Genesee County Chamber of Commerce President Brian Cousins presented each animal group with a check for $7,163.39 each from the total $28, 653.56 raised on Tuesday afternoon at the Genesee County Chamber of Commerce. (Left to right Jonell Chudky/Mockingbird Farms, Marcy Colantonio/Volunteers for Animals, Maryanne Arena/MaryLand- A Haven for Horses, and Pamela Harmon/Cherry Hill Farm Sanctuary.
“We would like to thank all our media partners for all the coverage we had for the eclipse and also for Genny and we did submit both projects for tourism and excellence awards by the State Tourism Association, so hopefully we will be bringing back some awards in September,” says Kelly Rapone/Tourism and Marketing Director at the Genesee County Chamber of Commerce.
Thank you
“That is truly lifesaving, for us at Mockingbird Farm Sanctuary, that total amount will pay for the amount of hay that we need through winter,” says Jonell Chudyk.
“For us at Cherry Hill, we’re just starting a program with the Amish to help pull in horses that either came from Batavia Downs and then moved to the Amish for retirement, and so this will help kick start that program so that we can help more of the horses that need to be retired,” says Pam Harmon.
“We too take retired racehorses. This is going to allow us to take another couple of horses and that means we saved two lives,” says Maryanne Arena.
“This is our kitten season, last year we had hundreds that we placed. We had over 240 kittens, there’s bottle babies, and all different levels of kitten care so this will help with that,” says Angie Knisley.
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Mockingbird Farms
Jonell Chudyk
5978 Upper Holley Rd Byron NY 14422
mockingbirdfarmny.com mockingbirdfarmny@gmail.com https://www.facebook.com/mockingbirdfarmny
Mockingbird Farm Sanctuary is a 501(c)3 corporation solely operating as a result of your donations.
Volunteers for Animals
Angie Knisley/
3841 W. Main Street
Batavia NY 14020
585-813-3584 https://www.vol4animals.org/
info@vol4animals.org https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064814947808
Volunteers For Animals, Inc. is a non-profit animal care organization serving Genesee County, NY.
Cherry Hill Farm Sanctuary
Pam Harmon
2514 Genesee Street
Corfu NY 14036
585-506-8054 https://www.cherryhillsanctuary.org cherryhillfarmsanctuary@gmail.com https://www.facebook.com/cherryhillhorsesanctuary/
We are a 501c3 sanctuary with the mission to provide a lifelong home to senior & abused farm animals
MaryLand – A Haven for Horses
Maryanne Arena
8132 West Bergen Road
LeRoy, NY 14482
Marylandhorsehaven.org mcarena@genesee.edu https://www.facebook.com/MaryLandAHavenForHorses
is a non-profit sanctuary for retired Standardbred racehorses that was established in 2021.
(Provided graphic)
Project At-A-Glance:
· Project development: May-October 2023
· 100% of proceeds to support 4 local animal rescues
· Forbes listed it as “One of the Best 6 Books to Prepare For The Eclipse” – March 2024
· Printed 3,000 Commemorative books
– Sold 1,924 books (mid-October through April)
– Gave away 600+ (area schools, libraries, promotional, animal rescues)
– Book orders came in from 28 states and 165 New York State Cities. Our very first book order was shipped to Hawaii.
– To promote the book, our team sent out press releases, pitched media, held interviews, executed digital media campaigns to promote the book, managed book sales, held a Meet the Illustrator book signing event for our community and also conducted a lengthy book reading tour to our municipal libraries. We had the book copyrighted and also established an official ISBN number.
The newly hung Solar Eclipse Barn Quilt on a barn in LeRoy, Wednesday.
– We based our book on the fictional Genesee Farm and requested the illustrator add a barn quilt to Genny’s barn, in recognition of our barn quilt trail program in LeRoy. The Barn Quilt Trail of LeRoy features over 100 hand-painted barns throughout LeRoy. We then used the illustrators barn quilt design and reproduced it for our trail. The Eclipse Barn Quilt was recently hung on a red barn, and is now included in our official barn quilt trail.
Book dedicated to the residents of Genese County to commemorate our position along the April 8th Path of Totality.