“Wanna’ play?” asks CC (short for Cookies and Cream), a Nigerian dwarf goat who loves being part of the gang.
O.G. Farms (Old Goat Farms), snuggled in the hills outside the hamlet of West Kill in the town of Lexington, is the still-evolving vision of Mike Salica.
Healing moves in a circular motion, Mike Salica has experienced…giving it by sharing the beauty of the Catskills…receiving the same from mini-donkeys and a family of other farmstead animals.
If it’s mountains and peacefulness you want, they are plentiful at O.G. Farms, along with curious alpacas and Hip Hop tinged originality.
Peaceful stroll is led by Kelly, the chocolate lab and unofficial CEO at O.G. Farms.
WEST KILL - Something deeper than a belief within Mike Salica has led to his ongoing envisioning of O.G. Farms, snuggled in the hills a few miles outside the hamlet of West Kill in the town of Lexington.
“A place built from the intention of healing shares that healing,” Salica says, doing his best to explain why he is opening his personal Shangri-La to kindred spirits and how the whole thing has happened.
It started in 2019 when his car busted and he was lost. Well, actually, the seeds for Old Goat Farms, as his new home is more fully known, were sown many dreams and emotional nightmares earlier.
“Everybody has a story about how this place finds you,” Salica says, not meaning merely his spread but the soothingly surrounding mountains.
On the morning of 9/11, he was working in the World Trade Center, on the 45th Floor of Tower Two, when the first plane hit Tower One.
“At first we didn’t know what it was,” Salica says, remembering, “we could feel our building sway from the sheer impact. There was a rain of debris.”
His corporate finance company evacuated amidst uncertainty and chaos. “On our way up to the street level from the underground system, the second plane hit. There was suddenly a stampede,” he says.
Returning to his midtown apartment, still in the dark about the situation, “I turned on the TV and the first tower collapsed,” Salica says.
While respectfully deferring to the emergency personnel and citizens who lost their lives, the unfathomable event left its own unforeseen void.
“Shortly thereafter, I began having panic attacks,” Salica says. “I didn’t know what it was at first and I’m not a person who likes to expose his feelings so it wasn’t until covid that I talked to anyone.”
He was dealing with severe PTSD which, “caused me to reconfigure what purpose I wanted to serve in my life,” Salica says.
“I had been working in corporate finance. I couldn’t think of anything I was doing that felt like that, until I found healing through this place.”
O.G. Farms was as serendipitous as it gets. He bought the property in 2019, not having any inkling or intention of eventually welcoming total strangers to what quickly became sacred ground.
“I had decided I needed two things in my life, a dog and a getaway,” Salica says. “One weekend, I went with my mom to the Catskills.
“We were looking around, driving down Route 28 on the far end of the Notch [between West Kill and Shandaken] when the car broke down.
“An old auto shop was open and the guy there was the nicest guy. I told him what we were doing.He asked if we’d ever checked out West Kill.
“I’d never heard of West Kill. I got lost on the way but I went and looked at a place for sale up on Rusk Mountain Road. As I was standing there, I noticed this land at the bottom of the road,” Salica says.
“There were For Sale signs posted. The owner said they had just put them out the day before. It wasn’t coincidence. It was fate.”
It was an older house in the middle of nowhere and, “in the beginning, this was just somewhere I loved being. It brought me peace and joy. Then I started thinking I should share this with people,” Salica says.
“I started thinking about animals and a barn and crops, and figured I would maybe get a few goats and now, well, you can see what happened,” says Salica, smiling, looking around the now well-populated acreage.
There are alpacas and chickens, mini-donkeys and sheep in the pastures, a barn cat keeping the Nigerian dwarf goats company and the CEO of the joint, Kelly, the chocolate lab that perfectly answered the dog vacancy.
O.G. Farms will officially be offered to the public on May 7, with day-trippers, overnighters, weekenders and wandering souls invited.
“This has been seven years in the making and the best part is, it didn’t start out as a business or Airbnb or anything like that,” Salica says.
“I can see how how this is something genuinely simple and therapeutic for others. It provides someplace where people can really connect and find peace like I do. It’s a bit quirky but it’s agro-tourism with a heart.
“O.G. Farms is a place where people can slow down, connect with animals, the outdoors, and leave feeling better than when they arrived,” Salica says.
“Whether you’re a curious traveler, a burned-out New Yorker, or someone who just wants to hug a goat, explore the farm on your own, with a tour guide, shop the farm store or do a farm stay at our guest cottage.”
O.G. Farms is located at 38 Rusk Mountain Road, outside West Kill on rural Route 6 with easy access to miles of hiking trails. For info, email ogfarmsny@gmail.com, visit the website or telephone (917) 732-6023.
