Saturday, October 21, 2017

Space Farms Zoo, Wantage Township, NJ (Beemerville)




Beemerville Presbyterian Church



This iron cast eagle was from the Grand Central Station torn down in 1910

Small windmill

Herd staying together by the water's edge

The number of birds flying around is amazing

Prairie Dog

White-Tailed Deer

Sunrise Ridge

Space Farms Zoo and Museum is an interesting place on many levels. First and foremost, Space Farms is a zoo and actually the name 'Space' is a family name, being originally founded by a man named 'Fred Space' -- the zoo allows visitors to feed many of the animals which makes this zoo an ideal place to take young children. I was also taken by the vast numbers of birds which were either exhibits or indigenous to the area and simply living off the crumbs the zoo offers. Its almost like something out of Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds." Space Farms' setting in Northwest NJ in Wantage Township is nothing short of stunning. Growing up in NJ, I fondly remember Space Farms being associated with bears and that is because the largest bear on record used to live there. Space Farms now has Goliath on display. Space Farms is also a museum and more pertinently its really several museums filled with most impressively, a fleet of antique cars, with the surrounding museums filled with curios, a fair amount of which would best be classified as 'Americana'

In this sense Space Farms is really a very eclectic place, in some ways this place doesn't necessarily know exactly what it wants to be, but then again where else can you look at a prairie dog and then glance up and see a 3 1/2 ton cast iron eagle that had once been atop the original Grand Central Station in NYC before being demolished in 1910?

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