Last Week

I abandoned blogging for awhile, but today I really need to do my taxes so blogging has suddenly become very interesting again.  It was hard to get out of bed this morning because I rolled over and the cattle were grazing right outside my window. Watching them is sometimes like watching reality tv...in a foreign language. I can tell very interesting things are going on in the herd. I can see the cliques, the relationships, the friendships, the drama, but I don't quite understand the dialogue. I wish I could be a cow for a day and get in on their secret life out there in the pasture.

Highlights from the week:

Stephanie and I went to Sophia's class "Why Vegan?" and helped out with the sales of books and cupcakes. It was really interesting to go and see people be so responsive to the talk, people asked great questions and despite knowing a lot of the information I actually learned quite a bit! There is another class next week about how to move towards a vegan diet. I'm not sure if I'll be able to attend this one yet because I might be headed to San Francisco for my two days off in a row. 

We watched the movie Fowl Play last week too which is one I've wanted to see for quite sometime. This documentary focuses on all aspects of the egg industry. There is undercover video that is hard to watch, but it's spread out nicely between rescue stories. Because of this movie I've been doing a little bit of research into hatcheries and egg laying facilities. I found a website of an egg farm who is so confident their practices are "humane" that they have six live cameras you can watch at any time. It just focuses on the birds in the cages. I found it extremely interesting that they are calling themselves a humane facility based only on the livelihood of the hens in the cages.  I really would like them to put a camera in the hatcheries, more specifically on the sexing process of the birds that are born to inhabit those cages. I think anyone who could see the video of male chicks (deemed worthless by the industry) being ground up alive, suffocating to death in huge piles, or being tossed into plastic bags to suffocate would be appalled. Regardless of the treatment these egg laying chickens receive the sad fact of the matter is that male chicks are just a "worthless bi product" to the industry. I was going to post the link to this facilities live cams but I'd rather not accidentally give them free advertisement. Anyways, I just went off on a tangent, check out Fowl Play, it's definitely worth the watch. If you have Netflix it's available as a "watch now" option.

I'll try to keep updating throughout this week. I really need to get some more photos but the weather has been terrible. I even went out and bought myself a pair of rain pants....overall style. Yeah, I've got the farm fashion down. Speaking of bad weather though....even when the weather is awful we always end the day on a good note:

 Shubah took this picture. I didn't even get to see the rainbow! But it was just so gorgeous I had to share!