The future.
The CTPR Expansion project
Venmo @centraltexaspigrescue
You helped us purchase our new property.
Now what?
READ THE MAY 11 UPDATE
It's with tremendous joy that we share the news: we have officially closed on our new property. 🥳 We are humbled and honored to have had your support in making this absolute dream come true.
When we began this seemingly impossible mission last year, we had so much faith in the goodness of our giant extended family, but there was so much uncertainty. You could have turned away, you could have assumed your donation wouldn't matter, but instead, you helped. In fact, enough people helped and embraced their power to do good so that we could hand over a check for over $100,000 to secure our future.
With the competitive real estate market, we continue to realize how fortunate we were for this land to be available at this time. It's a diamond in the rough, and we now get to build our sanctuary exactly the way we choose - as a sanctuary perfect for pigs (and people).
As you can imagine, now the real work begins! But here's the icing on the cake!
One of the things that has been in the works is an infrastructure loan tied to closing. Basically we are borrowing against the improved value of the land which means the bank has given us a construction loan against the equity. Essentially, everyone’s donations got matched up to the amount of the construction loan so we don’t have to fundraise for the major improvements to the property - fencing, water services (meter and well), pond, etc will all be covered under the mortgage cost. No way, right? Way!
We'd like to give another major thank you to our realtor & friend, Annie, for understanding us so well and being relentlessly committed to helping us find our perfect home. We're also grateful to the family & their agent who sold us this land - for their patience and the happiness they've created by giving us this opportunity.
And, of course, you. We actually, literally, truly, factually could not have done this without your help. Every single dollar has been a building block for our future. Thank you.
What's next? We're meeting the clearing contractor next week to clear for fencing, and very soon after we will be on site with the fencing contractor setting posts and pulling fence! If you'd like to continue to support our transition, the next major piece of the process will be barns! We need to replace some of the pig barns that can't come with us, as well as relocate the ones that can! Any amount helps or you can visit centraltexaspigs.org/sponsor to learn more and see how you can have a barn named for you!
Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts. We hope someday soon that we can all celebrate beneath the trees and stars on a warm night, surrounded by our happy pig friends.
Love,
The Pigs & Humans of CTPR
Infrastructure projects
We have so many exciting projects to tackle before we can begin relocating the pigs. We need your help to make the magic happen!
✅ Fencing: funded! Construction in progress
✅ Water meter: funded! Installed!
Community Structures
The first thing we must set up on our new property are human facilities!
✅ Community Center: the hub for our volunteers and visitors! Purchased, wired, and insulated. Will be finished thanks to a matching grant from The Riseman Foundation. Help us meet the match!
🔳 Feed Barn: still needed
🔳 Tiny Home: we need homes for our live-in caretakers and overnight stays!
pig housing
Many of our barns will be relocating with us, but some won’t be able to. We will need some help with the relocation and purchasing new barns!
Power to the pigs
Connecting to the county’s utility grid has proven to be far more difficult and expensive than we could have imagined. The good news? We’ve turned our attention to a much more progressive plan and one that’s better for Mother Earth: taking our power off-grid.
We need solar sponsors to help power our pigs! If you work in off-grid solar and would like to be our sun-powered hero, please send us an email!
What’s the new property like?
-
26 Acres
With 9x the space of the current property, it’s enough land to grow into, hold events, and get cheerfully lost.
-
Keeping ATX Weird
45 minutes from Austin…or less! This was a top priority, as this is where all our volunteers live! We’re right on the outskirts of Bastrop.
-
Forested
The property is heavily forested with tons of natural shade, which the pigs really need to stay cool and comfortable during the summer. There are also many plants for snacking!
-
Untouched
While there are some paths and clearings from previous humans inhabitants, the land is largely untouched. This means we get to do things exactly as we see fit!
-
Easy Topography
We saw several properties that were beautiful, but had terrain that would be much too challenging for little legs and hooves. This property has some manageable hills, but is very suitable to our residents.
-
Magical
Our ultimate goal is to cultivate a magical experience for our current residents, our future rescues, and the humans who visit and care for them. We want bring people and pigs together for memorable and life-changing connections against a more enchanting backdrop to evolve the pig-paradigm.
our vision
The clock is ticking! help us make our move as soon as possible!
We need your help.
Why are we relocating?
When CTPR began, we couldn’t have anticipated the scope of pig cruelty. A vision of rescuing a few pigs was soon overshadowed by an endless flow of owner surrender requests, shelters with pigs dumped, and rescuers all over the country in desperate need to place a pig. It became quickly clear - pig victimhood is tremendous, and we must do all we can to help these beings who need it most.
As the demands grew, particularly with the Caldwell Seizure of 133 pigs, everything about our organization changed, from leadership to daily communication to priorities. We have spent the 2.5 years since that seizure building our team, rehabilitating those pigs, learning, and working to stabilize our fundraising base. As time has gone on and pigs have gotten bigger we truly have outgrown our current space.
Our journey has been challenging, inspiring, and has brought together humans and pigs from all walks of life. But this next step is our most important one yet.
If not us, then who?
The pigs of Texas & beyond need more support, but with our current space limitations, we are forced to turn away pigs in need. Our expansion plan factors in new facilities and systems to help those who need it the most.
Goals & initiatives
Cultivating the ideal environment
Before the end of summer, our goal is to transition all of our residents to the new property with thoughtfully designed enclosures full of trees. We hope to reframe people’s understanding of pigs from farm animals to the woodland animals that they are.
Creating Human-Pig Connections
By the end of the year, we hope to begin facilitating unique opportunities for humans to meet pigs through B&B, events, tours, workshops, community gatherings. Meeting pigs creates a lasting impression that changes lives, lifestyles, diets, and helps to save the planet. Animals help us heal, and we all need to heal.
Rescue animals who need us the most
We have been at capacity for 2 years, but with more space, we hope to be able to offer sanctuary to some of the animals in the most desperate need, including other pigs, goats, donkeys, cows, sheep, chickens, and more.
Pet pig boarding
Target Date: August 2022
We aim to help provide a service to the pig-parent community, by offering boarding for families when they travel or need a short/long term place of stay for their pig.
our motivation
For our current residents.
Most of our residents come from 2 horrific cruelty seizures - The Bastrop Seizure in 2016 and The Caldwell Seizure in 2018. We have another 60+ residents with unique stories and journeys that led them to us. They have overcome adversity, cruelty, fought off death and abuse. The beat all the odds. With so many of them entering their golden years, we are committed to giving them the most idyllic environment, more relief from the Texas summer sun, and more places to explore. Simply put: they deserve the best.
For the pigs we haven’t met yet.
More land means an opportunity to give more pigs the gift of a safe and loved life. We have had our doors closed to new pigs for almost 2 years because of our space limitations. We want to renew ourselves as a resource for those who need it most, including FFA pigs, pigs saved from slaughter, abandonment, and testing, and becoming a landing spot for owner surrenders to help them find a new forever home.
Sanctuary for pigs & people
The pigs provide just as much (if not more) love and sanctuary for us humans as we probably ever could for them. Our Animal Care Team members come out to care for the pigs and give belly rubs on tough days, weekends, after work…seeking refuge in the company of their dear friends. They also get caught up in so many tasks that would be solved with our ideal property.
We hope to find a property that furthers that concept of sanctuary for our human friends, making their time spent with the pigs less task oriented and more care + friendship oriented.
past updates
Latest update (4/16): down payment!
We officially have raised the funds for our down payment. We are filled with so much gratitude for your support over the last several months to help us reach this incredible milestone. When we set out towards this goal nearly 9 months ago, it seemed like just a dream in so many ways.
The support and faith of so many unique people means the world to us. We are so grateful the opportunity to give our pigs the best possible life.
We have so much work ahead but are excited and passionate for our future.
As we await our closing date, we are planning and preparing the infrastructure and process needed to make the transition happen. If you’d like to support and make an impact, we have some of the most important projects listed below!
Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts & hooves!
(3/11): we’ve found it!!
This is what we've all been working towards. After months and months of searching, we've found it. The perfect place. The place that feels like home. And, we are currently joyfully (and nervously) under contract.
With the hot and volatile real estate market, the journey has felt hopeless and out of our control for most of the last 9 months. But here we are at the junction of nearly reaching our fundraising goals and finding our paradise. If you're not from Texas, you might not realize that most properties of this size are cleared for cattle pasture and trees are few and far between. Others have been less than ideal (mesquite and cactus covered), out of our price range, with too-rugged topography, inaccessible, too far away, or purchased by someone other than us. This slice of heaven has some short term challenges, but is truly a diamond in the rough.
26 beautifully forested acres with plenty of clearings and some incredible heritage trees. An oasis where each of our residents will play, explore, love, and enjoy their old age showered in the dancing sunlight that filters through the branches overhead.
It's a future of so much promise. We felt spiritually connected to the legacy and history of the land. It's the perfect place for nights filled with music and good food shared beneath twinkling string lights. It's the place where people will see pigs in a context they've never before considered. It's a place where people will vow to change their habits and live more compassionately. It's a place that will heal broken hearts. It's a place where future residents of all species will feel freedom for the first time. It's a place that will change lives. So many lives.
We find ourselves, as always, racing against the clock. As we sit here just potentially a month from closing, we need your help, now more than ever to ensure the future of CTPR doesn't slip away. We need another $15,000 to achieve our downpayment and we need to provide proof of funding to our lender as soon as possible. We're also discussing the need to pay closing costs, as in this market they're being covered by buyers...something we hadn't expected.
If you've ever visited CTPR or smiled at one of our videos, you can change hundreds of lives with just a few dollars. What we need to achieve is just within our grasp.
If you've ever considered making a major impact as an Angel Donor, there is no greater moment than this one, and we'd be honored to discuss a visit with our Angel Donors to the new (and current) property to share our vision with you.
We are filled with so much gratitude that we are in this position today and so so close to achieving our dream. We feel lifted by the good will of so many humans and our loved ones like Annalise, Hannah, Jasmine, Chicalinda, and Emmylou who give us strength from beyond the Rainbow Bridge and will join us there in spirit.
Thank you all 💜 and if you'd like to reach out, please email me at tracey@centraltexaspigs.org.