Yoga Enterprise

Indiana Woman Must Shut Down Business After County Officials Determine Her Farm Isn’t Zoned for Commercial Goat Yoga or Goat Snuggling

Since the pandemic began, Jordan Stevens has led Indiana’s only full-day goat yoga operation on her farm in rural Hamilton County. Since then, she has been forced to stop this service by planning officials who say her property is not intended for goat yoga purposes.

Her application for a zone change that would have legalized the business, Happy Goat Lucky Yoga, was also denied by the county. The cost of that process, plus the added cost and hassle of not being able to run her business on her own property, has considered Stevens, who has multiple sclerosis, to close her goat yoga business entirely and apply for disability benefits.

“It sucks,” she tells Reason. “They take so much money from people who are already taxpayers, and then even on our own property we can’t do the things we want that don’t harm anyone.”

Stevens started Lucky Yoga in 2018 with her partner Happy Goat. At that time, they were already raising Nigerian pygmy goats on their family’s farm. The rising popularity of goat yoga – where people take traditional yoga poses while goats climb on and around them – has provided both a business opportunity and a chance to share their goats with the community, she says.

The Hamilton County Reporter says it was the only full-time goat yoga company in Indiana.

First, Stevens rented a space in a city counseling center to run the courses and hired independent contractors to teach them. A mix of the center’s closure during the pandemic, a desire to move classes outside, and her car breakdown prompted Stevens to move her business to the farm.

About 20 people would show up for each class. The community really embraced it, says Stevens. And the goats liked it too.

“They live from human interaction,” she says. “We have a separate stable on the farm that we do classes in and they walk right in.”

Stevens’ problems with the county began this summer when she received phone calls and emails from Hamilton County Plan Commission officials. They said a complaint from a neighbor sparked an investigation into that her business did not comply with the agricultural zoning of her farms.

“I have determined that your goat yoga and goat cuddling business is not permitted in this current zoning for your property,” wrote CJ Taylor, director of the Planning Commission, in an email on July 29th. “You are obliged to cease all business operations on the property.”

Stevens’ farm and her grandmother’s smaller adjoining property, where the yoga classes actually took place, are designated as an A-2 agricultural district.

In Hamilton County, this allows the property to be used for a variety of agricultural businesses, including growing crops and livestock, retailing farm produce, and doing household chores. But none of these categories allowed goat yoga or cuddling, Taylor said.

His email was attached with a request for derogation and a suggestion that she should contact the state departments of building inspection and transportation for her contribution to legalizing her business.

The news that her goat yoga operation was technically illegal took Stevens by surprise. She had assumed that a goat-based operation would be permitted by the agricultural zoning of the property. The timing couldn’t have been worse, she says. Your store only offers courses from May to October. The county’s request to stop them came in the middle of the high season.

Stevens and her partner are also in the process of adopting a foster child, which means they cannot afford the lost income.

Deterred but not deterred, Stevens began applying for this zone deviation. She drew up a business plan for Happy Goat Lucky, posted signs on her property for an upcoming public hearing on her motion (which she had to pay for), and ran required advertisements in two local newspapers to inform people of her deviation motion. She was also required to send registered mail to neighboring property owners about her application.

It all cost Stevens about $ 1,000, including a $ 500 filing fee. The lost income from two months of not teaching classes cost her an additional $ 4,000, she says.

It was all in vain.

At a preliminary hearing, Commission staff said it needed to request two derogations, one for her grandmother’s property where the classes are held and another for her neighboring farm where the goats are kept. Stevens couldn’t easily afford that, given the cost of the first application.

“It’s been a fight all along,” she says. “I feel like it was made as difficult as possible.”

This first hearing resulted in the staff of the Planning Commission giving a negative recommendation to Happy Goat Lucky’s proposal. A Board of Zoning Appeals meeting in late September didn’t go any better. Your application was officially denied.

(The reason reached out to the Hamilton County Plan Commission but received no response by the time we went to press.)

That was obviously a blow to Stevens and her partner. It also posed a serious financial problem for them as they had already sold a number of gift certificates for upcoming classes.

Fortunately, officials in neighboring Tipton County were more receptive to their business. She was able to rent out her fairgrounds, where she will close the season. It obviously cost a lot more to move all of their operations out of the county because the fairgrounds had to be rented and then the goats had to be carted back and forth. Stevens said it still costs less than having to reimburse everyone for their tuition.

The effort and experience put Stevens and her partner in a difficult financial position as the goat yoga business is Stevens’ only income right now. She says her health is preventing her from doing other jobs outside of the home and that she is currently applying for disability benefits.

Aside from the financial cost of closing their business, this is a loss to their community and the wide range of people interested in goat yoga and / or cuddling.

Stevens tells the story of a teenage girl with autism who came to one of her classes with her mother. The daughter was visibly nervous at first, but quickly relaxed when one of the goats, Sofia, walked right up to her.

“Sofia just sat the whole class on this girl’s mat and she just patted Sofia the whole time. You could just see the calm on her face and how satisfied she was. It’s hard to describe how peaceful this girl is ,” She says. “Those are the stories that really are why I did it. It was very therapeutic to people.”

Unfortunately, such moments are not allowed in an A-2 zone agricultural district.

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