Nonprofit organizations throughout Asheville and the surrounding area nourish the people within our communities, caring for those in need, protecting our historic heritage, educating young and old, and nurturing our cultural soul. Each month, The Laurel is bringing to our readers some of the stories behind these agencies. This month, the “spotlight” is on Goat Mountain Ranch Animal Sanctuary in Leicester.

The first animal I met was Shrek, an affectionate donkey who is best friends with Fiona, one of several sheep at Goat Mountain Ranch Animal Sanctuary. They, and dozens of other animals— including an assortment of potbellied pigs, goats, roosters, hens, miniature horses, and an indigo blue peacock named Vincenzo (aka, Vinnie)—all owe their lives to the compassion and altruism of a man named Rob Levy.

Rob’s is an unintended sanctuary, resulting from several synchronistic events of which he claims to have been an unwitting participant. You see, Rob was a city boy in New Jersey, and had a career as an antique dealer with a piano restoration business on the side. Animals? He had two dogs. So where did all this start?

“My mother was living in a condo in Asheville,” explains Rob. “One day in 1998, out of the blue, she tells me she’s purchased a 25-acre ranch in Leicester.” Rob visited soon thereafter and saw his mother was in a bit over her head trying to maintain the mountainous property. “She knew it, too,” says Rob, “and so she moved back to her condo, and I bought the ranch property from her.” That was in 2003.

A month later, having tired of the stress of living in “polluted, crime-ridden New Jersey and hearing sirens all the time,” Rob decided to move to the ranch. “I packed up all my stuff and my dogs and never looked back.”

A short while after he moved in, a neighbor, asked if he could put four of his goats in Rob’s pasture. Rob agreed. But six months later, when the neighbor came back for his animals to take them to auction, Rob balked. “I’d become a vegan about the same time I bought this place,” he says. “I just couldn’t let him take the goats, so I bought them from him for what he would have gotten at auction.” An unwitting first step toward an animal sanctuary had been taken.

There was a donkey (alluringly named Lolita) that came with the property. But Rob decided she needed a buddy. So he rescued Pearl, a miniature horse, to be her pasture companion.

All the while, Rob was continuing to sell antiques online with inventory he’d brought with him from New Jersey. Then one day he heard the pitiful sound of an animal in distress. “I ran across the road and found this young pygmy goat tied to a tree. She’d wound herself tightly around the tree and her mother was standing watching helplessly.” Rob unwound the little goat and gave her water. Unfortunately, the same thing happened the next day.

“I went over and knocked on the door and this young girl said she’d be delighted if I’d take the animals, as she was moving and couldn’t take them with her ... and couldn’t stand the idea of letting them go to the wrong place.”

Then Joe Walsh, a friend, offered to sponsor a vegan potluck at Rob’s place to help raise money to feed the animals. Unbeknownst to Rob, Joe’s invitation listed the location as Goat Mountain Ranch Animal Sanctuary. “I guess I am a sanctuary,” Rob recalls saying at the time. And that’s how it all started. Shortly, people were telling him about chickens and pigs and other animals that needed to be rescued. Goat Mountain Ranch Animal Sanctuary now has 50–60 animals at any one time, with more in foster homes.

In 2009, Rob formalized his operation as a nonprofit organization, and says he has ambitious plans to fence in more of the steep, rocky property. How rocky? “My neighbors told me that prisoners mined the rock here to help build the bridges on the Blue Ridge Parkway,” says Rob.

With a hundred or so foster homes and cadre of 20–30 dedicated volunteers (no one, including Rob, earns a salary at the sanctuary) and through a strict adoption procedure, all the animals are assured of living out their natural lives in peace. There’s no way Rob could have foreseen the series of events that have brought him to this place and these animals, and I don’t think Rob would have it any other way.

To learn more, visit goatmountainsanctuary.org. You can reach them at gmranchsanctuary@yahoo.com and at 828.683.5709. If you’d like to donate, the organization can always use money, but they also welcome materials and feed (call first to determine current needs).