The Sanctuary at Soledad Goats

21/03/2025

We were hacked.

After receiving many violent threats through our Facebook platform, and several messages notifying us of password changes, we were hacked.

We don't know exactly how it happened, but one day we received some very nasty messages from a profile that was telling us she 'hoped we would die'.

We didn't think anything of these and just ignored them, until we were locked out of our account.

Which is why we moved out to Florida in the first place, to avoid conflicts like that. So now that they are here in Florida it gives us a very unsettling feeling.

Dealing with all the drama of potentially losing our Facebook was very hard on us.

We really did not want to create a new profile from scratch as we would have lost all of our followers on Facebook. By pure luck we were able to recover our Facebook account and our page because it was locked out of 2fa, which we never created, and we were able to secure it ourselves.

We are finally pack and we can give you some updates on what's been going on.

- Julian isn't doing well at all, which has me by his side almost all day.
- We have been using our final savings to pay our workers to take care of our animals, and make necessary repairs.
- Our donations have hit the lowest they've been in almost the past 7 years.

We don't want to quit our dream of running our Sanctuary, but we are almost out of options. Seriously, we've said it in the past, but we never really had to touch our safety net money. I think if Julian was doing better things would be much easier, but with his declining health over the past 3 years it's been really rough.

Anyways we got our account back it is secured. But like I said we are very very low on emergency funds. If you want to see more rescues, more animals saved, more updates from us, we need help. A simple $5 donation from you today would help.

Please help in anyway you can, if you are financially able ro.

sanctuaryatsoledad.org/donate

paypal.com/paypalme/sanctuaryatsoledad

venmo.com/sanctuaryatsoledad

God bless you all, thank you for being here.

23/02/2025

I have been accused of stealing the picture of Pan the baby goat. Here I am holding him. Today, I don’t understand why this is happening.

22/02/2025

We are in desperate need of hay. Hay is our biggest expense right now. We use a truckload of big round bales every 10 days at a coat of 1800.00 per truckload. Donations are down so every little bit helps. We so appreciate everything you do for us. Our residents count on you. Thank you so much for always being there for us. Thank you again. Speak soon.

If you can help the Sanctuary please donate to our PayPal.me/sanctuaryatsoledad or
Venmo: or
Sanctuaryatsoledad.org/donate

21/02/2025

Hey everyone. This week we are asking for some help. It has gotten cold here which has increased our hay consumption. It costs 1800.00 for a truckload which we use every 10 days. We understand money is tight but every little bit helps. We so appreciate everything you do for us, our residents count on it. Thank you. We have decided with the name Pan for our little crippled baby goat. He is doing great. He has a long way to go but he is so willing to try. We will keep everyone updated. Thank you in advance. Speak soon.

The Sanctuary at Soledad Goats, Where Every Animal Has a Home. A vegan farm animal sanctuary. We rescue abused, unwanted farm animals and neglected pets.

18/02/2025

Hey everyone. We wanted to share a picture of our latest resident. This beautiful little guy is paralyzed in his hind legs. It has been very difficult financially lately, we feed a semi load of hay every 10 days, but we have to help this little guy. If you have been following us for several years you will remember Kaboom. He had the same problem and with love and attention he overcame his paralysis and even became the subject of a children’s book. We will not give up hope for this baby. He also needs a great name, so help us out. Thank you so much for the support you have always shown us. We will keep you updated on this little guys progress. Speak soon. Carol

31/01/2025

Difficult month and difficult decisions

After a terrible tragedy in California and Julian and I feeling the pain of so many of our supporters we knew this was the start of a difficult year.

Most of you know our Sanctuary was previously located in the Mojave desert, an hour or so away from all the tragic fires that ripped so many lives apart.

Our heart still goes out to any of you affected by this, and we know that picking up the pieces and rebuilding will be a tremendous effort.

Who would do this to a dog? Another poor pup joined the pack this week. This poor girl was thrown out of a car in the middle of the highway. She is old and totally blind, she was tossed out of a maroon Corvette and a man pulled his truck across the highway to block traffic until she was picked up.

But honestly how screwed up is this? This dog has absolutely no way to survive by herself. She is completely blind and we can tell, she is severely congested so she probably can't use her sense of smell like other dogs to get around.

She needs to see a vet and shes been here on a heating pad for the past 2 days to keep her calm. Poor girl is so terrified and just shivers all day even when our Mobile Home is 75 degrees inside!

When we say she needs a vet, she really needs to see someone about all the different ailments. I don't think it would make much sense to get her into surgery to fix the multiple cuts/bruises/scuffs, (potential burn marks?) that she has, because putting a dog this weak under could spell disaster.

Anyways any help is greatly appreciated.

*Updates on the Baby angus calf*

Our little boy is doing okay, and fitting in better. He indeed had a serious case of intestinal parasites because he was eating like crazy this past week after giving him antibiotics and treatment for his worms.

The colustrum packets seemed to help as he is able to prop himself up slightly. We hope he regains some of his muscle strength and we want to thank everyone who donated towards his care. He is enjoying his own permanent pen, and doesn't have the scared look in his eyes like he did weeks ago.

If you can help the sanctuary please donate to our paypal.me/sanctuaryatsoledad or Venmo: or sanctuaryatsoledad.org/donate

28/12/2024

The end of year brings more difficulties as well as more uncertainty to our Sanctuary. An incredible gift of life that also reminds us where we are with the status of our Sanctuary.

As you know Julian and I are out of time, money, and hope. After the rebuild of our barn, things were looking up, but after false accusations, dwindling donations, and the Julian's health in question, we are worried this is the final year of S.a.S.

After sitting down with our accountant and looking at all of our expenses this past year and seeing the amount of decline in donations this year as opposed to last year, we have come to the conclusion that without an immediate increase in donations we will be forced to close our doors to new rescues permanently.

Unfortunately we would have to start the task of rehoming some animals that we cannot afford to take care of. We do not want this.

We were proud of ourselves that we could afford our new dream of running an animal sanctuary, after transitioning from goat dairy. But after our move to Florida, things have been getting worse month after month

Can this new baby be an inspiration of hope for a new start here? This baby was an unexpected surprise, a rescued pony we had taken in before the hurricane destruction gave birth just this past week.

We wanted to talk about the birth but we have been so stressed and weren't able to get pictures of the baby because mom is very wild and aggressive. She has calmed down a bit and let us take a few photos of her and the baby!

We need your help today. Please help us to continue running the Sanctuary at Soledad. A donation today will allow us to continue into 2025

Please donate to save our sanctuary : paypal. me/sanctuaryatsoledad and Venmo:

01/11/2024

Hey everyone this is Carol and I hope you're having a wonderful Friday morning on the 1st of November. If you were lucky yesterday you were able to snack on some plant based candies, and if you were really lucky you were able to find vegan candy corn?
Anyways, I wanted to clear up some confusion over some comments we received this past week.

This past week many people were asking why we don't show any of our past animals, and why we don't offer volunteers, and also asking if we are really a Sanctuary?

This hurts us because we have met many of you personally either at our old location in the Mojave desert, or we met personally at the Grove, or maybe even before we were a Sanctuary at the Hollywood Farmer's Market when we were still a goat dairy.

We are hoping to open back up to visitors as soon as our new barn is up and running. Many times unfortunately having to tour visitors around the Sanctuary takes up a lot of time out of our day. Our goal is to open up a visitors day at least once or twice a month.

A lot of times when you see the same faces day after day, I might not think many of you would be interested to see our old pigs, or an update on our cows, or goats, or horses etc. It's hard for me to gauge what would be a worthy update, and I usually keep that to newer news, and more exciting stuff like new rescues.

In the pictures above above: Rambo, Natalie Porkman (Our piglet at the Grove), Zsa Zsa (our goat at the Grove), Abigale, Two Pig Shakur, Bucky, Juliet (We have had her for 18 years)

From here on, until the end of the year we will try to update you all each week on some of our older animals that you might remember from the early days.

Some of you brought up some concerns over our animals and their well-being. Because of the hurricane destruction some of our animals have definitely been displaced from their usual spots in their barn. We are moving as fast as we can we with a rebuild and hoping to have walls up on the barns in the next 2 weeks.

Rest assured the animals that have been displaced such as some of our cows, and goats, they have all been moved to the one barn that was left standing on the property. This barn is half the size of the other 2 barns that toppled over, so our animals are confined to a smaller space at night, but during the day, they are roaming around for the most part.

If you are on the Patreon check it out for some more updates on the rebuild coming soon! patreon.com/sanctuaryatsoledad

Thank you for being here,
-Carol

27/10/2024

The building has started!

Finally we have some good news! Building has started on our barn, the support beams are going up.

We were able to get some guys to come out and start building, and we hope to have this barn built by the end of the year.

The roof is looking to be up by the end of this coming week!

As happy as we are with the barn build getting underway, we really need to ask you guys for one very small favor.

We should have just enough to cover this entire build, but we want to be safe for the future, with regards to caring for our animals. If you aren't supporting us monthly and could spare just $5 a month, we would greatly appreciate it. At one point on our Patreon we were over $5,000 per month which gave us some breathing room as we continued to rescue animals.

We haven't brought in a new rescue in a while, but we would definitely like to go out and get a Turkey this year and give them a forever home.

$5 per month comes out to $60 per year, which doesn't seem like much, but when all of our readers join, it makes a huge difference! If each one of our readers, who wasn't subscribed took the chance to sign up right now, it would give us a considerable boost per month, almost $500 more right away.

patreon.com/sanctuaryatsoledad

Thank you from Julian and I. As we think about the future, and when we pass on, we would love to be able to have the Sanctuary sustain itself with new owners. The only way to do that, is to leave them on a good financial footing. Click below if you can help us today with just a $5 contribution.

2nd batch of tshirts:

To those of you who reached out after our first batch of t-shirts went out, do not panic, we are getting this out by first week of November.

We want to thank you all for being patient! We focused our attention on the Hurricane prep and dealing with the aftermath, but we want to get those out to everyone who provided their info. If you have been supporting us and still want to get a t-shirt, just reach out to us via Messenger and send us your name, email used to donate, shipping address, and size of tshirt (S-2XL)

Thank you all!

05/10/2024

You gave us a second chance

When we went from full production goat dairy, to vegan cheeze producers, to then animal sanctuary, we never imagined the difficulties of running a Sanctuary.

I had to look back at my IRS non profit filing and that was done in 2014, but I believe we officially opened as a Sanctuary at the end of 2015. Wow, does time fly!

Anyways, after all the hardship of the initial years of our Sanctuary, to getting some good traction before our move to Florida, then finally landing upon this property with all the greenery around it, and tons of space for our animals, we thought everything was PERFECT.

When the hurricane ripped through our property, we were praying the night it happened, almost a week and a half ago. We did the best we could do to huddle all our animals in the only barn that could sustain the winds and we just prayed. It felt like we could get swept away at any point.

Julian and I, with all the dogs, and some of our baby animals a few goats, a piglet, and a calf trying to survive the night.

When we walked outside the next morning, barely slept, we saw the damage it had done. We told each other, that was it. All of our almost 10 years of running the Sanctuary, done.

After we sent a newsletter and did our usual posts on social media, we know our amazing supporters would help, but what we didn't expect was so many others reading our story, and having it shared so many times. Wow.

After all is said and done, we were able to reach $10,000+ in donations. With our previous fundraiser for the last hurricane, and the most recent one courtesy of hurricane Helene, we should have enough to complete a rebuild of a medium to large sized barn, that is windproof, and can stand up to 100+ mph winds.

We have tons of damage to our entire property, plumbing issues, electrical issues, and obviously the barns. But, the great news is that we have sent a few people out to get quotes on a new barn rebuild, and it can be done, and will be done very soon.

We can't believe it, Julian and I could not believe after suffering through all of this, that we still have a chance. Our animals are confined to sleeping in a small barn at night, but we hope that it will only be for a month at best. We need the concrete foundation poured, the framing of the new barn, and then putting all the walls up, overhangs up, and roof, and we can be back in business.

We figure after we have the structure in place, we can run electricity, and install a bunch of fans for the hot summer months.

Thank you to everyone who donated, sent us messages of hope, shared our story, shared the posts, and most importantly, thank you to everyone who cares about the work we do. We do this for the animals. We do it to make a change in this world for them. Thank you for being a part of this movement.

30/09/2024

This is the end

As far as we can tell there is no way to come back from this. I don't know what to say. We didn't have enough time to prepare ourselves, I'm not sure what we would have done different but here we are. Sharing this with our Facebook friends, some of you may have already seen the news.

However all of our animals survived unscathed. We heard the news and transferred them to our most sturdy barn, the smaller one, but they were all huddled together during incredible winds topping over 100 mph+

Here are the pictures are what we are left with.

Hurricane Helene ripped through our property damaging all but one small barn. We have 3 barns in complete ruin, and our mobile home which we live in was shifted around and damaged partially.

I don't know if we need to host a real fundraiser because at this point there is so much work ahead, besides just caring for our animals. After we raised enough money to rebuild one of our barns, we had materials ready to be purchased and a verbal quote from a builder to come to start early next month.

However, this sets us back even further, almost to the point of no return. Julian and I are thankful to be alive, because there were many deaths surrounding this hurricane. However, we are not sure what to do.

We obviously will not be able to rebuild all 3 barns that were destroyed and we didn't really need all the space. We would like to build one completely new barn, with a much sturdier design involving more concrete posts, which can hopefully withstand any future Hurricanes.

If we take the donations we had saved from our last Hurricane help fundraiser, we raised approximately $5,500. We were just planning to build a small barn with that, and secure it better for wind damage.

Now we will need in excess of $10,000+ to rebuild a much larger barn and secure it with concrete posts all around. If we can take all of our donations on Patreon for next month, we will have roughly $8,500 available from our last donation and our Patreon for October, coming up in a week.

Since our initial ask of $2,000 we were able to raise that through our newsletter and our Instagram post. We would love to raise another $1000 through Facebook as that would really help us get this built quicker than expected. If each one of our amazing followers on Facebook could contribute just $1 each, we could easily raise some extra funds for building.

We don't really have an exact quote for all the materials, labor, and what the exact plans will look like. There will have to be electricity ran, and we will need to pour an entire concrete slab as the foundation. So this really won't be as cheap as we hope.

If you can donate, please help by sending a $1 donation to: paypal.me/sanctuaryatsoledad or Venmo:

and you can see all the other ways to donate at: sanctuaryatsoledad.org/donate

Thank you so much, and God Bless. We are just happy to be alive.

07/09/2024

Could we ask for a small little favor?

We promise this won't be too much to ask of you, but it would really help us out.

Julian and I found a great supplier, BUT, they are all the way in Georgia, which is a drive for us. The hay is great, the animals absolutely love it, and the price is obviously much, much cheaper than other suppliers here in Florida.

I know everyone says BUY LOCAL, but when it comes to feeding all of our animals, we have to do the cheaper option, especially if the hay is great quality, and our animals prefer this over the other batches of hay we purchased a month ago.

The small favor...

Could you spare one dollar today?

If we could get everyone that likes this post to donate just $1 right now, this would cover our travel costs, and help to purchase some of the hay.

The drive is roughly 3 hours roundtrip, and this extra mpney would help us pay for the additional gas, the XL trailer rental, and money towards the actual hay.

But everyone needs to be a part of this. If you've been reading our newsletter but haven't donated yet, could today be the day?

Asking for a dollar for this hay is almost like online panhandling, but this time it's for a very good cause, and we won't be annoying about it, we promise!

Send $1 to on Venmo to help us out!

or send $1 to paypal.me/sanctuaryatsoledad on PayPal to help!

09/08/2024

This could be the end...

We have some unfortunate news to share.

Although the hurricane this past week wasn't as bad as we initially thought, we were still devastated by strong winds.

Our secondary barn that we had just temporarily rebuilt, has been damaged once again. We are starting to feel helpless.

Many of you have been with us for years, and have seen our updates, newsletters, even spoke to us in person.

Running a Sanctuary is a very difficult life. Taking care of the animals is already an incredible task, but dealing with issues to our barns, and other property issues, is the straw that broke the camel's back as they say.

I don't know what else to do, asking for donations is only getting us so far, but it almost seems as if we have terrible luck.

Whenever we seem to get ahead by just a little bit, then we have another big issue to tackle, that isn't even related to taking care of our animals!

As sad as it was, we had all of our hay stored underneath the barn, and we had to move parts of the roof off the hay to feed today!

Please help us today. It will cost us at minimum $1500 to purchase supplies to fix up parts of the barn, not even the full structure. If we can get 30 donations of $50 each we can have it raised. We know we are asking for a lot but we are in really bad shape right now. (Since we sent our newsletter out earlier, we already are halfway there, can you believe it!? Just another $750 to go to get us our supplies!)

To donate: sanctuaryatsoledad.org/donate + paypal.me/sanctuaryatsoledad + Venmo:

We don't really know what else to do. Although we have some ideas on how to increase the amount of donors we have, we aren't sure if it will be enough of an increase to really care us forward into the next year.

We want to tell you all that we will be here in the future, but honestly at this rate, I dont know how it's possible.

I now understand why a lot of Sanctuaries have shut down, or on the verge of closing their doors. It's a lot of tough work, without making a lot of money to even fund the work, let alone have any money leftover for a livable wage.

If you can help today, please consider a donation. We have a lot of work ahead, and we need all the help we can get to build our barn back to a normal state.

THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE!

19/07/2024

kittens - https://mailchi.mp/sanctuaryatsoledad/kittens

08/06/2024

I thought I was gone (piglet picture to lighten the mood)

I had a heart-attack on Monday. As you know Julian and I are both getting up there in age. I am approaching 80 years old, and having a stint put in an artery that was 99% clogged really made me think about my life right now.

I love what I'm doing of course, but the amount of effort it takes to take care of 300+ animals on a daily basis is not for the faint-hearted (no pun intended). This is extremely tough work, that's why whenever I see new Sanctuaries popping up with younger owners, I get worried. I have been involved with animals my entire life, so this is nothing new. However, most people don't realize the shock when they understand all the work involved.

I am still here, thank God, and I don't know what to say about the incident. Maybe our diet hasn't been great, with more fats than usual, we do eat a lot of veggie burgers (Beyond + other brands) and unfortunately they are loaded with fat. Right now I am just trying to be calm, get rest, and thankfully we have some help that can take care of most of the work until I can move around a bit more.

Dealing with the pain I am in, in the sweltering heat feels unbearable but again this is not just about me. This is about us trying to do what's right and make as much of a change as we can on this Earth. In the meantime if you want to help me, you can help the Sanctuary get some hay. Many farms have just cut the hay, so it is perfect to feed to our animals.

If you can spare anything please help us buy some hay today, before we get paid through our monthly donations hopefully by the end of next week. I would love to have a truck deliver a bunch of bales.

Our delivery truck can carry a max of 32 bales of hay, and each bale costs roughly $60 + delivery fees, so about $65 per bale.

I don't know if we can get a full truckload, but that would help us for most of the summer with our hay feed, which is 75% of our animals.

If you can help with a bale of hay that would be wonderful and it would bring a smile to my face. Lord knows I haven't been smiling the past few days... thank you all and God Bless
paypal.me/sanctuaryatsoledad – venmo:

25/05/2024

Small little runt - https://mailchi.mp/sanctuaryatsoledad/small-little-runt

12/05/2024

Save this mother - https://mailchi.mp/sanctuaryatsoledad/save-this-mother

06/04/2024

Give this goat a chance

We hate to receive these calls, but we encouraged animal control in Mayo, FL to give us a call whenever they have a farm animal with nowhere to go. We get about 5-6 of these calls a year, and they are never great.

This little goat was left at an abandoned property, and the neighbors found this little girl huddled up next to their fence. They called animal control, and then they called us.

We received this picture just now before typing out this post
Our support levels have dropped significantly over the past 2 years.

We wanted to get the baby goat, but then we released we haven't got paid through Patreon, and a lot of our extra donations from last month are going to the new build of a barn on our property. Unfortunately as much as we wanted to pick her up, we need to worry about the animals we have.

The sad part about this rescue is that if this baby doesn't end up with us, they will more than likely get taken to a goat dairy farm, end up at the animal shelter, or worse be sent to a packing facility. We don't know where she will end up, but right now she is in a small crate awaiting her fate.

Please help us today if you can spare a few dollars. Everything we can raise today will go to bringing her home, we just don’t have the money right now. All of our bills have increased and we are doing everything we can to save $$$ but also give the same care / feed / vet attention to our animals. This is one of the most difficult times as a Sanctuary.

Please consider supporting us on Patreon. This number used to be above $5,000 per month and we have dropped to $3,000 over the past 2 years. This is our main source and we are dropping to scary low levels.

If you can donate please help at patreon.com/sanctuaryatsoledad or sanctuaryatsoledad.org/donate and paypal.me/sanctuaryatsoledad