Grayslake Goat Business Helps Kids in Romania

Part One: What Good A Goat Can Do

“It’s quite an adventure.”

It’s the best way 36-year-old Gretta Winkelbauer of Grayslake can describe her mission.

The teacher for visually impaired students of Lake County wanted to incorporate teaching her students, helping kids around the world, and her experience growing up on a farm, all in one.

So she bought four mini-goats and began a business endeavor she knows will pay off tenfold.

“Just being around animals is very therapeutic,” says Winkelbauer of her students. This fall she plans to bring students on a field trip to visit her goats at the Prairie Crossing Learning Farm. “Giving them hands-on experience with being able to touch the goats is just so important.”

What’s also important to Winkelbauer is raising money to help other blind children around the world.

With the goats, she created her business, Gretta’s Goats, where she makes handcrafted soap from the goat’s milk, then sells it at local stores and farmers markets. She also shears the goats, spins the wool and sells the yarn.

In the next three years she hopes to acquire a dairy license and eventually sell goat cheese.

Fifteen percent of her sales are going to support Winkelbauer’s mission of helping blind children in Romania.

“They just don’t have the resources to deal with kids who can’t see,” Winkelbauer says. “It’s so sad.”

The country has a high percentage of underdeveloped children and orphans, and does not have the resources to provide a quality life for them.

Two years ago, she traveled to the country and connected with three different families with blind children. She worked 14 hours a day to help teachers and parents understand and communicate with visually impaired children, showing them how to use walking sticks and read Braille.

“It was a life-changing experience for me.” Winkelbauer said. She worked through Light into Europe, an organization that specifically helps blind and deaf children in Romania.

Winkelbauer says the families she has worked closely with are “always very tearful and appreciative. They tell me that finally someone is giving them the respect to help them with their child.”

Winkelbauer says the resources for raising a special-needs child in Romania are very limited.

She plans to return to Romania in the winter with more supplies, including braillers and Braille books. She already has raised $400 from her soap sales since April. She hopes to have to $5,000 to make the trip.

If you would like to read more about Gretta’s Goats or to support her cause, log on to her website, like her on Facebook or email her at grettasgoats@gmail.com.

You also can find her goat milk soap at the Farmers Market at Station Square on Friday afternoons in Prairie Crossing, or locally at Art and Nature Salon and Motif in Libertyville, Earthly Goods in Gurnee, and Rustique in Antioch.

Click here for Part Two to learn about the special local farming program that helped Gretta's Goats get started.

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