Feed the Change for Farmed Animals

Greetings and thank you again for your support for the cows, chickens, goats, sheep, ducks, geese, and other nonhuman animals here at VINE Sanctuary!

We can learn a lot from them, and that's been the theme of our activities since our last report.

We closed out our Barnyard Buddies virtual humane education program for the 2023-2024 school year and started up the on-site Pasture Pals summer program for this year. The 50+ classrooms participating in Barnyard Buddies received their April and May lessons and supplemental materials and also took real or virtual field trips to the sanctuary.

Pasture Pals is an on-site program meeting weekly on a drop-in basis. Each day's program includes a humane education lesson given by a local elementary school teacher, a volunteer activity, and time to interact with especially friendly sanctuary residents.

Herd matriarch Rose was a “Barnyard Buddy” this year, and gladly accepted greetings from the children whose classes had learned about her during the school year that ended in May. Another elder cow, Maizey, surprised everyone by going out of her way to befriend visiting children. While cranky with adult humans and sometimes pushy with other cows, Maizey approaches children with gentleness, affection, and toleration. During one Barnyard Buddies field trip, she was hugged by a dozen children simultaneously. On the day of a special Pasture Pals session for profoundly disabled children, she appointed herself the guardian of two children in wheelchairs.

Our newest community member, the goat called Patches in the photo above, also turned out to be very interested in meeting visitors. Years ago, Patches evaded capture when a small dairy herd was sent to slaughter. She then lived alone, with only an elder human for occasional companionship. When she arrived at VINE, she was so happy to have goat friends again and immediately became best friends with the eldest goat here, Rosie.

Other humane education events in recent months included a Q&A with vegan Olympian Seba Johnson for children at our local public library, a sanctuary tour for local LGBTQ teens, and a week-long summer program for high school students from a nearby boarding school.

Speaking of Seba, she was the featured speaker at our second annual Rainbow-Palooza combined Pride and VegFest, which brought hundreds of people to our small town to sample vegan food while learning how to make our communities safer for everybody. Other events in recent months included monthly meetings of the VINE Book Club and our annual Pride Month Vegan Challenge.

Staying with the theme of learning from animals, VINE co-founder pattrice jones gave the closing keynote at the annual Animal & Vegan Advocacy Summit, encouraging all attendees to set aside their presumptions of human supremacy to listen to and learn from the larger-than-human world. At the international Animal Futures conference, pattrice encouraged European animal advocates to do the same. At the AVA Summit, pattrice also spoke at a panel on Animal Voices, sharing VINE strategies for listening to and learning from our nonhuman community members.

We couldn't do that without you! Your support for Feed the Change ensures that sanctuary residents have everything they need to heal, thrive, and co-create an amazing multispecies community from which everybody can learn. Thank you again for that!

Links:

• VINE website