Lewisberry, York County (WHTM) “We save horses from abuse, neglect, and slaughter,” says Connie Geenawalt, the co-founder of Central Pennsylvania Horse Rescue. “We rescue from auctions. Most of them are surrenders from people who can no longer care for their horses or don’t want to care for their horses.”

It’s never not busy at the Rescue in Lewisberry, but today was busier than usual. Volunteers from Lowe’s hardware stores are sprucing up the place, as part of the company’s Hometowns program.

The volunteers are painting buildings, painting gates, weed whacking, assembling wheelbarrows (a horse facility can never have too many wheelbarrows), electrical work, and power washing as needed.

The big project – erecting a new building for horse feed and medical supplies. As Connie explains, their current storage facility doesn’t store things too well.

“When you have a big barn, you also have the critters that get into the barn. And we have skids of grain because we go through four bags of grain a day, at $30 a bag, and the mice get into that. So we end up with a mess. So we thought if we could have a secured, dedicated feed room, we could put the feed in there and the medications and be able to hopefully keep it rodent-free.”

According to Bobby String, Lowe’s employees look forward to this event. “Every single year we the information put out through sign-up sheets. And the great thing is, depending on the size store, you normally get about 10 to 20 employees per store.”

The horses seem to be enjoying the break in their routine as well. “The horses are trying to figure out what’s going on and try to be nosy and get into everything,” says Connie.

Around 11:30 in the morning, the first wall of the building was raised into place.

“It’s amazing,” says Connie. “We still can’t believe it, just can’t believe that we were blessed to have this happen to us. Nothing like this has ever happened before for the rescue. “