A wish for Tobago's only goat sanctuary

Surprised by the unexpected revelation that she was a jazz singer in her youth, I ask her to sing something for me, please.

“Nahh. My voice is rusty,” she says, brushing the request away. I insist until she gives in.

As if to spotlight the performer, the early afternoon sun projects through light grey clouds, casting an almost otherworldly shaft of illumination through the sugar mill’s arched stone doorway and onto the floor, which is carpeted in reddish-brown guano (bat droppings). The feeling is akin to being in an ancient cathedral somewhere in Europe.

As her lone voice echoes in the womb-like darkness of the towering 350-year old sugar mill that stands on her property, the German Christmas carol takes on a haunting, ethereal quality: “Maria durch ein Dornwald ging...Kyrie, eleison”...

"Kyrie, eleison" means "Lord, have mercy."

Her audience, apart from me, consists of about ten of her 30 goats, beloved pets, inhabitants of her goat sanctuary at Orange Hill Nature Ranch, a former sugar estate. Some goats are listening, some standing near so that she can stroke them lovingly, as she croons, some are shaking raindrops from their fur. The goats, which were grazing, have run into the fortress-like structure to seek shelter from a sudden downpour since “they don’t like rain,” Josie says.

Few people know that, in the days of her youth in her homeland, Germany, Josefa "Josie" Patience was a jazz singer in a band named after her: "Jo Vienna Quintett."

Twenty-two years ago, she left Germany to start a life in Tobago, where most people came to know her as “the goat lady” or “the yoghurt lady.” Owner of Orange Hill Nature Ranch, she works almost single-handedly to care for and milk the goats and make yogurt and feta cheese from their rich milk and baked goods with their whey.

Meanwhile, her farmhand cleans the land, cuts grass, feeds the goats, makes sure their boxes are clean and stands guard over these special animals like a shepherd when they are released to graze.

Before residential development began to encroach upon the Orange Hill area, the farm’s environs were pure nature. The goats, once released to pasture, could wander far and wide to graze, returning home when called after a few hours.

Now, there are too many threats: high levels of livestock larceny, speeding cars and the risk of the goats being killed by roaming packs of hunting dogs.

This is why part of her farmhand's job involves standing around, protecting the goats when they are released to graze at 1 pm daily. If the 3.5-acre sanctuary were fenced, the goats would be able to roam safely, unsupervised.

Life on the farm is all-consuming. With barely any time for herself, Josie devotes much of her life beyond dairy production, to the care of her animals: two parrots, five cats and five dogs.

She makes time every morning to spend with the dogs, sitting with them, stroking them, speaking to them in German. She also addresses the goats in her mother tongue, her voice soft, filled with endearment.

“The goats are more my pets, my kids, than anything else,” she says. “It is a most wonderful, intelligent animal. Next to my dogs and cats they are the most important thing.”

In contrast, she laments that the treatment of goats in Tobago is not "the greatest."

“It is a piece of meat that people like to eat in their roti...curry goat. And I don’t want that to happen. It’s hard to be on an island where goats are a meat product. There has to be somebody who doesn’t do that and keeps them alive. I would never kill my goats. I am very emotionally attached to them.”

Hence the existence of her goat sanctuary, the only one on the island, a safe place for goats to live and be loved until they die natural deaths.

“I am not funded by the Government,” Josie says. “And to get anything done, we need money. But that money is not for me. It is for the animals. That is my wish.”

This year, may Josie’s most urgent wish be fulfilled – to acquire the funds to fence her 3.5-acre property so that the goats are free to roam, grazing safely as and where they wish on the vast expanse of their Tobago paradise.