So the wonderful, good-natured old breeds are out of a job and nearing extinction. But not at Tiny Town. They have a new lease on life because they are born in the spring, spend a happy summer playing with the children that come to visit, then before winter, most get taken to new homes and small farms by the same folks they made friends with that summer. A few stay behind to make new babies and it starts all over again.
Tiny Town is the sort of place that makes young kids squeal with delight, a place they never want to leave. In a very real sense, their laughter and glee is the sound of salvation for future generations of important farm breeds your great-grandparents raised but had all but disappeared.
Tiny Town,
which debuts in 2009, is a novel petting zoo: a miniature town populated
by baby farm animals. But these are very special farm animals,
ones you have never seen before, and might never have seen at all
because they are nearly extinct. Each breed selected is on the
critical list of the American Livestock Breed Conservancy.
These
are old-world breeds from a day when all farms were family farms,
and every farm animal was part of a complete ecosystem. In those
days, versatility, intelligence, sociality, and natural instincts
were desirable, and there were hundreds of popular breeds. But today
the factory farms that supply 99% of what we eat use only a handful
of selectively-bred animals that grow incredibly fast and exist for
no purpose other than to provide the most food mass at the lowest
possible cost at the end of shortest possible lifespan.
