Hi there. We're Chris Dostal and Aja Perbix, and together, we run Dostix Ranch.
We're a small-town duck egg and organic produce farm and animal rescue, with plans to expand to a full scale sanctuary farm in the lush valleys of the SW Oregon coast. We're selling NFTs to finance the move to a larger, even more rural property, and to finance the day to day operation of our current farm and rescue operation, which has suffered greatly due to the covid-19 pandemic and our county's response (or lack thereof).
It's always been our dream to own our own working farm and animal sanctuary (though we occasionally sneak in a restaurant dream, or a game developer dream), and we finally found the time and opportunity when the pandemic struck and all jobs around us immediately disappeared. With a large elderly human population and an even larger young animal population, combined with already overflowing animal shelters and foster organizations, we knew that there would be a large population of unwanted and abandoned animals in need of care - and we weren't wrong.
We currently have our own two pet dogs (a sweet but neurotic Border Collie named Luca, and a Catahula Hound mix named Cody), and what started as two cats (Lancelot and Edmund). Then we took in two feral kittens for a friend, only to discover that one was disabled, and a fifth cat came soon after.
Little Beldin was born without back feet, likely due to an umbilical cord injury pre-birth; while his brother Belgarath was the runt of the litter. Beldin spent the first year of his life in an enclosed play-tent, because his brother bit one of his little stumps and it developed necrosis. He's all healed up now, though, and has no problems getting around our two story house.
Within the week of getting the two brothers, another cat came into our lives and under our care when she made the slowest little beeline that a starving kitty can make, straight to us while we were out on a walk. Miss Maxine was so small that we took her for a third kitten, but the vet pointed out that most kittens haven't lost all but three of their teeth due to age and almost none have cataracts. So now she's our little old lady baby. She eats, sleeps, and snuggles, and just generally lives her best life.
Last year we added ducks, and this year we'll be adding chickens and potentially goats, if we can afford the new fencing and gates to keep the goats away from my fruit and veggies. And those are just the planned additions, that doesn't account for feral cats, foster litters, animals left behind by dying seniors, or otherwise abandoned animals who may wind up in our care.
All of these animals require food, and frequently, medication. And that's where you come in! By purchasing our NFTs you can help provide food, shelter, and veterinary care for the current and future animals in our care, and help feed our community by reducing our dependence on the sale of produce and duck eggs to keep ourselves going. That way we can embark upon our third, and most important goal - feeding anyone and everyone in our community and immediate surroundings, for a price they can afford or for free, no questions asked.
The pandemic has hit our area especially hard, as we are entering our second tourist season without access to our beaches, restaurants, and state parks. As a primarily timber driven area, backed by tourism, this has hit us hard. Sadly, the community has been incredibly underserved during this time, as several of our food banks actually closed when the pandemic was announced and never reopened, and several other options for food and shelter have closed as the pandemic has dragged on.
Our ultimate goal is to provide food and shelter to anyone who needs it - through a large working farm that pays a living wage and offers room and board for its workers, who can work at their own pace as necessary to recover from whatever ails them. A convalescent farm for the 2020s, as it were.
All of the NFTs consist of our own photography, or art created therefrom. For example, our logo was originally a photo taken on a Google Pixel 4, transferred to desktop, and then edited in Paint.net in order to remove the background, outline the ducks, fill them in with a flat color selected from their own natural colorations, and saved as a "line art" logo. Programs used to create our NFTs include:
- Paint.net
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Illustrator
- Adobe Spark (they have a trading card template)
Right now, our NFTs are undergoing a redesign. The currently available series are unbacked and collector's items only. The next release of NFTs will be backed by farm merchandise and wall art. We are currently in the process of selecting high quality silk screening and photo printing vendors in our area, after trying and rejecting Printful and others for quality deficiencies (as in, they had no quality at all). Once those are chosen and we have contracts are signed, we can begin offering our second series NFTs on the open market.
In the meantime, we will continue to sell the first generation of NFTs to finance the initial orders from our chosen vendors. There will also be several giveaways, drawings, surveys, and other ways to win our NFTs. Find us today at Dostixranch.com and find our NFTs at AtomicHub.io.