The Animal Farm
This early Autumn I and family visited the animal farm at Walnut Creek, Ohio. The farm is quite well known as it has three in one program to see closely the agricultural farm, animal farm, and the Amish house including the modern daily Amish culture in an open museum. For us, also for the local and international tourists, the most exciting thing is the animal farm because the agricultural farm can be found everywhere in the States and the Amish farms including their produces are common at those areas in Ohio; as one of the largest Amish Counties in the world.
In the beginning, the animal farm reminds me to the novel by George Orwell, Animal Farm: A Fairy Story was published in August 17, 1945. Basically, the plot story of the book is the old boar named Major on the Manor Farm, summons the animals on the farm for a meeting, during which he refers to humans as enemies and teaches the animals a revolutionary song. When Major dies, two young pigs assume command and consider it a duty to prepare for the rebellion or revolution. Finally, the animal farm community win against the farmers.
The end of the story, the pigs start to resemble humans, as they walk upright, carry whips, and wear clothes. A single phrase added to the rules of the animal farm: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”. The pig holds a dinner party for animals and local farmers. As the animals on the farm look from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again, they can no longer distinguish between the two.
All animals in the book of George Orwell can be found on the animal farm at the Walnut Creek for example many species of boars, pigs, donkeys, mules, horses, goats, sheep, cows, also llamas, deer, oryx, giraffes, bison, camels, kangaroos, zebra, ostrich, rhea, emu, many kinds of beautiful large birds such as mandarin ducks, black swans, geese, decoration quails, pheasants, fowls, macaws, cockatoos, cranes, and koi fish. At the Walnut Creek’s animal farm, the heaviest animals are American bison, swamp water buffalo, and percheron draft horse; their weight can be over a ton.
I felt very strange that mostly we could see the animal from behind the glass windows from our car or from a special rented wagon with Amish driver, carried by a pair of strong and big percheron draft horses originally from France. Some of the big animals like llama, different species of cattle (watusi, brahma, Scotch highland, Jersey, longhorn), bison, swamp water buffalo, from the outside of our car looked at us for a bucket of pellets as their favorite food. If the animal can talk like in George Orwell’s book, they would like to say why the visitors have scary faces. There are two reasons that they will hurt us or scratch our car.
The best and safest view in the animal farm at Walnut Creek at that time, in my opinion was a pair of aoudads, a close relative to wild goats that stay quietly and freely on the pile of rocks about 5 meters from the land as they can be seen in the photo. It seems most of the animals were healthy, although the pellets food is everywhere on the road; it’s too much food. According to their guidebook most of the lifespan of the big mammals and other animals is much longer in captivity at the farm than in their original habitat in nature. Most of the children and adult visitors are happy because having a new experience with the exotic animals in the farm and the farm has four seasons programs; which is different in Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter.
I am sure that the animal farm has enough of water, the soil is fertile due to the pasture and manure from the animals that is processed by earthworms, other decomposer animals, and the beneficial soil microbes to produce a good compost to support the sustainability of their agricultural farm.
– Bintoro Gunadi
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