Pics

Some of my pics are now up on Flickr. I will update as I go, but for now, enjoy!

Quick Links For Busy People

It's a fresh saturday morning and I'm the only one awake, so I was happy to spend some time in the kitchen with Moby. You can hang with this musical prodigy/vegan for a few minutes too on Epicurious. If you're really in a time crunch, just watch/hear his thoughts on veganism (video 4). 

If you're too busy for Moby but never too busy for an on-line survey, won't you head over to VegNews' Veggie Awards site and vote for Farm Sanctuary in the categories "Best Non-profit" and "Best Sanctuary"? If you're so inclined, you can write in Farm Fresh Fem for your favorite weblog, but I also suggest SuperVegan and VeganYumYum. 

x o x Hugs and Chickens x o x

Links

If you tried links on "Hoe Down" and they didn't work, please try again. Everything should be corrected!

Lowdown on the Hoe Down

This post is about a week overdue and I apologize for making a new ‘blog and immediately going M.I.A., but it’s been a dizzyingly tiring week and I’m adjusting to a new sleep schedule. I will post more links, pictures and updates this weekend, but first things first – the Watkins Glen, N.Y. Farm Sanctuary 2008 Annual Hoe Down! After my orientation and tour I delved into helping out as the Farm commotion was pretty much divided between Pigs (Iowa rescue) and the Hoe Down.

The Hoe Down is officially August 2-3, but the 1^st was all preparation. Though a great deal of my time was spent on manual labor and serving food, I did catch some of these speakers and events:

* Bruce Friedrich (PETA) presented “Animal Rights: Social Justice for the New Millennium.” Though I have qualms with some of their tactics, PETA definitely does some good work and Friedrich was entertaining, tongue-in-cheek, heart-on-sleeve informative.

* Susie Coston, national shelter director for Farm Sanctuary, narrated a slideshow of Sanctuary residents and their stories supplemented with general information on the “food animal” industry. Susie is incredibly passionate and knows the names, stories and personalities of every animal at the Sanctuary. She’s pretty fearless and amazing.

* George Eisman gave a lecture on vegan nutrition and led a brief nature walk, “Wild Edibles,” where he showed us how to identify edible “weeds” and raved over their nutritional value. Eisman also has a self-launched “dairy isn’t necessary” campaign. And, well, it’s not.

* Herbivore clothing/magazine entrepreneur, Josh Hooten, gave a hilarious intro to his presentation, “We Can’t All Wear the Big Chicken Costume: Effective Activism Your Way,” where he demonstrated that we really can’t all wear the chicken costume – by wearing a “hot cop” costume instead. Unfortunately, I was assigned to tasks during this presentation but had a great conversation with him at his merchandise stand. Bonus: the proceeds from his merch sales at the Hoe Down all went back to Farm Sanctuary. I picked up a “Wings are for Flying, not for Frying” sticker and was glad he didn’t bring any “Cow Hugger” shirts, since I’m on a budget and would have been far too tempted to splurge.

* Captain Paul Watson, a self-proclaimed pirate and founder of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, took the bold stance of saying Yes, I am an animal rights activist and I care more about animals than people (paraphrased). Former Greenpeace activist, Watson now takes his own approach to bringing justice to the sea and its inhabitants.

Farm Sanctuary’s own Gene Baur, founder and president, and Jeff Lydon, executive director, also gave short, inspiring speeches (incidentally, both are tall and inspiring).

Saturday night concluded with a barn dance (in the People Barn) DJ’ed by Farm Sanctuary’s own “Big Daddy Don.” The music was utterly undanceable but it was fun watching others “get piggy with it” and “bust a mooove.” Yes, I really did just write that. It’s what farm life does for your sense of humor.

Persistent attendees insisted on keeping with the bonfire tradition in spite of the rainstorms of the day and succeeded. Stragglers, intellectuals, and walking bottles of vegan wine gathered around the cozy but smoky clearing and deep conversations that would be forgotten the next day abounded over the strumming of a single acoustic guitar.

I truly wish everyone could have experienced this weekend—I think, acknowledging the title of Gene’s book, it truly would have changed a lot of hearts and minds.

(Farm Fun with Fragments) FS Day 1

My first official day on the farm was quite excellently exhausting.

After orientation with the other new residents and a Colbert style round of "Better Know an Intern," I realized I'm not alone in leaving my job, my boyfriend, my cat and my security at the gate to pursue my passion and find out more about who I am. Our stories had some major similarities in spite of the divisions in age/geography/personality and I think I'll really get along with this group of passionate vegan femmes (I know, it's a vegan miracle!). Plus, one of my Canadian housemates likes to cook and I already know we'll get along well.

Because I did so much today, I'll give you the sentence fragment abridged version: licked by cow, nuzzled by sheep (allergic to wool but shockingly no reaction), giant pig belly rubs, tiny piglet watch (mission: help mama pig keep premies safe and warm), still smitten over chickens, met FS staff, helped prepare for hoedown weekend (folder stuffing, lifting, stairs, weeding, sun, more lifting, more stairs...), five minute meals, happy in spite of oncoming migraine.

Oh, and the gift shop has Uncle Eddie's Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies, which will likely get me through several more farm-filled days.

That's it for now--I will have pics up soon, probably through flickr. Right now I'm a "possibly maybe" for yoga at 8:30 a.m. and a "right on" for FS President Gene Baur's presentation at 10:15.

I hope you're all doing well cityside and I promise my posts will be witty and farm-fresh-fem-fun-filled (or at the very least, bepictured) in the near future (after I get some sleep).

P.S. - How do all these people not know Flight of the Conchords?! Why? Just because their rhymes and records, they don't get made?

Chicken dance

Well, I didn't wake to the roosters, but I surely heard them once I was awake. Last night one of the house cats made her way to my top bunk and kept me company (I miss my kitties!)  so I could get a solid five hours before getting up absurdly early to secure a shower before my seven housemates. I'm not completely a morning person, but the palette of colors outside the window at dawn was worth it. Everything is so absolutely green or gold.

The chickens are hilarious. I stepped on to the porch to see what all the commotion was about and found about 20 hens, one full-sized immaculately white rooster, and a tiny yellow rooster with black tail feathers whose cry sounds more like a funny little song. His name is Pedro and he is quite bold, especially at feeding time. I thought there would be a riot when the shelter staff told the feathered crowd that feeding time was over. 

For now, I'm city-girl-giddy over just about everything.