REMEMBER THE TV show Green Acres? This story is a little like that, only with more animals and an even better ending.

“My wife of 24 years, AnnMarie Roberts, was raised in New York City, worked in the fashion industry, and never got her hands dirty,” wrote Keith Roberts in the magazine Country Woman. “Then, nine years ago, I wanted to move home to Florida and reconnect to my country roots, but how would I inspire the same feeling in, well, a city woman? I brought her a two-month-old potbellied pig.”

AnnMarie, then 46, was smitten. Soon she took in another potbelliedpig that had been abandoned. And thus began Sugarloaf Mountain Ranch, her animal sanctuary in central Florida. With the couple’s two children grown up, these creatures would now be AnnMarie’s babies.