A 10-Acre Farm & Garden in Santa Ynez California

Interior designer Maggie Clancy takes us around the ten-acre farm surrounding her Santa Ynez, California home — a former art gallery she and her husband turned into a family getaway, then filled with animals as an excuse to keep visiting during the long renovation.

They started with two goats, added two donkeys as protector animals, and — once a boy goat arrived — quickly found themselves with baby goats everywhere. The farm is now home to 27 goats, 11 chickens, two donkeys, a few ducks, and several hives of bees.

The donkeys, Guapo and Nina Simone, came from a Craigslist listing and are, Maggie says, the loves of her life. The chickens supply all the eggs, the bees make honey she strains right on the pantry counter, and the whole property produces a rotating harvest the family cooks with — deep in artichoke season, they eat as many as they can, then let the rest bloom into brilliant purple flowers for the bees.

The garden shaped the entire house: when they bought the place in bare December, spring soon brought greens, pink flowers, and poppies across the hillside, and Maggie pulled her whole color palette from what grew around her.

She and her daughters would lay cuttings on the table and turn them into paint colors for the rooms inside — living proof of her belief that a home should lead with whatever makes you happy.