The High Falls nonprofit, which cares for nearly 300 rescued farmed animals, is backing state legislation to ban commercial octopus farming before the industry takes root in New York. The sanctuary has never housed an octopus. Its leaders say that is partly the point.

“It really just depends where we think things are winnable,” said Rachel McCrystal, the sanctuary’s executive director. “Banning something before there’s an industry feels like something that we can make happen.”

That logic runs through the 150-acre nonprofit, founded outside Woodstock in 2004 and based since 2015 on Rescue Road, off Lucas Turnpike in High Falls. McCrystal, who supervises 25 workers and hundreds of volunteers on a $2.5 million annual budget, aims to provide lifelong care to rescued farmed animals while trying to change the systems that made their rescue necessary.

One recent afternoon at the sanctuary unfolded in a series of introductions to its most important residents.

There was Remy, a goat who uses a custom mobility cart after being born with severely bent legs. There was Marsha, a pig rescued from an auction as an undersized piglet. There were turkeys whose head colors change with their moods, pigs coated in zinc oxide sunscreen to prevent sunburn, and cows whose bodies bear the consequences of being bred for milk or meat.

There were also Colin and Woody, two male calves whose rescue began with a calf the sanctuary could not save.

McCrystal said a worker on an upstate New York dairy farm contacted the sanctuary after taking home a sick male calf named Gershwin. The sanctuary agreed to take him if he first went to a hospital for testing. Gershwin tested positive for a deadly virus that could have contaminated the sanctuary’s pastures and had to be euthanized.

Out of that loss came another rescue. The sanctuary told the worker that if she could save two healthy male calves and make sure they received colostrum, the first milk produced after birth and an early boost to a newborn’s immune system, Woodstock Farm Sanctuary would take them.

A week later, McCrystal said, the worker walked out with Helen and Woody, who had been born only hours earlier.

“And so we rescued them in honor of Gershwin,” McCrystal said.

The sanctuary, founded by Jenny Brown and Doug Abel, now houses sheep, goats, pigs, cows, chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese and rabbits. Most of the volunteer work is direct and practical.

“If you’re okay with a wheelbarrow and you’re not scared of a shovel, you can sign up,” McCrystal said. “And we just show you what to do.”

The sanctuary’s work is also educational. Staff members try to help visitors understand living beings they usually encounter as products, said Anna Balser, the sanctuary’s programs manager.

“People get to experience what it’s like for them when they are kind of free to live their lives as the individuals that they are,” Balser said.

She said the hope is that visitors look the animals in the eyes and “realize that they are also an individual who enjoys their life and wants to live.”

Animals at the sanctuary are not adopted out as pets. They stay for life, often growing old with the animals they arrived with or bonded with later.

About two-thirds are elderly or geriatric, a rarity in the farmed animal industry, where many animals are killed young. That has made the sanctuary a place for unusual expertise: mobility care for cows, arthritis treatment, cold laser therapy, special diets and daily medical support.

It has also made the work expensive. Donations dropped by about 20% from 2021 to 2024 and were little changed last year, McCrystal said.

“You could really raise some money off a little baby who needs help,” McCrystal said. “But then 17 years of care is a different story.”

Hervé Breuil, who has worked at the sanctuary for 14 years and serves as its shelter director, said many people want to open sanctuaries without realizing how much labor and fundraising are required.

“So many are closing,” Breuil said. “Do we need more? In an ideal world, yes, we would need more sanctuaries because there’s always more animals to rescue. I have to say no constantly. Day after day, I have to say no, we don’t have space.”

Someone recently asked the sanctuary to take in seven cows, adding to the 12 it already has and requiring more pasture, barn space and money.

“This is a difficult thing to balance, right?” Breuil said. “We do give priority to our animals and make sure they have enough space.”

The same calculus shows up in smaller ways. People often buy rabbits on impulse, thinking of them as starter pets, McCrystal said. In reality, they are difficult to care for, require specialty veterinarians and may not even get along with other rabbits.

One of the sanctuary’s newest rabbits, Lora, arrived just a week earlier after being kept in a backyard. Before that, McCrystal said, Laura had been in a situation where she was being bred to help train hunting dogs.

“She’s only been here a week, and she looks way more relaxed than she was,” McCrystal said.

Some animals arrive with stories that seem to follow them.

Johnny Boy, a cow who was being raised for slaughter, repeatedly escaped from a backyard as a calf and wandered to a neighbor named John, who fed him crackers. When John learned the cow would be killed, he pleaded for Johnny Boy to be released to a sanctuary.

Years later, that same neighbor came to visit.

“We said, we don’t know if he’ll remember you,” McCrystal said. “He’s kind of shy compared to others because he’s a little bit aloof. We took him in with Johnny Boy and he pulled a bag of crackers out of his pocket, and Johnny Boy ran right up to him.”

Photos by Roy Gumpel for The Overlook.

Noah Eckstein is the editor-in-chief of The Overlook. Send correspondence to noah@theoverlooknews.com.