Our Story

Adam and Joy met on June 10, 2001. They began a job together after Adam’s career in the Army and Joy’s career as a legal assistant. They both took a chance and started a new job which, as fate would have it, led them to one another. They became best friends instantly, started dating on September 1, 2003 and got married on October 1, 2005. Shortly after getting married, they relocated from New Mexico to Virginia for Adam to begin a new job. Their first year of marriage included moving across the country, Adam starting a new job, buying a house, selling a house, and having their first baby, Cora. Their second child, Tessa, was born 14 ½ months later. They had a happy life in a nice house on an acre of land. Having moved from a city with postage sized lots, they loved having an acre of land to call their own. They talked about how it would be neat though to eventually acquire 10 or so acres of land with a creek. After years of mostly being a stay-at-home mom, Joy decided to pursue a career in real estate and gained her real estate license in June, 2015. Around 2018, they decided that with the extra money coming in from Joy’s new career, it would be a good time to make some upgrades to their house. Months were spent looking at samples, things online for inspiration and thinking up ideas. Then during the summer of 2018, all of the plans were derailed when Joy started showing several properties on larger plots of land. She would pull up some of the listings to show Adam. Suddenly they began to think that maybe their renovation money would be better spent as a down payment! There was one property in particular that stuck out to Joy which she felt the rest of the family needed to see. It obviously needed work, but the potential was astonishing! Looking back on it, neither Adam nor Joy really know how Adam ultimately agreed to this knowing the amount of work it would take. Our savings, along with a gross under estimation of the amount of money we would spend, being swayed by the magic feeling of the property and the feeling both of us had that this is the direction God wanted us to go all led to us having the biggest, most life changing adventure of our lives!! 

Year one was all about making necessary repairs and trying to keep Adam from having a heart attack! From having to have all the wood work redone on the main house (dormers rebuilt, soffits, etc.), all new windows (52 of them!), five new HVAC systems, five new roofs (main house, guest house, barn, shed, little wood shed) and exterior paint on everything. 

We could not believe we bought a property with a four stall barn. We knew that we would use it eventually, but vowed for the first year to just concentrate on repairs. We finished with exterior painting and were feeling pretty good about where we were with things in October, 2019. The next month, the day after Thanksgiving, the gentleman we had working on our driveway looked at our barn and asked if we would be interested in a small mule and a half-miniature donkey. He and his wife had just listed them on Craigslist trying to find them a new home because they were ready to downsize and wanted to be able to travel. Without hesitation, we said “YES!!!!!” We went to see them and fell in love. We spent the following weekend figuring out how we were going to work everything, how/where they would eat, etc. Neither of us had any experience with equine. None. Having only had dogs, their heads looked gigantic to us! We wondered what we were getting ourselves into, but didn’t really care. We technically “purchased” Hershey and Sally and all their belongings for one carton of eggs. 

The year 2020 was a normal one with nothing unusual happening at all. Just kidding! As March, 2020 rolled in and the world shut down we were extremely grateful to be quarantining in our paradise! We love being and working together and dream to do that 24/7 eventually! While some couples were struggling with their forced together time, we were thriving. Of course it wasn’t all positive with the stresses of Covid-19 swirling around and the affect that it had on so many. 

In February, 2021, we were alerted to a goat and a sheep in need of rescue. Miraculously, an extremely brave and lucky sheep and goat had escaped a truck headed to the slaughterhouse and ultimately brought to the Fauquier SPCA. We, especially as vegans, were blown away at the story and felt the need to provide a safe and loving forever home for these two brave souls! After trying all means of communication and being told the Fauquier SPCA office was closed due to snow, we had a very nice lady tell us that she would be able to get us in that day to meet them. We gladly jumped in the vehicle to head that way. We remember seeing them for the first time and thinking that they were so much smaller than we imagined. Lenny, the sheep, was much more brave (brought out more so by his desire for food) and came near us, but still didn’t want to be touched. We remember thinking that we just wanted to be able to hug him! Squiggy, the goat, was much more hesitant and stayed at the far end of the pen. We got the call that afternoon that, out of all of the many applicants generated by the elegantly written story, we had been chosen!! We were so excited!!! We then got busy trying to learn about sheep and goats. We quickly realized we would need to build a new barn to allow them to have constant access to pasture, which we could not provide them at the barn shared with Hershey and Sally who require a more controlled eating situation. Once we knew we were building a new barn, we both decided quickly that it didn't make sense to build a barn for one sheep and one goat. We agreed that the next logical step was to create a nonprofit farm animal sanctuary. The rest is history!