A Place of Refuge LLC

11/11/2024

Wagging Tail Ranch Pet boarding facility is a woman owned and operated business registered with the State of Wisconsin under A Place of Refuge LLC. A Place of Refuge LLC encompasses all our pursuits as we establish our dream of restoring this property to organic and healthy. Over our time of stewardship, we have planted over 40 trees [fruit and shade] and numerous berries and herbs as we establish a permaculture environment that will be a refuge for pollinators, animals, and people that we hope will be here for years to come.

We accomplish this by working with nature instead of against it. As we plant trees for shade and abundance, we add understory fruit bushes and herbs that will nourish the trees and attract pollinators. Our “retired” hens work the orchard while aerating and fertilizing the soil and eating not so good bugs. Their bedding is added to the soil for compost and to enrich the formerly depleted, dead soil that existed before.

Currently, we have over 60 fowl that range in age from young hatch to 8 years old. Our birds have large open areas in the run, the garden and the orchard where they are allowed to enjoy their lives while doing some of the work for us by rooting around the trees and depositing fertilizer. It’s good for them, good for us, and good for the environment unlike factory farming. Their eggs are given away to our clients, neighbors and anyone that needs or wants healthy, good food. We do not add artificial light to their coops to force them to produce year-round. Our hens are offered a well-deserved rest like God intended for them to have.

Our goal is to be a blessing to others by offering food security through free fruit, eggs, herbs and whatever else grows here to those that need or want it. We hope to be offering herbal teas, fresh herbs and other products in the future all free of charge.

When you are a client of Wagging Tail Ranch, you are supporting our efforts to grow organically, have a cleaner environment and help others have food security. When you see “free eggs” posted, it means FREE eggs and we are happy to give to you.

Growing organically is a labor of love but also a labor-intensive process that requires hours and hours of work including planting and researching plants with benefits. We ask that you excuse our weeds- they’re good for the bees, and we are a work in progress. Thank you for supporting our labor of love and our small business!

Send a message to learn more

18/10/2024

We have a momma raccoon on the property that raises at least a litter a year. She raises them, sometimes she also adopts an orphan or two and then they disappear. We only get a crowd like this for a couple of weeks [2-3] a year.

18/10/2024

18/10/2024

We keep getting strange looking cats trying to join the colony

18/10/2024

Gus and Morton at the water bowl, while Mittens sleeps in an old drawer attached to the side of the building. We put stray and good quality cat nip [From the Field] in there to help with fleas and ticks. I have never seen fleas on my feral cats and some of them I am able to pet and examine.

20/08/2024

Spring Valley Area Emergency Services (Spring Valley Area Ambulance and Spring Valley Fire Department) have reached a critical need for Emergency Medical Technicians, Emergency Medical Responders, and Firefighters.

As we all have seen in the news over the last couple years, emergency services have been warning of the “crippling labor shortages” and unfortunately that reality has arrived here in our local emergency services. How do we fix this? We ultimately need people to step up and join the ambulance and/or fire department in whatever capacity works for them whether it be an EMT, EMR, or Firefighter. Each position is equally important for the survivability of both departments.

Below is a YouTube link from a NBC story that was aired in 2021; although it features a rural department in North Dakota it is a mirror of similarities of where we are at here in Spring Valley.
https://youtu.be/Bx9NHRM1Efk?si=U1g65iQBK4L2XfM2

Spring Valley Area Emergency Services will be hosting an Open House Hiring Event on Sunday, August 18, 2024 from 3pm-5pm at our station at S407 Newman Avenue, Spring Valley, WI. If you feel you can help by joining one or both of the departments, are interested, or have ideas, we would love to hear them and meet with you! We (SVAA) will also be launching a social media campaign to spread awareness about rural EMS over the next couple months to bring to light some common misconceptions throughout the industry and make you more familiar of what we do.

17/06/2024

25/05/2024

Lee and Gus about 15 feet in the air on the giant cat tree in our shed. The drawers have cat nip and straw in them.

21/05/2024

Our girl Molly
The best of both breeds!
Smart and snarky like a golden retriever and soft and squishy with a super sweet personality like the newfie.

27/04/2024

https://www.phillyorchards.org/2015/10/06/poultry-in-orchards/

We like to "retire" our birds in the orchard to help with pest control. This article lists some of the benefits of having your poultry work for you.

The permaculture chicken niche – http://permaculturenews.org/2013/05/12/managing-the-working-chicken-video/Looking for an organic method of reducing insect pests in your orchard? You might want to consider poultry! There are many benefits to letting chickens or ducks roam around your orchard. Thes...

30/03/2024

In case the numbers have never added up for you, CONTEXT is everything.