Huntington petting zoo business supplies food for Christmas meal to 17 families

HUNTINGTON, Texas (KTRE) – For some families, gathering around a table and sharing a meal is a part of the schedule on Christmas Day.

Owners of M&L Farm Mobile Petting Zoo in Huntington helped a few families accomplish that.

The petting zoo started out as a family farm in 2020. The family’s son, Liam, who has autism, would tend to the animals as a way to stay busy during the pandemic. Then three years later, they started the petting zoo to share the animals with other people. They mostly take the animals to places at no cost but will accept donations, which is how they raised the money to purchase the food.

“We’ve done Centennial Park, and we set up a little donation and the community showed up for us. We took some of the money from the donation boxes we got and put it back and used it to bless families with Thanksgiving and Christmas meals,” Liam’s mother, Michelle Compton, said.

The family agreed on the idea to help families with the holidays earlier this year, which made this their first year doing the meal giveaways. They bought hams, turkeys, stuffing and other items to make side dishes. While they were only supplying meals, a couple of families needed help with gifts, so they bought them a few.

“Community is community. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to do our petting zoo,” Compton said.

In total, they helped nine families for Thanksgiving and 17 families for Christmas. Compton said they plan to do it again next year and believes what they are doing will grow and help more people.

“I think it will, I really do. That’s good, that’s more families that can have meals or can have Christmas gifts,” Compton said.

Liam was not able to make the deliveries with her, but she said he did help prepare the food they had for families.

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