition, we’d love to receive more sponsorships and any funds raised for animals that have already moved site will be given to their new caregivers. Please show loads and loads of love to Riverlink Donkey Sanctuary and The Cabbage Patch. (Links in comments)
Thank you for your understanding and compassion.
Lots of love 💜
Katey, Craig and Lily 💚
