Our History And Future
1st Tara - the Village of JORNAŁTÓW - year 1995 
The first one was founded upon picturesque grassland landscapes situated within the borders of Wroclaw . A small team of volunteer workers from Wrocław, along with a few soldiers from the local military unit and some regular employees all participated in the forming of the foundation. While the stables were being built in full swing and although the financial situation was rather decent, they still would save and economize only so that there’s more left for the animals. Initially, Scarlett spent her nights with her two dogs inside a car standing right in the very middle of a deserted field, keeping an eye on construction materials brought in and collected there at daytime. Later on, they bought a construction tool shed that served as home to all the people. Afterwards they added new premises by nailing wooden planks to form room-like boxes and connecting them to the original building. That’s how the flimsy hut was brought to life, warmed up in winter by a tiny lousy metal heater that gave no heat whatsoever. “The warmth was actually inside each and one of us , for we all are people of a determined will and faith” - They entered the path of making the world a better place, rescuing horses. That was what they felt and that is why despite the freeze, the discomfort of having no running water or electricity ( they lit up the rooms with candles), they would not give in. They woke up early every day, truly happy to build shelter for animals. Soon, first horses appeared: Kara , Horda and Siwek, along with numerous stray dogs and cats. They started a campaign to sterilize homeless animals at the local Vetertinary Clinic in the town of Lesnica, publicizing it at that time through mass-media. As new and new horses joined the foundation in relatively short time, and it indeed was tough , they managed to remain.
happy. In 1997 everything was completely destroyed in Poland’s Flood of the Century. All animals were evacuated. The horses were dispersed around farmers, while the dogs and the cats landed in Scarlett’s house and some other places rented for this purpose. It was a really difficult time. Everything that embodied their dreams had been taken away by the water. One can’t forget that the animals did survive and that they had to be provided with basic life conditions. As the ground dried, the waters relented only to reveal an image resembling a post-nuclear explosion. The remnants of the wooden framework stabbing out of the ground testified a freshly extinguished existence of the stables. All the hay rotted pitch black, hanging around tree branches while the splendid green grasses molded into a thick black sludge.
So they started from scratch all over again. Scarlett’s mom gave a donation to bail out a slaughter-bound filly. As she said: “May this this filly bring you luck and become the symbol of your new life”. They named her Tara.
Ever since the foundation was brought to existence, Scarlett could always count on her life’s number one man, namely her first-born son Ikar (Pl.: Icarus), aged ten at the time. He helped her find the right location, loaded the first ever batches of wooden planks and eventually assisted in taking care of the horses. Amazingly mature for his age, animal-loving and always ready to help his mom in need, Ikar was the first to commence the fight for horses’ lives. Yet the place they had been living in soon turned out not to be a safe one anymore. In early spring of 1998, the dam patched a year before didn’t hold and just “let it go”, re- inundating the whole newly rebuilt shelter facility. Again they set off to look for a new spot, and managed to find one in 1999. They found some premises in a small town of Poręby, near Twardogóra. While dismantling all the recently built objects to be transported to Poręby, Scarlett and Peter tied the knot. It was the 8th day of May, and a few days later Tara was to enter a new stage in life.
2nd TARA -the village of PORĘBY - 1999 
And there they were again: building fences, facilitating the new premises for the horses, setting up electricity. It was warm spring time, with fresh green grass, and they knew they’d make it by fall. Volunteers began coming to help.They were happy again. On July 20th Scarlett gave birth to her other son, David.
Poręby was a spot marked by rapid progress - new horses joined them week after week,and so did their first cow Mućka (Pl. Mooey) as well as their first piggy Heidi. As usual, they took part in numerous interventions. Driven by the desire to save more animals, they institutionalized their activity into a foundation.
And thus the Tara Foundation, labelled as a horse shelter, was born. As years passed, Tara grew large, many new stables with large boxes were built to accompany the vast pastures and grass-lands. Ikar started his education in equine studies at a local junior college in the town of Krzyżowice near Wroclaw city. Tara was full of animals and fantastic people who built it, and took care of their four-legged brothers. They worked extremely hard, and there were moments of profuse tears, but love and joy eventually outweighed the sorrow.
After seven years of land lease they were informed that they would be evicted from their beloved spot. Thus they applied for the only available premises at the time in the town of Nieszkowice through ANR - Agricultural Property Agency (a Polish governmental institution dealing with land and farming property trade). Inevitably, it again was a time of immense stress and tension, but they won the tender for the lease of the premises and adjacent land in Nieszkowice (it all sounds so simple now!).The fall was approaching, so again, wooden poles had to be bought to fence the area off for the horses. It was year 2005. And they were beginning from scratch again.
3rd TARA- the town of NIESZKOWICE - 2005 
This time it was really tough, they had nearly 100 horses and lots of different animals. They had to fix some means of shipment, disassemble all their stuff, carry it, load it, transport it and unload it - day after day. The volunteers who gave their helpful hands back then should be resting in Tara’s Hall of Fame. As usual, Ikar went out of his way, working for ten people, and it was he who went along with Scarlett to the desolate farm to get it ready to accept such an enormous amount of creatures. Peter loaded shipments of wooden planks and other materials, prepared everything for leaving Poręby and took care of the animals with a bunch of volunteers. While Ikar was fencing the area, Scarlett drove her good old dilapidated mini-bus back and forth, transporting everything that belonged to Tara. She would often do 300 miles per day, and one must note that her left hand’s metacarpi were broken at the time, and since her vehicle was rather out of date, she had no steering support, which made it really painful at turns and veers.
Nieszkowice posed a depressing image: the mansion lacked some windows and doors, there was no electricity in any of the buildings, no heating and no running water except a hydrant in the centre of the courtyard. The dampness was omnipresent, peeling the plaster off the walls onto the floor, which consequently rotted, damped by the plaster. There was garbage everywhere, interspersed with shattered glass and a variety of disused stuff.
The facilities were basically a number of pigsties with their sewers filled with dung sludge, with metal rods sticking out everywhere, being all that was left of demolished boxes for swines. They had no windows,while the condition of the walls themselves was horrifying - the bricks were literally soft to the touch at many places. 
The roof was dilapidating and there was no barn.
Scarlett and Ikar slept in the mansion’s hall (unfortunately, the nights were drastically cold), and the moment they heard the dogs barking, they would spring to their feet in the middle of the night. They could not cease such vigilance as their first load of oak poles disappeared from the courtyard three days after their arrival.
The next stage was to bring all the horses in special double horse trailers ( Scarlett transported the smaller animals with her bus). Meanwhile, Tara had a company modify the farming facilities into stables. Yet the work in Poręby was just as intense, and the people’s weariness was exploited by thieves. All the best materials, such as dismantled and stacked poles, perches, planks, boards and angle bars disappeared in night time. And that’s, briefly speaking, the story of their removal to Nieszkowice. They left Poręby, a place so close to their heart 
where they had saved so many suffering creatures, where they had experienced so many moments of joy. They will keep the memories of it in their hearts for ever.
Untruthfully publicizing that the farm belonged to TARA now had quite a result, various people stopped bothering and pestering them. A lot of strange incidents stopped taking place, like for example the one in which dark-skinned, curly-haired men chased Scarlett in 3 SUVs around the courtyard, trying to scare her. Weird phonecalls abated as well. Media have great power, as it turns out. In the middle of 2008 ANR declared the lease’s cancellation. Since that time they had been occupying the farm
Throughout years of leases and removals, constant clambering uphill and stumbling blocks,not to mention rebuilding new premises over and over again, we have never questioned the righteousness of our actions. Today we are able to change the world for the better without the insecurity of losing home for the animals. And we do it together with you. Yesterday there was nothing here but empty remains of cow barns and pigsties with no windows, electricity or water. Thanks to your help we create warm, dry stables for the horses we save. What has passed shall never return, and all that counts is the present day and the future - a safe future for all Tara’s animals
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