Local Luminary - Jenny Brown, Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary

She’s crashed a Gillette Corporation cocktail party in an Easter bunny costume to protest product testing on animals. She’s gone undercover for PETA to record animal cruelty in industrial factory farms. Now Jenny Brown works full time promoting animal rights as the director of a sanctuary for animals that were abused, neglected, or escaped from live-kill markets. Since 2004, the former TV producer, her husband and co-founder, Doug Abel, five employees, and dozens of volunteers have given hundreds of animals a new lease on life at the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary as they simultaneously promote the vegan lifestyle.

On the 23-acre parcel outside the village of Woodstock, de-beaked chickens once crammed into cages sun themselves on the lawn, a goat named Albie who escaped from a slaughterhouse in Brooklyn runs toward Brown on his prosthetic leg to receive affection, and cows rescued from being veal calves sleep peacefully in a shaded field. Every single one of the 140 rescued and rehabilitated animals on the farm has a name (Brown keeps a collection of baby-naming books in her bedroom), as well as a personal health chart.