Organic Farm Needs Help

In September 2015 we purchased our dream farm. It had sat unused for almost 45 years, the owner lived in one room of the old farm house and had let everything go in recent years. After getting settled and moving our small farm bag and baggage to the new location we began to expand by buying new animals and adding a store where we sell our organic goat's milk products, goat cheese and both lamb and goat meat. This year we wanted to expand our sheep flock and started looking into fencing our largest open field. It was at this time we were told by a neighbor that we didn't want any animals in the field until we cleaned up the asbestos the prior owner had dumped there. We started looking into what it would take to clean it up and found a second large "dump" just off the field that the prior own tried to bury. The cost to clean both of these sites up is $26500. We can't do it and our attorney has told us the court battle could take 2-3 years to settle. We can't expand our flock or even use the field for grazing without cleaning it up. If we don't expand this coming year we will be out of business because we can't raise the number of lambs we need to be successful. We are a certified organic farm, we raise only organic lambs and goats for for processing. We have obtained certification to sell in stores but can't get a contract because we can't raise enough animals. We can't get a farm to market contract because we can't guarantee we will always have meat available. This fund will allow us to do these things and more. Contributing to this fund will help a small organic family farm move to the next level and become successful. I can not put into words what it would mean to our family . We all work very hard and our two daughters are in 4H showing animals at the county fair. We hope you will find it in your heart to help us with this unexpected problem