UPDATE: Your Donation Will Be DOUBLED until Oct. 15th!

We have had more challenges than ever in the past several weeks.

Thanks to everyone who donated last month, we have all the necessary materials to begin our new adoption area, but we cannot complete it due to the following recent problems.

Our 4 wheeler we use to pull our feed cart through the property was STOLEN last night. We filed a police report. The feed cart weighs between 250 and 300 pounds when loaded with feed. We use this for all daily feedings, as well as clean up and moving lumber and fencing through the farm. Not having one will double our feed time and cleanup times, since we cannot pull the full cart by hand. This also makes it difficult to move all our adoption area supplies from our storage barn to the other side of the property for the new adoption area. We desperately need to replace it!

Our tractor also broke down 3 weeks ago and we've been unable to repair that. This has slowed down our wallow digging and poop cleanup. We also need the tractor to complete the new adoption area fencing, wallows, and leveling the ground for fencing and pig houses.

We need your help to get things back to normal again! We need the tractor running for wallows, poop removal, and construction projects; we need a 4 wheeler to pull the cart, pull lumber and supplies, and navigate the farm; and we need to add cameras to the entrance and feed/4 wheeler shed so we know if someone is ever out there.

While the pandemic economy has slashed our funding more than in half, our feed, hay, and medication costs have increased 35% since last year. Every penny has gone into making sure the animals in our care still get the same healthy diet, the medical care and needed medication, and all needed things like water and power.

We need $6,000 to get all these immediate needs met, and this would be purchasing a used 4x4 Four Wheeler and repairing our current tractor.

UPDATE (10/7) :

I hope everyone is sitting down! We have some pretty amazing news to share! Thanks to the diligence of our local community, someone spotted our 4 wheeler today, and the thieves were having mechanical issues on the side of the road. The authorities were alerted, and while the 4 wheeler had started back up, they arrived in time to pull them over and make an arrest! Evan, and our caretakers Tiffany and Crystal went out and identified the 4 wheeler as ours! Tiffany's husband, Aaron, loaded it up on the trailer and brought the 4-wheeler back home! We can't thank our community and the Lexington County Sheriff's department enough for all their help.

That said, the thieves, unfortunately, caused a lot of damage to the vehicle. They ran it hot after burning all the oil out, they messed up the wiring and tried modifying the engine. Right now it is still inoperable, but we will be taking it to our ATV mechanic in town this Monday when they open! Our hope is that everything is repairable, and it will be up and running smoothly again this coming week!
We also have our tractor mechanic coming out next week to hopefully get it up and running again too!

We are so thankful for everyone who has given toward the replacement 4 wheeler, and the donations will be put towards repairs for both the 4 wheeler and tractor. We will also be adding additional cameras, motion alarms, locks, and motion lights, in strategic areas around the property, to assure this doesn't happen again!

Everyone cross your fingers that the damage done is repairable, as our 4 wheeler only had 400 miles on it and was in great mechanical shape before this incident.

We will be keeping everyone updated on how it's going once we have it checked out. Due to the recovery of the 4 wheeler, we are reducing our goal to $6,000 instead of $8,000.

Again, thank you all so much, we could never do what we do without our Cotton Branch Family and the local community.

As a show of appreciation from all of us at Cotton Branch, we have some amazing thank you gifts to offer for different levels of giving.

$5,000 Mountain Mover
- Private wine and plant-based cheese tour of the Sanctuary for up to 6 people, hosted by Josh and Evan
- New Adoption Area pig house named in your honor, or to honor a loved one.
- Up to 6 complimentary tickets to any Cotton Branch event of your choice in the next 12 months.
- Up to 6 of our new logo shirts!
- Up to 6 of our new logo window decals

$2,500 Movement Leader
-Private wine and plant-based cheese tour of the Sanctuary for up to 4 people, hosted by Josh and Evan
- Up to 4 complimentary tickets to any Cotton Branch event of your choice in the next 12 months.
- Up to 4 of our new logo shirts!
- Up to 4 of our new logo window decals

$1,000 Movement Partner
-Private wine and plant-based cheese tour of the Sanctuary for 2 people, hosted by Josh and Evan
- 2 complimentary tickets to any Cotton Branch event of your choice in the next 6 months.
- 2 of our new logo shirts!
- 2 of our new logo window decals

$500 Movement Sponsor
- 2 of our new logo shirts!
- 2 of our new logo window decals

$100 Movement Friend
- 2 of our new logo window decals

Help Us Keep Moving!

By The Refuge Project

Help Us Keep Moving!

Your Donation Will Be DOUBLED until Oct. 15th!

Team Members