The Sanctuary at Soledad Goats (2024)

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

06/04/2024

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

15/03/2024

I don't even know where to begin, this was devastating for us. Here is what happened on Monday of this week.

Our pig barn completely collapsed

After a few days of some strong winds (nothing we haven't seen before) We are assuming the barn collapsed when we were out getting feed in the morning on Monday.

By the grace of God, none of our pigs were hurt during this collapse. We think it happened slowly, and usually during the morning our pigs will hang out in the sun right outside the barn.

These pictures show it collapsed as of Wednesday, as it was not fully collapsed on Monday. We had moved our pigs to the other barn, once we noticed is was falling down.

We will need to do a fundraiser, sometime before summer.

With all the repairs and needed for many of our barn fixtures, and other issues around our Sanctuary, we will definitely need to do a Gofundme or something similar very soon to raise enough to support a huge repair effort and rebuild S.a.S.

Things are just not looking great right now…

What we will do:

To rebuild that entire barn enclosure would be too expensive for us to even entertain. In reality it was only our pigs that were inside, so we want to build something much smaller for them, and then we can actually afford it and maintain it much better than something so large.

We are going to need to tap into our monthly donation funds to get most of the repairs done, but we will need some help. Anything you can donate is going to go right back to material costs, labour to build, and building before the summer heat comes in. Please help. This will cost us a few thousand to start rebuilding, so anything you can donate today will help.

Please help us by visiting sanctuaryatsoledad.org/donate or paypal.me/sanctuaryatsoledad or Venmo:

God Bless.

09/03/2024

Gotta have Faith - https://mailchi.mp/sanctuaryatsoledad/gotta-have-faith

23/02/2024

For us we never really had a traditional Easter meal, this was when I was growing up as a kid. I think we just prepared something simple but unfortunately there was always some animal involved. I didn't really know 'leg of lamb' was a tradition for an Easter meal.

However once I noticed a few ads on Facebook Marketplace for 'Easter Meals' showing a picture of a lamb, I knew something was going on.
After getting the address of one of the people putting up the ads for the sheep pictures, I showed up unannounced to their farm mid week. It was on our way to Gainesville.

When we got there we saw a very small farm and we could see behind the clearing some lambs all huddled up in a small pen. As sad as it was to see all these poor lamb just confused, scared, and without fresh grass to stand on, I realized I needed to take one of them with me.

Eventually someone came out of the house, and I asked them if I could take the 'injured' lamb. (I was lying, hoping the farmer would think the lamb had no value)

They told me that they were struggling to find anyone to buy their lambs and that they knew I looked like a farmer and that this lamb would get a 'good home' by coming with me.
I was so surprised, I just shook my head and said that would be great! I thought I was going to be tricked somehow as I made space for the lamb in the back of the truck, but sure enough I proceeded to pick up the lamb and load her in the back of the truck.

I was still in shock when the man said, "I hope you guys have a wonderful Easter dinner!" and I just said, 'Sure will!" knowing in my head that this was still such a confusing encounter that I better just go along with it…
A few things I learned from this rescue:

- Many small farmers are struggling and just dumping animals, or selling them for next to nothing.

- People still consume lamb for Easter, and there will many lamb that are being raised now to be sold just before Easter in April.

- This lamb was extremely lucky and this type of a rescue will probably never happen again.

To help name this new little lamb, please send a note with any donation to Venmo: or paypal.me/sanctuaryatsoledad or sanctuaryatsoledad.org/donate

THANK YOU FOR READING AND BEING A PART OF COMPASSION

09/02/2024

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

As sad as most of our rescues are, this little guy never had a chance. He never got to meet his momma, and he definitely was not going to have a free life.

This poor little baby was almost given to a Caribbean restaurant. We don't know if he is lame because he cannot stand. This is really sad.

We were at the feed store and one of the associates knows us by name and we talk to her frequently.

She told us there was a man who came by holding a baby goat asking if there was anyway he could drop it off because it couldn't walk, and he didn't have the time or energy to take care of him.

Luckily she gave us a text about this asking us if we wanted the baby. The man had no other options and was going to drop him off at a local Caribbean restaurant where they take his lame goats from time to time. What a horrible way to 'fix' a problem. Wow, was I surprised, but it hasn't been the first time we dealt with this restaurant.

Anyway luckily the man left the goat at the store and we came to pick him up 20 minutes later. Here he is, innocent as can be.
We haven't had a completely lame goat in a long time. This baby can't really move any of his legs. We are concerned but we have a plan of action, if you can help us.

He needs emergency colostrum, we can usually find these in a packet form. We used up our last batch on our last rescue, because we typically give a few packets of it to our newborns that are showing signs of extreme weakness.

Next is if the baby is indeed lame, or at least has some movement in their legs, we might get a full body mobility cart for the baby. Similar to a wheelchair, it takes the weight off the baby's legs and they can move around and try to build their muscles up.

All in all we can pay for half of the expenses, and raising another $150 can help us pay for the rest, give or take.

Please if you haven’t helped in a while or you are reading this post and care about an innocent baby goat, consider leaving a $1 and a prayer. We are counting on all you prayers to help this little one recover. Right now he can’t move so we need a miracle to make this happen!

Send any help to our Venmo: or PayPal: paypal.me/sanctuaryatsoledad

Or visit sanctuaryatsoledad.org/donate

God bless you all, and thank you for helping today.

03/02/2024

living the good life - https://mailchi.mp/sanctuaryatsoledad/living-the-good-life

13/01/2024

I haven’t had emotions like this in a while, but it was completely unexpected. I found myself at our local farmer's market, which is very small, just there to pick up feed for the animals and produce.

Thats when I saw a vendor with a small pig inside a tiny cage on the table, with a banner on the table, "WE SELL WHAT WE RAISE" and immediately walked over just too confused for words.

The man behind the table was busy with a customer so I started taking pictures of the most innocent pig I've ever seen. Never have I seen such a tiny cage for a piglet that looked about 4-6 weeks old. Clearly too big for the cage, and an incredibly dirty cage as well. I thought, this is Edgar Jr!

Once he saw what I was doing, he asked me if I needed any help, and I said, "No, I'M okay, but this poor little guy needs space.”

He replied, "He can't be walking to much or he will get too lean, we want him fattened up!" and smiled while he said this..

At that point I lost it, I told him what I did for a living, and how this was one of the most messed up things I've seen in my time, all the while selling his dead brothers and sisters packed up out of an Igloo cooler.
He told me that he felt sorry for me, and that his animals were treated with the most respect, and killed in the most humane way possible.

My jaw dropped at that point I was talking to a madman, and I just wanted to see what could be done with the piglet.
he fact that this piglet was almost identical looking to our big boy Edgar, was more than enough to know this was fate, and I needed this poor guy.

I said to the man, "...look we can have our differences, but I want to know how much for this little guy"

He said, "Because you were so rude to start, the price for you is $200"

I walked away feeling horrible, knowing I couldn’t get him right then.

I didn't sleep at all last night thinking about the little Edgar, and I really need all the help I can get. Please please please help me raise this $200 so I can rescue him. I normally wouldn't have done this but he needs to be here in the Sanctuary, and he needs to meet his long lost brother Edgar! To help please send a donation to:
sanctuaryatsoledad.org/donate
paypal.me/sanctuaryatsoledad
venmo.com/sanctuaryatsoledad
HELP US BRING HOME EDGAR JR!

Monday	09:00 - 17:00
Tuesday	09:00 - 17:00
Wednesday	09:00 - 17:00
Thursday	09:00 - 17:00
Friday	09:00 - 17:00
Saturday	09:00 - 17:00
Sunday	09:00 - 17:00

The Sanctuary at Soledad Goats

01/11/2024

27/10/2024

05/10/2024

30/09/2024

07/09/2024

09/08/2024

19/07/2024

08/06/2024

25/05/2024

12/05/2024

06/04/2024

06/04/2024

15/03/2024

09/03/2024

23/02/2024

09/02/2024

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13/01/2024

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