Joe joined Rikki's Refuge on the day of the very first work party in 1998.  A regular volunteer at the Fauquier Animal Shelter, he'd heard about a sanctuary being started in Orange County.  When he arrived, he said he was "here to help build the cat farm."  The term Cat Farm is synonoumous with Rikki's Refuge in Orange County today.  Joe is a volunteer, seven days a week, rain or shine - but hates snowy and cold days!  Joe says, "The only good thing about a snow was it brought Rob out."

Sure enough, if it was a bitter day and the snow was falling, you could count on looking out the window and seeing Rob flying up on his ATV.  Rob Darby was Joe's dear friend of many years.  Together they blazed many a trail in the woods, built a log cabin, patrolled during hunting season, built the red barn and worked on many other projects.  Rob, much too young and very unexpectedly, crossed the Rainbow Bridge.  Today all of us who knew him see his face in the snowflakes.

"I enjoy the camaraderie of spending my retirement with the retired animals.  It feels good helping animals, especially when they become my friends after having a hard time or being mistreated by other people.  Copper, our first horse, was a special one; he followed me around like a dog."

"It's like feeding two cats out of one bowl" -- a saying Joe invented since at Rikki's Refuge we'd never kill birds with a stone (or any other way for that matter) -- "I take care of the animals and the animals take care of me!"

What's your favorite animal story?  "Not long ago I was riding my ATV and as I began to round a curve, right there in the middle of the trail stood a surprised skunk.  I saw her about the same time she saw me.  The tail went up just as I scooted off the path to miss her.  I didn't even smell it for the first few minutes.  But when I got back to the office and said, 'you'll never guess what happened to me,'  everybody said 'you got skunked!'  So I guess I smelled pretty bad."

"One of my happiest days was when I brought home little Fran, my dog, in 2002.  She was so tiny I could hold her in one hand.  She grew up playing with baby ducks with her adopted mom Molly, an old beagle. She grew to be a very gentle dobie.  Girl scouts were camping out one night and she was curious about them.  She was always a bit timid.  She stuck her head in a tent and startled a girl and turned howling and ran back home."

"The day she died from bone cancer in 2007, only 5 years old, was probably the worst I can remember."

"I spend a lot of time on the tractor mowing the fields.  I do the burials at our Rainbow Bridge Cemetery.  It's not fun but it's hard work and somebody has to do it.  Security is my job.  Nobody is going to hurt my animals.  The refuge animals or the wild animals in my woods.  Night Patrols.  Perimeter patrols.  And especially patrolling for poachers and trespassers during hunting season."

"Out here some people still hunt with dogs.  Seeing some of these poor dogs just makes me sick.  It's convinced me we should outlaw hunting with dogs in Virginia.  The dogs don't seem well cared for. The ones that end up lost on our property anyway, they are starving, ribs sticking out.  It makes me so angry to see an animal treated like that.  I figure if you're not smart enough to shoot a deer without a dog helping you, then you deserve to starve.  And if you don't need food (and these days most people don't, it's cheaper to go to the grocery store than to buy all that fancy equipment they use, radio collars, ATVs, outfits and all the accessories) it's just the joy of killing.  And it isn't right.  It's just not right."

"I like animals.  It's very peaceful to be with the animals.  Seeing all that we see here makes me believe laws about animal cruelty should be strengthened.  We need to tighten up the laws about spaying and neutering.  Start taking these issues seriously and making some serious changes."