Hello all 😉
Didn’t I tell you? The Sunday blog is HERE and VeganReese is here for good!
So guess what? I have spectacular news! I know it seems planned a little… Farm in advance (I really shouldn’t have made that joke, should I?), but VeganReese is packing her bags in 2014, and heading West to Farm Sanctuary to intern for couple months! I’m so stoked! Can you believe it?!
Isn't it beautiful?
For those of you who don’t know, Farm Sanctuary is a slice of Vegan Heaven. You stay for a miminum of a month (During intership) and help work with rescued “food animals.” You get to watch animals live out their lives the way they were meant to be, rather than being on someone’s place.
I’m going to farm sanctuary after being extremely inspired by my friend. I wanted to share with you what she wrote. She’s at farm sanctuary right now, and she went to visit a stockyard a couple days ago. This is what she wrote immediatly after experiencing it, and it’s absolutly breathtaking.
“ We pull up to the stockyard, painted on the front of the building was its name: E*$&%# Livestock. It was a worn building. Small, yet monumental. From inside came the shouts of the workers, moving the animals. The animals, squealing, grunting, bleating or groaning their discontent. I was nervous. Of course I was nervous. We entered, like mourners enter a funeral. Like soldiers leave a battle-scene. The main room had a large set of bleachers, a few men casually exchanged words there, above the bedded floor area where rabbits waited, in cages, packed to the limits, for their owners to take them home for whatever purpose. A sign on the wall: MAKE SURE YOUR RABBITS HAVE BREATHING ROOM. We cross through the bedded area, and go through a sliding door. We’re in a corridor, to the left and right there are pens, made of thick wood, containing animals of sorts. On the left, there are cattle in very narrow pens. Very large cattle, with very large, very sad, very pleading eyes. On the right, an assortment. A lone goat in the back of her pen. A duo of sows, who’ve just had their piglets torn away from them, likely waiting for another round of artificial insemination. A group of 12-15 goats, huddled together in the back of the pen. In the next pen over, there are 15-20 tiny baby goats, skittish and frightened without the comfort of their mother. I try to reach my hand to a white and brown baby, but he backs away, bleating, crying in a panick. How terrible, to be terrified of a gentle hand. Oh, how I long to comfort the poor kid. To the left, four cattle crammed into one pen. They don’t look overly comfortable. Their legs quiver, and their look of desperation sends chills down my spine. To the right again, two groups of piglets. Some pink, some black and white, some orange and spotted, all fxcking adorable. All on the defensive, paranoid, and ready to bolt.They are so tiny. Couldn’t have been more than a week old. My eyes begin to water, and my throat closes up. One of those piglets could have easily been Bob Harper right now. How fortunate for him to have fallen into traffic nearly a month ago. If he hadn’t, he’d be in that pen right now. It was at this moment, at this realization, that I start to cry. I feel like sobbing hysterically. We go in to another room, similar to the one we had just exited. This area has an off-limits section. Suspicious, much? A man stands in a pen, several calves stand in the pen, and several more lay on the floor. The calves were very thin. Some appear to be days old. Some, not even a day. There were some with mucous seeping from their noses. Some couldn’t walk well. How shameful. These calves should not be away from their mothers. The man in the pen raises his cane and brings it down on one of the calves’ skulls. He prods the calf in the side with the cane, forcing him into another room, where a man was auctioning them off. There was no turning away from the scene. The man prodded the calves into the room, one by one, by hitting them with the cane, jabbing them in the stomach, kicking them. It was as if the man had jabbed the cane into my stomach, over and over. I want to suffer in the place of the calves. They shouldn’t have to be treated so brutally. Take me instead. I’ll gladly die so they can live. I couldn’t watch any more, or I’d be sick. Behind me is a pen with more calves, the same state of sickliness. The next pen has a handful of half-grown pigs. I kneel on the ground and rubbed one’s forehead. She grunted at me, and looked into my eyes. I melted. The bond I had developed with the pigs on the farm, their grunts, and their soulful eyes. These pigs deserve to live out their lives, free from suffering. But they won’t. And it kills me inside. My heart lurches, I hold back a sob. I move to another pen, with more calves. There’s a larger pen, with upwards of 20 calves in it, all the same. Sick, skinny, struggling to walk. One approaches me, cautiously, but curiously. I reach my hand to him, and he sniffs it. He shoves his snotty nose closer, and then begins to suckle my fingers. Can he sense that I’m not here to hurt him? Or is he just looking for comfort, or milk from his mother, perhaps? He continues suckling, sucking my entire hand in his mouth. I look into his eyes. How could anyone want to hurt such a tiny fragile life? How can you go home, and honestly be proud of yourself, after hurting baby cows all day? I hear the auctioneer, raffling off the next calf to the highest bidder. 12, 12.50, 13…. Sickening. These calves are not sentient beings. They’re items. I pet the calf’s neck and forehead with my free hand, and give him the only gentle touch he’ll experience in his short existence. He continued to suckle on my fingers, and the tears continued to stream down my face. I can’t believe how shitty I feel. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be that calf. To die in a matter of weeks. To think that this calf will likely end up on someone’s plate. Possibly even my own father’s plate. It’s unreal. Disorienting. This little sickly calf is not a hunk of meat. He’s a little sickly calf who needs to see a vet and live out his life happily ever after. I couldn’t bear to hear the auctioneer for another second. It all became too real, too fast. Suddenly, I found myself out in the hallway, in the path of a steer who was being moved. A man in charge of moving the great animal shouted DO NOT OPEN THAT GATE! I just charged all the way down the alley, and out the exit. My mind had no control over my body. It was instinctual. It wasn’t an intentional act; I was scared shitless. The power in that man’s voice. It was horrifying. More intense than any horror film I’ve ever seen. Because it was real. I didn’t want to go back into the animal holding rooms so I checked out the back rooms, and there was BEEF: ITS WHATS FOR DINNER posters, and literature everywhere. There was a hallway, and at the end of the hall way was sunlight. Outside, to the right of the door was a large enclosure that held upwards of 30 cattle, waiting to be herded into the auction area. Waiting to serve their duty to their human slave masters, to make the ultimate sacrifice to those who don’t give them an ounce of respect that they deserve. Driving back, the tears came more readily. My heart was torn to shreds, broken into a million pieces. It wasn’t the horrors that I saw inside, its the feeling of helplessness. Of leaving those animals behind. To suffer. To die.”Isn’t that absolutly breathtaking? If that doesn’t make you give up animal products, I don’t know what will.
Now, let’s move on to a more happy note.
It’s officially my favorite season!
Who else is excited? Fall is my absolutly favorite season! Already the leaves are changing, and I already have to wear a jacket! I love it!
What’s on your fall list of improvements?
My seasonal goals!:
- This Fall, I’d like to lost 15 pounds.
- This Fall, I’d like to run alot more, since the weather is cooler!
- This Fall, I’d like to start volunteering at an animal shelter, to get some hands on expierence and to have at least 30 hours of community service for my transcript.
- This Fall, I will Get Juno, Piper, Jeeves, and December to all get along!
I promise I’ll edit a recipe into this post on Tuesday! Unfortunatly, I don’t have the photos to show it properly on my computer, nor will I have them til’ Tuesday! It’s a really simple recipe, in honor of my trying to eat at least 50% raw vegan foods a day!
And I decided to add one new thing to VeganReese. Song of the day. Because we can never have to much music, right?
Hopefully, this will be every week, but I don’t always find a new song every day, so at LEAST every other week!
- Monday: Empty Without You; The Used
- Tuesday: Baby Baby; State & Madison
- Wednesday: Open Your Eyes; Goldfinger
- Thursday: In the Sun; She & Him
- Friday: Walking the Dog; Fun.
- Saturday: All That the Wind Brings; The Able Body
- Sunday: Take Me Like Nothing; War Tapes
That’s all for now, check back on Tuesday Night, and keep it vegan!
Until Tuesday/Sunday, VeganReese 😉
VeganReese 
