Home is Where the Goats, Sheep, Dogs, and Kittens Are…
Simple & sweet lifestyle celebrating our inherit connection to the land and its animals.
My friend and soul-sister, Serena, has always inherently known how to utilize nature, space, and random odds and ends in just the right way to breathe creativity and beauty into any thing or place.
A poetic soul, an animal-lovers heart, and a gardener’s patience and passion, she has always turned her surroundings into art.
When Serena and her family bought a property in upcountry Maui, Hawai’i, I could not wait to see what she nurtured the property into. I knew that as soon as her gypsy soul started to take root she would start accumulating animals as well. She is a born mother and has always welcomed creatures of all shapes and sizes into her open arms. It has only been about two years, but she has already scattered the property with various forms of furry love; three goats, two sheep, four kittens, and of course her dogs as well.
Alongside her musically-minded, sweet-hearted soulmate, she has been cultivating the land into a home and her new furry residents into family.
Every time I step onto their property, new trees have taken root, new flowers have bloomed, and new fruits and vegetables are ready to be harvested for our dinner. Recently she adopted a baby goat, and she helped me to fulfill my longtime goal of bottle feeding the silly and sweet little kid.
Whenever I arrive, we always stroll through her organized wilderness of a garden to pick the main ingredients for our meal as we chat about life and love. The sheep and goats baa and bleat in the background as her dogs and mine follow us from bed to bed.
We cook in their kitchen-shed using their propane burners near their teeny tiny hand-made house built with recycled windows and doors and flooring found on the free section of craigslist. It is not exactly what you think of when you think of a ‘house,’ but it is most certainly a home.
It is an ever-growing and changing place. It is constantly being molded and nurtured by their passion for living off the land, and love for the beautifully simple and sweet lifestyle and knowledge of ‘less is more.’ Less stuff, more love… a concept we can all benefit from remembering.