Goat Love For All Seasons

A New Building for Hux Family Farm:

Help us provide goat/farm animal love and therapy to our community during all seasons!

Background:

We are a small local family farm in Durham, NC (Hux Family Farm)  The majority of the farm is run by the two of us, Amanda and Matthew (with a baby girl farmer on the way!). We do have some amazing volunteers and an intern that help with our daily farm work as well.

Amanda is a former teacher of 11 years who left the school system to better connect and serve her students the way they needed, through tutoring and some of our therapy programs here at the farm. Matthew is a mechanical engineer disenfranchised with the corporate world, who left to return to his roots and reconnect with the natural world.

Why we love our farm:

We are both very passionate about the environment, the healing power and lessons of nature, and the therapeutic benefits that animals can bring us if we let them. We have many programs that help show and teach people this as well as give them the opportunity to connect with our animals, bringing joy to all those who come here. Our programs range from meditation with our animals and reading therapy, all the way to what many people say is their favorite, yoga with goats.

Purpose:

Right now our classes, therapy, and community play times are only offered when the weather cooperates. Only the hardcore are going to be able to relax and get into nature when it is cold and wet. While we may not be able to tame nature, nor would we want to, we can offer a more sheltered area to connect with our animals. That is where this “gofundme” comes in.

We are looking to create a space that will allow us to continue to offer our animal interactions to the community year round and even during the rain! This will bring more security to our visitors from near and far. Another benefit of the building is potentially bringing in enough steady income to do some further expansions. Some of our future plans are additional fields to allow for a more natural habitat and food for our animals, opportunities to rescue animals that we cannot currently support, and to invest further in the therapy experience to make sure that everyone who visits our farm has the best possible chance to receive the joy that our animals have to offer.

What will the money be used for and timeline:

The funds raised here will go toward purchasing all the materials for a pole barn that will be very similar to this sketch. Matthew and our intern will be building it along with the help of some of our volunteers. Once complete we will be able to offer all of our classes and therapy programs no matter what the weather is like.

If we raise more than our goal we also hope to put solar panels in place on the building to help reduce our impact on the environment, and add further fencing to expand the animals' living area and potentially start rescuing other farm animals.

We hope to raise the money for the building by the end of November. We would love to get the building in place this winter and start providing year round services as soon as possible.

Image: Sketch of building to create indoor space for therapy and events.  Will include amenities such as an outdoor patio for relaxing during community play times. Will also serve as extra cold and extreme weather shelter for the animals.

Who is this benefiting?:

Our farm serves an average of 4000 visitors a year. We welcome all ages and have had everyone from a 3 month old, to one of our favorite visitors who is 99 (she is about to host her 100th birthday party here in November)!

Our classes and therapy help kids who struggle with reading, adults and children battling depression, adults and children with autism, as well as adults and children just dealing with the stresses of everyday life.

There is nothing more effective at creating smiles, than having one of our goats climb into your lap and cuddle with you! Our programs and therapy truly do help to heal the soul.

About the stars of our classes and therapy:

Right now we have 18 Nigerian Dwarf Goats, 16 of which are trained therapy goats. We also have 2 sheep that we rescued and raised from birth, after they were rejected by their moms. All of our animals love the interactions they get with visitors each week.

We also have a livestock guardian dog that sometimes steals the show, as he is a large fluffy Great Pyrenees.

Our other animals include geese and ducks who are fun to watch, and who give us eggs.

We plan to continue to grow our animal family by breeding and training our goats, and potentially starting to provide an animal sanctuary for other types of farm animals (once we have the funds to expand). We hope to also work with any rescued animals we get to eventually become therapy animals.

Rewards:

Don't forget to check out the rewards for certain donor levels. We have everything from play time or yoga tickets, to T shirts and bags. Plus a special reward for any groups or businesses that want to give support!

Our gratitude:

Seeing the smiles on the faces of those who come and spend time with our animals, is the absolute best part of our week! We can't even begin to explain how much it would mean to us and our animals to be able to do this year round and in all types of weather. No matter what you are able to give please know that you have our sincerest gratitude and we hope that you will be able to come and experience how wonderful these animals are in person!

Want to learn more about us? Check us out at www.huxfamilyfarm.com We are also on Instagram and Facebook!