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REIDSVILLE — For nearly 14 years, Anna Micciulla was a suit — a hard-driving, ladder-climbing, corporate executive at a medical device company in Boston.

But, two years ago, she quit her job, hopping off the fast lane and onto a patch of land at the end of a gravel road in Reidsville.

It was quite a leap.

She and her husband, Bob, sold their four-story Victorian home and moved south, closer to Anna’s roots and a lifestyle that would let their family enjoy things they’d come to believe matter most.

They settled on Carroll Farm Road and 8 acres that came with a small log cabin, a tobacco barn, a couple of sheds, some goats in the pasture and three chickens.

To any observer, it appeared the High Point native, who’d earned her degree in biology from High Point University, had walked away from a life some only dream of. But Anna prefers the career she gained over the one she gave up.

“I figured that goats in the pasture must be better than the ones in the board room,” theorizes Anna.

The goats became their livelihood, and Bob and Anna, both in their 40s, couldn’t be happier. They live with their 6-year-old daughter, Xiomara (Xio for short), whom they adopted from Guatemala, their 14 goats, two sheep, a coop with chickens, a turkey and a dog.

The couple started Pennwood Farm, which comes from a name that Anna plucked from her family heritage. She’s one generation removed from a dairy farm that her ancestors started in the 1800s in Florida. It was called Pennwood Dairy.

Her uncle, the last to work the dairy, gave permission to use the name, though he chided her that she was two spigots short of a real dairy, referring to the two teats on a goat as opposed to the four on a cow.

When they hatched their move south, the Micciullas wanted to own a goat dairy farm and make and sell goat cheese. Despite a biology degree, Anna had never farmed a day in her life, and “Bob’s a city boy,” she says.

They started by buying four more goats, hauling them home in the back of their Subaru wagon. It took two trips.

While they were building up their herd and getting their land rezoned, the cost of concrete skyrocketed at the same time the economy nose-dived. They had to rethink the plan to build a cheese house and a milking parlor.

In the meantime, Anna started experimenting by using the goats’ milk to make soap. Goat milk soap has a pH similar to human skin, and many dermatologists recommend using it. On a whim, she took her soap to the Piedmont Farmers Market in Colfax.

“The hardest part was believing that someone would buy something you made, says Anna, who just hoped she’d sell one bar.

She needn’t have worried. The soap sold like crazy, she says. A friend suggested she sell at Saddlebags, a gift shop at Flint Rock Farms in Summerfield.

She dropped some off, and before she could make the drive home, they were phoning from the shop to ask for more. Half the display had already sold.

The Micciullas regrouped. Instead of putting money in a dairy, they built a two-story soap house. Anna wired it, plumbed it and insulated it herself.

“I always believe that you can figure out how to do anything,” she says.

And she has.

The first litter of goats came on New Year’s Eve in 2007. Anna jumped into the role of midwife. January to March is birthing season. Xio, who treats the goats like pets, helps name the newborns, and there’s always a theme. The 2009 kids were given celestial names: Stardust, Milky Way, Haley’s Comet, Orion and Sagan. The year before, it was pies: Moon Pie, Peanut Butter Pie, Chicken Pot Pie and Shoofly.

This year, it’s a toss up. Either Mexican food or flowers, says Anna. They’re hoping for more girls.

“Boys are pretty useless on a dairy farm,” says Anna, though she never sells goats that will be used for meat.

She usually milks once a day, in the evening. Almost as soon as the milk hits the bucket, she’s stirring it up in a batch of soap. The demand has been steady, and she’s making more than 40 scents, as well as lotions and creams.

But the goats aren’t the only animals making a contribution to the family’s livelihood.

Anna learned to weave when she was in Guatemala for six months, working out the legal issues surrounding Xio’s adoption.

She’s putting those skills to use by shearing the family’s two sheep, washing and carding the wool and dying it.

She weaves some of the fiber but she also makes wet felt, a soft cloth, out of it.

She uses it to create stuffed animals and figures for nativity scenes.

They’ve been making soap for about a year and a half and already need to expand the soap house.

Plus, Anna plans to add a line of herbal teas using herbs that she grows or purchases from fair trade sources.

Though the work is hard, Anna says that so is commuting to a job that keeps you away from your family for long hours.

And there’s something freeing about living with less. “We’re not part of the consumer culture anymore,” she says.

They have what they need. There’s goats’ milk and cheese in the fridge, fresh eggs on the counter, herbs drying on a rafter, but most of all, time to spend together.

Pennwood Puritanicals can be purchased at Everyday Art in Reidsville, Riverhouse Gift & Gourmet in Eden and Saddlebags in Summerfield.

Contact Myla Barnhardt at 627-1781, Ext. 116, or myla.barnhardt@news-record.com