Thanksliving at Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary

But first! What does one do when he or she is headed to the Catskills? Apple picking of course!

I want that one at the top! Damn my short legs!

Did you know that apples can grow out the side of trees? I sure as heck didn't, but as you can see below, it is possible!!

Joyous apples!

Off to Woodstock for some animal visiting and raising money for Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. Thanksliving is WFAS's biggest fundraiser of the year. This year, a donor generously purchased the property next door for the farm, but the building and barn are 150 years old and need work before they will be safe enough for use. That's what we were raising money for at this year's Thanksliving. The barn will be turned into hay storage and quarantine for animals when they first get to the farm. The old house is going to get turned into a B&B! So exciting! Consider donating to WFAS and helping them reach their goals this year!

Inside the tent!

Raffle prizes!

After the food (which I ate so fast I forgot to get any pictures of any of it), lovingly created by David Silver of Second Helpings, and dessert, Vegan Treats yummmmmm, it was time to visit the animals!

Piglets!

The cows enjoying the beautiful scenery.

Bunny! Pippin, don't be jealous. You will always be my favorite.

Look how freakin' cute he is, though. I mean seriously.

After many bunny visits, we came back into the tent for buying merchandise, raffle prize announcements and the live auction. Below you will see a very nice bowl I got for very cheap made by Daisy Dog Studio. Oh yeah, and something was funny. My partner in laughter is none other than Liz of Your Time Travels, a vegan owned voluntourism company! She is super awesome, so if you want to go on your very own trip where you volunteer for part of the trip and stay in lavish accommodations for the rest of the trip, Liz is your girl. Give her a ring. She rocks.

I think DanT said something funny...

Jenny Brown, cofounder of WFAS, speaking about the farm.

After Jenny spoke about what all the funds raised from this event were going to help pay for, she MC'ed the live auction. My friend and driver (to Thanksliving, that is), Jennifer won a really awesome flight around the Catskills with a local well known astronomer. Go Jenn!

Thanks WFAS! We had so much fun!

This guy loved to pose for cameras! If you have never been, get your butt to a farm animal sanctuary. I promise it will be a very positive and in-your-face reminder of why you are vegan (or if you aren't vegan, why you need to be!). Thanks for the amazing day, Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary!

Watch this!

Hello people out there in bloggy land reading this! (all two of you...)

This is important. Please watch this video and support the amazing work In Defense of Animals does. Up here in NYC, ida is not a prominent group. It is actually through a blog that I really started to learn about the organization. (I'll let you figure out what blog. It is in my blog-reel but you'll have to do some digging). What amazing work they do! I wish they had an NYC office so I could be a part of the critical work that they do.

Watch the monkeys!


Their website is: idausa.org.

Not that I should have to say this but animal testing is deplorable. People will tell you that we need to test drugs on animals otherwise how will we know if it is safe to use them on people? This shows how differently I think then most of the world, but I think killing innocent creatures so we can live longer lives is terrible. For starters, a drug is rarely something your body needs. 99% of all human bodies know how to thrive without artificial help if we would only feed our bodies real food (i.e. VEGAN food. the good stuff. not junk), our bodies are smart and know how to heal. Secondly, many of the chemicals that are tested on animal are for cosmetics. And not for new cosmetics either. Many are tested over and over again. for NO REASON.

Now as you may or may not know, I have an adopted bunny. He is not the type of rabbit that is used for cosmetics testing (though he is the type that is given to little children for Easter and then neglected until someone realizes that they actually don't want to take care of a rabbit) but I feel the plight for all bunnies who are subjected to cosmetics testing. And cosmetics testing isn't even required by law! See more about animal testing on PeTA's Stop Animal Tests site.

But back to the monkeys. Poor monkeys are tested on for medical products. Ugg. Most of the results aren't even applicable to humans as we are different species. You know, I am a "science person" but why cant scientists realize that having a heart does not have to conflict with our goals to learn more and save lives. There are some alternatives to animal testing on GEARI's website, but if we were really such great scientists we should be able to come up with many more. That is my animal testing rant. I hope you learned something.

You will hear from me next in two days on Sunday when I will have a post about the Sea Shepherd beach cleanup that I am helping lead! Check out the calendar on the right (the thing that doesn't fit right on your screen) for the details if you live in the area. Hope to see all two of you who read this blog there!

The one where I say hello!

Hi everybody! So, here's the thing. I've been reading vegan blogs almost as long as I've been vegan (5 years this December). I never knew a single one of those bloggers from the early days. That was when I was in college. Now as a fully grown adult-type-person, I get around more in my local vegan community. And, shocking as this may sound, a lot of active vegans are bloggers. It always seemed like a cool idea to me and an awesome way to meet vegans from all over the world. But I asked myself, can I write? As an engineer who comes from a family of "humanities people" I never considered myself an adequate writer. Today I decided that it doesn't matter. I'm sure after a while my writing will get better and my posts will become more eloquent and interesting, but for now I'll just share and you can stick around if you like what you read.

The point of this blog:

Ah, you what to know what is going to be covered within these html-coded pages. Okay, here was my thought on that: look at the name. Food, of course! Vegan travels, hurrah! Some health and nutrition information, woohoo! Gratuitous photographs of my bunny, yippee! (Hey, he is vegan too!) And lastly I thought I would try to keep a calendar of all the cool vegan stuff happening in NYC. The calendar will give those of you in the area a chance to know about cool events like potlucks and movie screenings before they are over and I review them. Because then they will be over and you can't attend something that happened in the past.

So there you go. A lot of mumbo jumbo. Hopefully my posts get more focused, but who knows. There is a lot happening in my brain.