Today two people I like, told me the very same thing. It’s something I have heard before, felt before and will probably both again.
“You are living my dream”.
Having a farm, homestead or anything sustainable is not as hard…or as easy as one may think.
Like having kids, there really is no “right” time to do it either. Ours was a complete accident. Not in a bad way, it just happened to us. She found us and we are so thankful. It takes a dream, and it takes a team! Don’t get me wrong though, we had neither before we started!
It wasn’t like we dreamed of living on a farm. We don’t by the way, actually even live on ours.
Both my husband Jesse and I, love FOOD and sustainable, local ingredients and have been eating clean and organic since we got together almost 10 years ago! I love animals, Jesse loves staying, hands on busy and once this property, on the back side of the rain forest, on the tropical island we live on, found us…it only made sense.
First came the guest property.
Since we were already in the air bnb community, renting out to guests a house attached to our home, we knew it could fund some fun! We had some extra money coming in from that, and so we decided to double down, and invest that money (and more) into the new place!
Jesse suggested immediately to have a place where people could come for massage, given the insane views of the micro islands, the rain forest and the rest of the beautiful scenery.
I knew we wanted a pool, because we didn’t have one at home and for the partial structure on the property, it only made sense.
As soon as what would become the, “Pool House” vision came to be, we knew having, “Casitas” was going to be our path. Separate guest casitas made sense because, we loved the pool house as a communal space for everyone to gather. We quickly put in a commercial style kitchen, bathrooms (not quick enough) and dining space because when you have extra, you build a longer table, not a taller fence!
All of this kicked off February 2020. By then we had had chickens for over 5 years in Arizona where my husband is from. Chickens by the way, are the gateway drug! Our first 30ish chickens here, we rescued from a couple moving off the island (though they later returned) I’m sad so say 15 of them were eaten by the endangered (now I see why!) Puerto Rican hawks. The guadawow as they are called in Spanish, are all over our place. 3 or more of them at any given time, love to soar and scream a top our trees, like this is their home. We love when they do! Especially during yoga classes, it’s such a, “Bound with nature experience”. We love it less when they are eating our chickens!
So, came Frank. Frank (as in Sinatra) is our blue eyed, loud squawking (or singling as I call it) male goose, who loves me…and tends to bite everyone else. When you visit steer clear of Frank. Frank’s job is to guard the chickens, not tend to guests! On Frank’s behalf I will say we have not lost a single chicken since Frank’s been on duty. He’s the guard goose, and VERY good at his job. He takes it very seriously which we appreciate!
Frank came in November and in December Jesse asked Santa for a donkey! A mean mini burro who like Frank would guard the live stock we knew was bound to end up here. Apparently Jesse wasn’t on Santa’s well behaved list because finding a donkey on this island was IMPOSSIBLE!
For Valentine’s 2021 I asked for goats! We were 1 year into construction on the pool house & casitas and Jesse somehow (with out me knowing) had 2, 3 week old baby boy goats delivered to my arms on Valentine’s eve! Remind me to write a blog about why I’m never asking for farm animals for Valentine’s again! Either way, I’m was ecstatic! We got to bottle feed, love, pet, hug and video the most hilarious baby goats anyone ever saw. Willie and Waylon stayed in our home, later moving into our yard and eventually to the Finca.
Leading up to this we had become relatively good at keeping backyard chickens, then decent at protecting and keeping Finca chickens. So in 2020 we took up bee keeping. In order for our bee mentor Jose, to teach us all about bees, we volunteered to do hive removals with him. Jose is a 5th generation, 30 year…mostly Spanish speaking Puerto Rican master bee keeper. We truly went straight to the top. You can not imagine the early mornings, the sweat, the buildings we scaled, boats, roofs, happy hives, angry hives and all out adventures we are STILL having with Jose and the bees.
One would think that all of this would prepare us for goats? No. We had collected hives, lost hives, released angry hives, rescued chickens, hatched chickens, lost chickens, buried chickens and more. Nothing on the farm was like losing our baby goats.
Two weeks after Valentine’s 2 more goats arrived. Females, unrelated to our males who we lovingly and appropriately named Dolly, and Mylie.
Weeks later, the night before I left for a flight we FINALLY found a burro to protect them! We drove almost 6 hours round trip. Hoisted him into a home made horse trailer on the back of our lifted F250 in true Puerto Rican fashion, and then broke down on the way home. Fortunately Jesse was able to fix the problem by disabling the 4 wheel drive and we somehow made it time to deliver our burro to his sweet new home and still had time to pack for my 6am flight.
Pepé who came with his name was not the mean biting burro Jesse asked for. He is the kindest, sweetest most gentle creature, offering kisses and hugs and accepting love from everyone! Except dogs. He hates dogs. His job in fact is to protect the goats from predators, like wild dogs who as we learned will injure, hurt and even kill your goats no matter the fence or the lengths you go to keep predators out. Pepé came in March 2021 and while on my 1 week trip Jesse built him and the girl goats the BEST stables! I came back to the most amazing home for our animals.
In April, our oldest daughter Kayla and her boyfriend Ricky moved to the island, aside from Gabe who had been helping for months, it had been just so. But now it felt like we had a TEAM.
The pool broke ground, finally. I felt like it never would, so it was a MAJOR bench mark after being under construction over a year and having been through 2 pool contractors and so many companies for various other things. Everything was truly coming together!
That’s when the dog attacks started. The boy goats were not close enough to Pepé, and the first attack nearly killed both boys. After vets and stitches, antibiotics, and studying the second attack in the end did kill them, and the third almost killed Frank too. Needless to say we were devastated. We felt defeated, like bad protectors, bad providers wanted to give up, we all were beat. Our youngest Dane who’s 14 was camping out, sleeping by the chickens and goats in the back of the truck. Just trying to make sure it didn’t happen again.
It was late April 2021 by this time and a friend at Finca Pastore started posting puppies. It took a couple weeks before I put together what the universe had worked out for us but I finally got the message.
We have dogs, they are pets. They are from the pound and the dog rescue. They are sheep dogs so to speak but they also are AC loving, boat riding, go to the groomer every month fluffy puffs. I never thought we would be in the market for a puppy. None the less I reached out to Pedro to ask for help. He’s a 200+ acre, beyond organic, Joel Salatin and many years of farming trained, micro biologist, turned local farmer. He’s an hour away in Dorado, has herds of live stock he must know how to protect them! I didn’t realize that’s why the puppies were there. Once I spoke to him, I talked with the team and as we always do, we began researching! 2 years until a Live Stock Guard Dog puppy is a good protector and they work teams. Meaning we needed more than one.
After talking with Pedro I balled my eyes out. He offered a 2 week trial to re-home the mama of the litter I saw him posting. 2 year old Maya who had gotten too aggressive for his daily farm tours after having this litter of 10 pups. He offered an unrelated male from another litter that his partner had. This was the answer.
June 6th enter Maya and Odin.
Maremmas as we learned from studying and since from having them are NOT pets. They are 2000 year bread to guard live stock, Italian LGD’s. Live stock guard dogs. They are loud frequently barking, non minding, outside dogs who want to guard the herd and not come into a house. They live with the goats, they eat with the goats, those are their goats. They are also the sweetest cuddliest animals ever! Again, not pets. Get a couple when you have a farm, please! You will be glad you did. DON’T if you haven’t got your farm yet, you will be glad you didn’t!
This dream we are living for coming up on 2 years has been a bit of a rollercoaster. The most rewarding and satisfying learning experience. A great example to our kids on independence, community and food freedom. Sustainability and off grid living. A great way to share while still utilizing an income property model, and we are SO excited to share the guest experience side. That part of, “The Sweet Life” should kick off Januaryish 2022. Otherwise if you are reading this before that? It means you are probably invited to tour the farm with us. Help out, love some animals or even stop by to swim one day or bbq which we try and do with friends and neighbors once a month. Which ever it is, please join us where life keeps getting sweeter!
