“It doesn’t matter where you came from, we’re just grateful that you’re here” Abby and Adam Pause have been working together as owners of Nederland Feed and Pet for 8 years, and on Grateful Acres for over 12 years. PHOTO BY CHRISTOPHER KELLEY[/caption]
Since about the crack of dawn on a warm Sunday Abby and Adam Pause have been awake tackling their list of duties caring for twelve chickens, seven goats, two sheep, a llama named Dolly, and many more.
“In the summer, when you can open the gates and let the animals out and they just stay by you…it’s rather peaceful, actually,” Adam says.
At about ten in the morning the animals were out and about in their pens, gathered around the Pauses as Abby introduced each member of the Grateful Acres family and told a little bit about each of their histories and personalities.
“Luna is going to be 13 this year,” Abby said, pointing to a short, squat, stark black goat. “When her daughter passed recently it was devastating.”
“And then there’s this little old man here, that’s Elvin, he’s 12. You just get to know these animals and they all have personalities just like a dog, or a human for that matter.”
Dolly towered over the goats and sheep and curiously investigated the goings on; the male goats paced and strutted, the females played coy until Abby lovingly poked and teased them enough to get them to playfully react, as if embarrassed by their mother in front of company. Luna, the grand matriarch, ignored everyone and joyfully scratched the back of her neck using a perfectly placed branch in the corner of her spacious pen.
“I still have that obnoxious little girl in me so I’m always like ‘My Baby!’” Abby jokes, faking an over-excited scream as she hugs and pets the female goats. “The boys, not so much…Elvin, I love him, but he smells to high heaven so I can’t really snuggle him.”
Grateful Acres is Abby’s dream project that she and husband Adam have been working on for over thirteen years, facing each hurdle along the way with sheer determination, driven by ambition and, most importantly, passion.
Abby has a lifetime of experience working with animals and in pet-based retail, and Adam comes from a background living on a self-sustaining farm and working on a horse ranch. With their combined knowledge and expertise, and having owned and operated Nederland Feed and Pet for eight years, the two are more than ready to make the Grateful Acres dream a reality.
“I’ve been doing this my entire life,” Abby shared. “I started at 14 at a pet retail store in my hometown and would just take in whoever needed me. Sometimes I’d find them new homes, sometimes I kept them.”
“He had experience with farms, and I had worked pet retail and done grooming for so long that I just spent my whole life educating myself about nutrition and husbandry. I participated in a lot of different programs and training and learned a ton along the way, and continue to learn.”
Grateful Acres is a safe place for surrendered companion animals to be rescued, rehabilitated, and rehomed, that focuses on the educational opportunities that a local animal sanctuary can provide. The Pauses desire to partner with other local non-profit organizations to provide to the public hands-on educational programs in matters like correct husbandry practices and the proper care of domestic and farm animals.
“As we get bigger and expand we will have foster opportunities. There will be times when we will take in animals strictly to rehome them. But we want people to be able to come in and see them, get to know them and really think about whether taking care of such an animal is something they want to do long term,” Abby said, desiring for Grateful Acres to not be seen as a shelter or a petting zoo, but as a sanctuary that provides educational experiences to those who may be curious about owning a farm animal or non-traditional domestic animal.
“People just want to be around these animals, so if they can be around mine maybe they won’t feel so convinced to rush into purchasing one themselves. Here you get to be in the animal’s presence but you can also see how much work it is.”
The Pauses hope that Grateful Acres can serve many purposes to the nearby communities, including part-time boarding of animals in emergency situations, and also potentially becoming a known animal evacuation site in case of a wildfire emergency.
After moving in 2020 to 32 Elk Meadow Lane in Black Hawk, a larger and more suitable location for the animal sanctuary’s needs, Grateful Acres registered for and received 501(c)(3) status. The Pauses are currently waiting for bureaucracy to run its course and for the IRS to officially designate Grateful Acres an official charitable organization.
There are plans waiting in the wings for when the sanctuary achieves its status as a charitable organization, including several fundraising campaigns and local fundraising events. Such events include a partnership with local non-profit Mountain Paws Pet Care Fund to hold a silent auction and live music event in the near future, as well as a small event at Grateful Acres in June and a Halloween and fall festival event in October.
“We’ll do a daytime thing, a pumpkin patch, face painting, some games, and we’ll have a bouncy castle,” Adam added.
All fundraising efforts are aimed towards funding the sanctuary’s facilities, which are needed in order to eventually host educational programs and special events. Such ideas for future programs and events include educational seminars on animal care and behavior, guided goat and llama trail walks, and animal meet-and-greets to learn about their behavior and natural habitat and needs.
“If you open these gates the animals will follow you anywhere, so you can take a walk with them on our trails. There’s five foot wide established trails all through the property,” Abby said about their ten acres of beautiful land, before mentioning a seasonal watering hole just a few yards away that gets frequent visits from deer, elk, and moose.
In addition to creating programs with local ecology centers, community centers, libraries, and schools in mind, Grateful Acres could also become a location for these same organizations, as well as businesses and individuals, to hold private events.
“On our old property I had a disc golf course that I had built over the years that we want to put out here,” Adam said. “We have twice the acreage now and we can have goat guided disc golf.”
“All the proceeds from the disc golf course would just go to the sanctuary,” Abby added. “We can host birthday parties or a small wedding ceremony. The accessibility here is incredible,” the Pauses are constantly dreaming about the possibilities of Grateful Acres, and feel that now is the moment to fundraise and bring a lot of these plans to fruition.
“We just love to talk about it because it is our passion and it’s so natural for us it almost feels weird to ask for anything,” Abby said, beginning to get emotional while feeling the delicate balance of her dream standing on a precipice. “There’s this pressure within us to make this grow and to have more space so we can have people here…it’s just time to make the jump.”
As part of their constant efforts towards upgrading the potential of their organization, the Pauses have purchased and are preparing to assemble a 40 foot by 50 foot pole barn. Currently Dolly, all of her goat friends, the two sheep and twelve chickens, live in two 40-foot shipping containers which have been converted to include fenced windows and air vents; there are individual stalls.
Though the containers have served their purpose in housing the animals, the addition of a barn will provide the animals with the best possible environment and with increased living space for the potential of adding more members to the family. And, with running water, plumbing, heating, insulation, and electricity, the barn would provide the community a great environment to visit with the animals and learn.
“With the new barn and with the improved space and infrastructure we’ll be able to handle a lot more. We have all the engineering plans and all the stuff we need being designed and ready for us to present to the county for permitting,” Adam mentioned, with Abby adding that they’re hoping to begin building the barn in June.
Though Adam has worked in the construction field and, through his contacts, was able to secure an excavator, plumber, electrician, and others to help assemble the barn, the Pauses are still building Grateful Acres out of their own pockets. As they enter the permitting process they hope that future fundraising efforts, merchandise opportunities, special collection boxes, a GoFundMe campaign, and grant pursuits will award the sanctuary the funding necessary to blossom into a community staple.
“There’s so much that all of this can give to people,” Abby said. “Just being in the presence of the animals but also seeing the extent to which they should be cared for, that is so important to me.”
In addition to the aforementioned animals that live outside in the containers, within the Pauses’ home is where several other members of the Grateful Acres family reside. Two rabbits, an albino rat, two corn snakes (one of them older than 17 years old), a bearded dragon, a leopard gecko, a crested gecko, three frogs, and several fish live in the Pauses den, all of them a part of the sanctuary.
“They’re all so spoiled,” Abby laughs. “They all get fresh produce, nuts and seeds, mealworms and beetles, and cockroaches…and I still feel bad for the insects, but you know that’s what they need to survive.”
“Somebody threw a box out the window with this rat inside of it and he was dyed pink and blue; they just chucked it out the window,” Abby walked over to a cage and checked to see if the rat, named Cotton Candy by the Pauses son, had any desire to be sociable.
“He’s finally at a point where I can pet him, but I think it’s important for people to understand that just because these animals are in your home doesn’t mean they belong to you. If he doesn’t want me to touch him I’m not going to touch him. I owe him everything because humans are terrible.”
The reptile enclosures are bioactive, containing living ecosystems, with insects and live plants allowed to play their particular roles in that ecosystem. Though the animals indoors enjoy the perfect conditions needed for their healthy growth and comfort, the Pauses wish to move them into the barn once it’s raised, to ensure visitors don’t have to be inside their private residence to visit with and enjoy the many animals at the sanctuary.
“We’ll get that barn up and from there we can launch all these educational programs, start holding stuff on the weekends, and get people up here,” Abby said, before returning her focus to her animals.
“One of our favorite slogans is ‘It doesn’t matter where you came from, we’re just grateful that you’re here’. That’s really all that matters, I’m just glad that we have these animals. They all come from their own situations, but somebody’s got to reassure them how much somebody loves them because they give unconditional love and they never hold judgment. They just want to be with you.”
With a pole barn kit on the way, a 501c3 status to solidify, and several plans of educational programming and special events ready to be implemented, Grateful Acres is bound to become more of a benefit to the Peak to Peak community than it already has. Abby and Adam’s love for animals and their undeniable expertise in the healthy care of those animals has been of service to the area for over a decade, and they ask for their fundraising efforts to be successful in allowing them to not only continue that precedent, but to expand on it.
For more information on Grateful Acres check out their website at: https:// www.gratefulacres.org. Find them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ GratefulAcres721.
To donate to Grateful Acres go to GoFundMe.com and search for “Grateful Acres” or go to: https://www.gofundme.com/f/build-a-barn-withgrateful acres?qid=0260529ae47eaacb1 4e16a64391980ea
This article is sponsored by the Gilpin County Commissioners, with funds from the American Rescue Plan Act.
