Aidez-nous à ouvrir un petit refuge pour animaux de ferme

La Petite Ferme de Belvie : Where permaculture and farm animal shelter meet Dear friend, You love animals and nature and would like to help a small-scale local project ? Lucky you, la Petite Ferme de Belvie needs you ! 😊 La petite ferme de Belvie ? This project is the realisation of the dream of a nice couple from Brussels (us 😊) looking to live in harmony with the living. In line with our values, we wanted to create a small haven of peace dedicated to nature and farm animals. Concretely, la Petite Ferme de Belvie is a newly born non-profit organization with a double project : the creation of a small shelter for farm animals and the production of fruits and vegetables from a permaculture garden. All of this in a green, flowery setting, where enhancing biodiversity will be a main focus. We dreamed this project for a long time and, after two years of research, we finally found the perfect place: in Belvaux near Rochefort (hence Belvie in the title ;-)). Last summer, we left the capital to start living our dream, a little naively, but determined and resolutely motivated. The great adventure began! Today, we need you for the shelter part of the global projet ! This shelter will eventually be able to welcome about 50 animals including rabbits, chickens, ducks, pigs, sheep, goats and cattle, all of which seized for mistreatment or abandoned (or adopted from larger shelters). We want to create a harmonious domain where these formerly abused animals will be able to live in peace, surrounded by love and where their needs in terms of space, food and comfort will be met. We won’t be a large-scale sanctuary but will still be able to have a significant impact in terms of awareness, especially by facilitating interactions with the animals. This will happen on our discovery days where you will get to know our residents and also thanks to the future lodges that will soon be part of our eco-domain. A fundraiser ? In order to welcome all these animals adequately, we need the proper infrastructures. The current fences only allow us to welcome cattle but not the sheep, goats, rabbits or pigs. By dividing the land in 3 separate meadows and using rotation, we would like to allow our animals to have fresh grass and avoid soil depletion. But of course, 3 meadows means as many perimeters of fences, gates, watering troughs, shelters... Not to mention the new rabbit and pig pens. We want to set up infrastructures adapted to each species with enough space for each animal to feel comfortable while preserving - and even promoting – nature, animal and plant biodiversity. To add to this, we will plant abundant hedges in various strategic places of the domain which will be fruit-bearing, melliferous and/or fodder-bearing in order to attract and shelter birds and insects while offering good food complements for the animals (and us too, long live homemade jam! ;-)). We also plan to plant apple trees, plum trees, cherry trees and other fruit trees and to create a pre-orchard where our protégés will be able to find shelter under tall trees which will store CO2, offer them some delicacies, and us too at the same time (long live the homemade compotes!;-)). Finally, we have in mind the making of a large pond to welcome amphibians, insects and even ducks. And to meet the needs in terms of water of all these living things (including the vegetables of the garden), the drilling of a well is even under study But unfortunately all this requires money. We have asked for estimations from many professionals in order to compare prices and materials so as to find the cheapest possible solution while being the most sustainable and safe for the animals. It all ends up being expensive. Very expensive. Too expensive for us to bear alone... That’s where your support comes in ! We need your help! We hope that this project speaks to you and that you are enthusiastic about it and we would be delighted to be able to count on your help, whatever it may be. In advance, a huge thank you. For them, for the project, for us! Counterparts ? We didn't want to just ask you for money without anything in return. So we activated our networks and, thanks to the generous help of several partners, we concocted a whole series of nice and ethical counterparts to thank you for your help. We hope you will find something that you like ;-)