The mission of Goldy's Farm is to improve the welfare of community seniors, veterans, and people with disabilities through interactions with our Sanctuary Animals. We provide Animal Assisted Therapy (AAT), a practice that uses the human-animal bond to support emotional, social, and cognitive well-being.
Goldy's Farm is home to a wide variety of rescued, retrained, and repurposed animals; dogs, turkeys, rabbits, horses, Percy the Pig, goats, chickens, mini horses, donkeys, and cows. Each specifically trained for our mission.
We visit over 200 care facilities and interact with 7,000+ individuals each year. At many nursing homes, we see empty Visitor Parking lots and some people who get no visitors at all. They feel forgotten, alone and every day is the same - until that one day when our staff is standing at their bedside with a pet chicken, leash trained pig and a Great Dane. Instantly, the sadness in their eyes disappears.
Recently, a nurse in a memory care unit explained that her patient, who struggles to remember the names of her own children, remembered the name of our therapy dog (Wanda) from the previous month’s visit. The nurse also shared that residents were still talking about the animals three days after our last visit. Three days of memory is extremely unusual for patients in the memory care unit where memories sadly do not last.
We don't fully understand why animals reach places in the mind that other things can't, but we've stopped being surprised by the impact of Wanda and Goldy's Farm.
Our mobile team visits long-term care facilities (LTC) facilities in Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex Counties where are animals interact with over 7,000 each year. (see actual impact report at www.goldysfarm.com/impact). Essex County has roughly 182 LTC facilities, Suffolk County has 255, and Middlesex has 271, each typically housing 40–100 residents. According to academic researchers, 61% of residents in LTC facilities experience loneliness, sadness, and isolation. The crisis compounded by high burnout among nursing home staff, which leads to reduced empathy and lower quality of care.
Many of the places we visit are underfunded and simply cannot afford activities or enrichment programs, deepening the isolation they already face. Goldy's Farm is committed to serving these communities at no charge, because charging for our services would exclude the very facilities and residents who need us most.
Seniors, veterans and the disabled also visit Goldy's Farm, where they enjoy lunch with the animals in our Donkey Café, tour the farm, sit by the ponds, or take a donkey for a walk along manicured trails.
Recognizing that many disabled people are physically unable to leave their homes, hospital beds, or hospice care, we connect mobility-impaired individuals to our animals through livestream cameras which LTC facilities display directly on TVs in activity and patient rooms. Our livestream platform has created an active online community who use our discussion board to connect and build lasting friendships. The online followers have generated over 50,000 new comments each year.There is no other nonprofit north of Boston providing this scope of services for free. The impact of our animals is easy to see in the joy and smiles on residents' faces and in the overwhelmingly positive feedback we receive.
