On July 31st, 2010 Petrina and Kevin got married at the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary in Woodstock, NY. This was the second vegan wedding I got to photograph at the sanctuary this year, which makes for a good year! I met Petrina a few years back at a Farm Sanctuary Gala in NYC. She was assisting WFAS founders Doug Abel and Jenny Brown in videotaping the event for posterity. Since then we have all become good friends and Petrina has been very helpful volunteering for WFAS in various ways. Somehow she ended up in Great Britain with her future husband Kevin, who she came back here to marry.

A vegan for life handbag hangs off a guest's chair

The timing of the wedding was very auspicious for me, as I got to go take a Jivamukti yoga intensive the next morning right up the road from the sanctuary. It turns out Jivamukti founders Sharon Gannon and David Life live within a short bike ride from Woodstock Sanctuary! Every year they host a month of intensive classes at their Wild Woodstock Ashram home studio. I got to officially meet Sharon and David, which was an honor. I gave them a cd containing the Vegan Radio Podcast I produced featuring Jivamukti yoga in New Orleans.

Upon Sharon’s urging one of her friend’s and advanced yogini named Julie Kirkpatrick took me to visit the Catskill Animal Sanctuary that is a few miles from WFAS. I am slightly embarrassed that I have never been there, since I am known as a photographer of sanctuary animals and it is so close to Woodstock. I guess I feel a fierce devotion to my friends Jenny and Doug and their sanctuary. But as with all love, the more we share the more we find in our reserves. I did not take any photos on this trip but I am now resolved to return in the future and spend some time photographing the critters there.

All in all it was a great weekend, spent with good friends and practicing the yoga that I connect to the most. I feel so lucky, as if the universe arranges itself in a lovely asana just to tickle my fancy. Of course it will slap me down to size every now and again too. Annica, annica! Petrina and Kevin, I wish you all the best as you spread your vegan happiness across the ocean. Just come back to visit us every now and again.

Bride with Annie the goat

Kevin and Petrina being playful by the river

Dana takes a delicious taste of shaved watermelon at Karma.

The world spins too fast sometimes. I cover the souls of my shoes with velcro and still I can’t hang on. The hottest day seem to go the fastest, as if Sun is exciting Earth with his radiant splendor, making her molecules vibrate faster. We all benefit from Sun’s frolics with Earth. From their union we are blessed with an abundance of fresh vegetables, herbs, fruits and flowers. Bees and butterflies and little creepy crawlies chip in to help spread life all around. The farm share I split with a friend is so abundant with fresh organic food I can barely keep up with eating it all. In our backyard we pick cherry tomatoes and wrap basil leaves around them for a succulent snack. Life is good.

There is a beauty eating plants fresh from the soil. Plants hold Sun in their cells. They hold Rain. They transmit minerals and medicines from Earth into our bodies. They have enzymes and wisdom. Cooking them may not always be bad, but it can diminish the flavor, smell and nutritional splendor of fresh veggies.

A new vegan raw foods restaurant called Karma is opening today in Northampton. It is an ambitious project with a restaurant, a juice bar, a store, and eventually a yoga studio and body work offices. Karma will be serving raw vegan dishes, as well as a few cooked vegan menu options. The juice bar will serve wheatgrass shots, green drinks, smoothies, teas, various elixirs and purified charged water. I will be working there in the juice bar and in the kitchen, learning new skills and sharing old ones.

On Saturday August 7th Karma had an invite-only dinner to try out some of their recipes on guests. I was able to get some friends from the local vegan and raw foods communities on the guest list. They were all impressed with the atmosphere of the restaurant and the delectable flavors offered in the dishes.

The food was presented in a five course meal. The first course was a salad featuring organic greens with onions, carrots and an oil & vinegar dressing. Next was a “palate cleansing’ with shaved frozen watermelon juice, which was amazingly good. The third course was tomatoes layered with sliced zucchini, almond cheese, basil and olive oil. It was heavenly. The fourth course was zucchini noodles covered in tomato marinara sauce with a cashew cream mushroom alfredo tossed with carrot and butternut fettucine. And finally the raspberry coconut cashew cheesecake in an almond crust, simply divine.

Karma opens today and I will be working my first juice bar shift. I hope you will stop in to say hello and treat yourselves to some life-giving deliciousness.

Karma owners Coree and Brian with assistant chef Rin

A view of Karma dining from above

Christopher Phillips with his two daughters Sky and Sirena

Oh Sweet Mama Megan Shackelford arrives with her friend Paul

Andee with her best friend Pippi

Smlove is a decadent chocolate pie recipe that is featured in Isa Chandra Moskowits’ Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook. It features caramel peanut butter, maple candied pecans, and chocolate drizzle layered over a chocolate pie filling in a graham cracker crust. Andee had experienced the smlove pie before. She has a friend who once tried to eat the whole thing on a dare. Poor dear. Because of her smlove had achieved legendary status in our conversations so I suggested we make smlove waffles. Ms. Grrrr was thrilled by the idea, and so on the appointed date I paid her an early Sunday visit.

Andee came up with the recipe modifications. Instead of the chocolate pie filling and graham crust we made the chocolate waffle recipe from Isa’s Vegan Brunch cookbook. We altered the recipe slightly, replacing the beer it called for with more almond milk. We also made candied almonds instead of pecans. Other than that we pretty much stuck to the recipe, and in the end enjoyed some delicious dessert waffles. I share the recipe here with you in my first-ever food blog.

MAKING SMLOVE

Maple candy almonds in the frying pan

Step 1: Maple Candy Almonds (by Isa Chandra Moskowitz)

1 cup almonds
2 teaspoons canola oil
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons maple syrup

Have ready a large plate, preferably covered in parchment paper. Preheat a heavy bottomed frying pan over medium heat. Add the pecans and stir them very frequently for 3 minutes, until they start to brown. Stir constantly for 2 more minutes, until they are a few shades darker and relatively uniformly toasted. (If a few don’t look toasted don’t worry about it. That’s better than having them burn.) Add the oil and salt and stir for another minute. Add the maple syrup and stir constantly for about a minute. The maple syrup should get bubbly and dry.  Use a spatula to transfer the pecans to the plate and spread them out as much as you can, it’s best if they aren’t touching. Place in the fridge until ready to use.

heaven dripping from a spoon

Step 2: Caramel Peanut Butter (by Isa Chandra Moskowitz)

1/3 cup natural peanut butter, smooth or chunky, at room temperature
3 tablespoons pure maple syrup
2 tablespoons brown rice syrup

Stir all the ingredients together in a small sauce pan. Gently heat everything over low heat, stirring constantly with a fork, just until smooth and heated through. It should fall from your fork in ribbons. If it seems stiff, turn the heat off immediately and add a little extra brown rice syrup, until it’s fluid again. This happens because different peanut butters have different amounts of moisture.

chocolate drizzling

Step 3: Chocolate Drizzle (by Isa Chandra Moskowitz)
4 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped (or 1/4 cup chocolate chips)
1/4 cup soy or rice milk

In a small sauce pan, heat the soy milk to boil. Once boiling, add the chocolate and lower heat. Use a fork to stir it until compeletely combined. Turn the heat off and let cool for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. You will probably have to reheat this a little when you get to topping the waffles.

Chocolate waffle batter dry mix...

Step 4: Chocolate Waffles (based on a recipe in Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowitz)
Makes 6 six-inch round waffles or 8 four-inch square waffles.

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sugar
1-3/4 cup almond milk
1/4 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
cooking spray

Preheat your waffle iron. Sift flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt, and sugar into a large mixing bowl. Make a well in the center of and add almond milk, oil and vanilla extract. Mix together until combined. Spray the waffle iron with cooking spray and cook waffles according to manufacturer’s directions, usually until steam is done coming out.

waffle assembly

Step 5: Waffle Assembly

Place waffles on a plate. Pour the peanut butter over the center of them, leaving an inch or two at the edges because it spreads. Get your almonds and place them on top of the caramel, pressing them in firmly. You can either drizzle the chocolate over the waffles with a spoon, or put it in a pastry bag fitted with a wide writing tip and drizzle it that way, in stripes. Top with some good vegan whipped cream!

don't forget the rice whip!

Andee enjoys a belly full of smlovey bliss

Featured Cookbooks

New Orleans 'Totally Vegan Potluck' in chalk

I have been here in New Orleans just over three weeks and have landed my first job, as the New Orleans Vegan Examiner! The Examiner is an online news and blogging site that deems itself “the insider source for everything local“.  They have hubs in most of the major US cities and recruit people like me who have a passion for writing about interesting topics to do columns. The pay is based on the popularity of the column and any advertising we can help them secure.

While I do not expect to become rich talking about veganism in New Orleans, I think that it will provide some other nice benefits. I am hoping that I will be able to use the column to encourage restaurant owners and chefs to try vegan options and add them to their menus. I hope it will bring more people to the vegan events being held here in New Orleans. I am also aware that Examiner articles get high Google rankings, so I think that it will bring more publicity to my other vegan projects and perhaps even my personal website. Beyond all that it will help me to hone my writing skills so that I can someday write that New York Times bestselling book I have in me somewhere…

If you would like to help out, please subscribe to my column, post comments on my articles, and keep coming here to check out this blog. You will get so much good karma you won’t know what to do with it all, and you will have to pass it on to others.

http://www.examiner.com/x-37530-New-Orleans-Vegan-Examiner

Things are looking up for this Pedal Person. (photo by Selena Dittberner)

I am not sure if it was the original plan, but the business quickly became centered around picking up residential trash and recycling and taking it to the Northampton Department of Public Works Transfer Center. Because Northampton doesn’t have a municipal trash and recycling pick up we have competing garbage truck companies. This is a particularly wasteful way to gather garbage. Each company travels down the same streets with giant trucks burning fossil fuel and belching toxic crap into the air as they continually stop and go picking up individual customer’s waste. The genius of Pedal People is that the same service is offered on bike, reducing the carbon footprint of residential waste removal drastically. Because Northampton is a Liberal enclave the idea really appealed to the townsfolk, and the business took off.

A photo I took of founders Alex and Ruthy back when they were getting started.

Since I was friends with Alex and Ruthy I somehow got involved as a sub early on, meaning I would occasionally cover a route for one of the actual collective members when no one from within the collective could do it. I pretty much did it once or twice a year for about five years, and only in nicer weather because I didn’t have any fancy gear to ride in the winter. Over this time I watched Pedal People grow and become hugely popular and always thought about what it would be like to do it full time. When thoughts like this came into my mind I considered the reality of New England winters and quickly ushered them out of my head.

Yet as I grew older and my vicissitudinous lifestyle etched lines of character into my personality I started to romanticize the idea of working out in the elements and becoming a bicycle activist. As fate would have it one of the Pedal People got hurt (off the job) and called me to sub. He left the collective shortly after that and offered me his routes, which he wasn’t actually allowed to do according to the collective’s procedures. This chain of events did, however, allow me to wedge my foot in the door, and since I was technically the sub with the most seniority I got to audition for the part, and somehow they allowed me to join.

Joining the collective entails nine months of apprenticeship that must include one winter. I started in August of 2008 and gradually accumulated the gear I needed as well as the muscles and endurance so that by winter I was ready to face the snow, slush, sleet and frozen diapers. People are always amazed that we do this every day no matter what the weather is like. During the winter of 2008 I think there was only one day when we called customers to postpone our pick ups. Most of us have studded snow tires on our bikes as well as all kinds of crazy clothing to deal with different situations. For me the hardest part is making sure I don’t sweat too much. With a loaded trailer and a 3 mile uphill ride to the transfer center it is easy to start sweating even on the coldest of days, and once your shit gets wet its all over as far as being comfortable is concerned.

Pedaling fast on the bike trail. (photo by Selena Dittberner)

At 42 years old, I am currently the oldest Pedal Person. I am also the newest Pedal Person because I was voted into the collective in September. I made the cut! I contribute it all to my amazing vegan diet. All you silly people who ask vegans where we get our protein can bite me, and then you will get yours. I haul some crazy heavy shit up hills and all over town. I have been vegan 14 years and I am still as strong and fit as I was when I started, and twice as good looking. I honestly don’t know how I keep so humble and modest with my multitude of qualities.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly…

There are some very conscientious customers, and there are some customers who make our jobs less enjoyable.  So much recyclable stuff ends up in the trash it is sickening. On the flip side some people will try to recycle everything, and then we are stuck picking garbage out of recycling bins. We have a contract to do the downtown trash in Northampton and it is particularly bad there. There are recycling receptacles next to almost every trash can, and inevitably people still throw their cans and bottles into the trash. That along with thousands of disposable coffee cups. At this point the Northampton landfill is almost a landfull, and we need to stop producing so much trash. At Pedal People meetings we often talk about ways to encourage people to be more conscientious about their waste, and in the near future we will be doing trash audits to help people learn ways to recycle more and produce less.

Another thing, meat stinks! It attracts maggots that completely cover some peoples trash bags by the time we get to them. We offer a composting service for vegetable waste, meat goes into a landfill. As a human and vegan activist I believe it is definitely time for us to evolve from our carnivorous ape phase and become more spiritually enlightened beings. The planet can’t sustain us all the way we are living. It takes lots of vegetation to make food out of animal flesh. The existence of factory farms calls into question the very notion that we are civilized. We are all complicit in allowing atrocity as long as they lurk in giant shadowy sheds around the country hidden from sight with their manure lagoons and animals gone completely insane from being constantly and relentlessly tortured. All to save a few dollars and for brief moments of pleasure on our tongues. The free range-organic -grass-fed-happy-meat ideal is faulty in that there isn’t enough land to support all of our billions at our current level of flesh consumption. Furthermore there are no real regulations on the use of humane labels so it boils down to being  a marketing ploy that encourages us to pay more so that we can relieve our consciences, even though many of the same inhumane practices are employed. Capitalism breeds inhumanity, same as it ever was. As far as seafood is concerned the oceans are nearly depleted of sea life, and many of the fish we like to eat take several years to reach maturity, so it is hard for them to make a comeback. We are pretty close to going over the cliff, and most of us still have our foot on the gas. Time to get off the meat-mobile and ride a bike!

Bicycle Acrobatics on the bike trail. (photo by Selena Dittberner)

In spite of these gripes I really love being a Pedal Person. Working in a cooperative has been an amazing life lesson on how a group of people with common goals can work together and achieve far more than any of us could as individuals. I encourage anyone who is starting a business and wants to contribute to a better world to consider the collective model. It ensures that workers all get treated equally and are valued. It keeps everyone honest and teaches us how to respect each other.

I love biking in the rain. I love biking in the snow. I love my big overshoes that make me look like a superhero. I love the big mass of muscles I have grown around my leg bones. It makes me feel so good that nearly every time I work some stranger will tell me how great they think the Pedal People are. I love that my job is also a form of activism, that it inspires people to think about the waste they produce and the way they commute to work. I took my own car off the road after about 5 months of being a Pedal Person. I love biking, feeling the wind around my face, flying by cars stuck in traffic, jumping curves, ringing my bike bell. It is real freedom. It keeps me in shape and makes me smile. I am one lucky bastard.

Thanks to Selena Dittberner for taking the awesome photos of me. I still owe you dinner!

A large load of trash, ready to go!

Jackie pedals through the flood (photo by The Republican)

Pedal People Ben and Myke meet on a snowy day (photo by Robin Barber)

Dumping cardboard into the recycling dumpster. Photo by Selena Dittberner.

Bringing compost to Montview Farm. Photo by Sarah Peters.

Group photo of all of us, circa November 2008. I took this with my fancy remote.

View more photos at PedalPeople.com

Me and Monica at the Zombie Prom in New Orleans

I went to see the new movie Zombieland Monday night. All I can say is that it was freakin’ great, two rotting thumbs up! With all of the lame vampire movies like Twilight coming out lately it is comforting that zombie films keep getting better and better. The zombies are getting faster too, running after live humans like rabid dogs. Of course they are still brain dead which is what makes them so fun to play with.

I have long felt that zombie movies, along with some alien movies, creep us out so well because they play on our subconscious fears of being eaten. It wasn’t that long ago in our evolution that we were being chased by truly carnivorous animals. Because we have ‘subdued’ and destroyed the natural environment we like to think we are at the top of the food chain, but in our hearts we know this is just an illusion. There are predators we can’t see like viruses, and then there are the worms and maggots that turn us back into dirt. Perhaps what we truly fear is a predator that treats us with the same cold indifference with which we treat the animals we prey on. In movies the aliens are usually smarter than we are, able to grow us in factory farms and incubate their babies in our bodies. Zombies are more like a bus load of rednecks pulling into McDonald’s and feasting on whatever unethical toxic abominations their lazy appetites are craving that day. Zombies don’t mind biting into a ninety-eight pound alcoholic marinated in his own urine, the zombie equivalent of a happy meal.

There are some fun vegan-related things going on in Zombieland that the omnivorous movie goer might miss, so I will be so kind as to mention them for you. First of all is the very source of the plague that turns humans into zombies, as described by the narrator of the story, Columbus Ohio (the four ‘survivors’ who we follow in the movie all go by the name of the place they came from). He tells us the plague was a viral mutation of Mad Cow Disease, the popular name for Bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE. In reality BSE is not a virus but an infectious brain wasting disease caused by an abnormal protein known as a prion. It is a favorite topic amongst vegans, because it is a disease that kills people who eat infected animal flesh. When vegans hold our underground cult meetings we often fantasize about a plague that will wipe out all the flesh eating humans and leave only us. BSE is the closest thing out there so far. It currently takes decades of incubation between when a human ingests a prion till their brain becomes full of holes and they start acting like a zombie. Perhaps what the movie left out is that it was mad vegan scientists who were trying to modify the prion so it would work faster, but they accidentally caused the Zombie_pocalypse. Muah ha ha!

Not all vegans are so evil. The most interesting character in Zombieland by far is Tallahassee. He just likes killing zombies. Nothing evil about that. “Time to nut up or shut up” is how he puts it. Tallahassee is played by none other than Woody Harrelson, a bona-fide vegan. One of the main plot lines in the movie is Tallahassee’s quest for twinkies. He believes that someday twinkies will reach their expiration date, and he fully intends to enjoy them while they last. In our world of course twinkies are not vegan (and they last forever). To play the part Woody had vegan twinkies made especially for him to eat. This in turn caused a wave of media stories about  Woody’s vegan twinkies, a positive plug for veganism I think. Woody gets further vegan praise for convincing Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer to eat vegetarian for the duration of the shoot.

If we were all raised in a vegan society Hollywood would be releasing movies about carnivorous plants when halloween came around. Because we live in a less perfect world we get the zombies instead. Eating flesh is a zombie thing to do. Our parents feed us meat before we are conscious of the ethical dilemma of doing so, and by the time we are able to see the contradictions we are embedded in culture, driven by our herd mentality to fit in, and overcome by our Pavlovian salivations for the smells and tastes of cooking flesh. We don’t think of the horrors we subsidize, we just stuff ourselves full of whatever is easiest to devour. A lot like zombies.

ZOMBIE FUN!!

For those living in Western Massachusetts come check out the Zombie Pub Crawl in Northampton this Friday October 23rd. The Haunted Vegan Bus will be making an appearance with some vegan zombies on board…

Dan Pirarro is a vegan and the creator of the comic Bizarro that is syndicated in newspapers around the country. It is the funniest comic out there (only a zombie would disagree) and I highly recommend his BIZARROBLOG to see not only the gut-bustingly funny comics but Dan’s uncanny thought process that creates them.

photo by Monica Ferroe

Today I am featured in the Hampshire Gazette’s Hampshire Life I.D. Column. Somebody referred me to them as a good candidate, and I suppose my life is rather interesting. The only mis-quote is about me photographing farm animals for VegNews. I am actually the “Digital Photography Advisor” for that magazine, which hasn’t really gotten many of my photographs published in there (I helped them out when they were getting started and it is kind of an honorary position). I photograph the animals for the sanctuaries where they reside, and for the furtherance of the vegan message. But that is all fine, I am happy to have gotten a chance to plug veganism in a mainstream newspaper. It will be something nice to send my mom and dad, too.

The links below are added by me, to make it more interesting for you…

Used with permission from the Daily Hampshire Gazette

For Derek Goodwin, being a vegan isn’t just about deciding what to eat – it’s a lifestyle choice. Goodwin, a photographer from Northampton, became a vegan 13 years ago and since then has gone on to photograph sanctuary farm animals for a magazine known as VegNews, bake and cook vegan foods for the Evolution Cafe in Florence, and co-host a vegan show on ValleyFree Radio, 103.3 FM in Florence, that’s available worldwide as a podcast.

Goodwin, who also works as a wedding photographer and for the bike-based trash and recycling collaborative Pedal People in Florence, has a background in Web design as well. But one of his more recent projects, undertaken with friends, was to buy an old school bus and convert it to burn used vegetable oil. The “Vegan Bus” took its maiden voyage – about 6,000 miles round trip – to Nevada for the 2007 Burning Man art festival, where the crew joined with an organization called Vegcamp to do outreach and education.

These days Goodwin’s working on creating a nonprofit organization to fund the Vegan Bus and his radio show so that he can dedicate more time to animal activism. He says there’s much to learn about animals simply by watching and photographing them: “They are so different from what we are taught they are. They are individuals with personalities.”

Full name: Derek Goodwin

People know you as: Deralique (Zoolander reference)

Date and place of birth: March 26, 1967, St. Louis, Mo.

Address: Northampton

Jobs: Photographer, vegan baker, cyclist with Pedal People

Who lives under the same roof as you?: A giant dog named Harpuah and his owner, Gina

Children: Nope

Education: Rochester Institute of Technology, B.F.A. in fine art/photography, 1995

Pets: Worms in a compost bin

Book you’d recommend to a friend: “The Tao Te Ching” by Lao Tzu

Favorite movie: “The Matrix”

Favorite television show: Don’t have a TV

Favorite singer or group: Radiohead

What do you waste your money on?: Vegan food, camera and computer equipment

Guilty pleasure: Soy mocha lattes

Life-changing experience: Photographing farm animals at sanctuaries is humbling. … They love to play, they form complex social arrangements, and they are wise in ways which humans don’t often recognize

Funniest memory: My humor is probably not safe for this publication

Strangest job you ever held: I spent most of the ’90s as a stagehand, saw some crazy stuff

Bumper-sticker statement?: Support your right to arm bears

A little-known fact about you: I started to grow a tail and had to have it surgically removed. Oh, and I like to climb trees

Dumbest thing you ever did: Once when I was photographing a wedding, I tripped and fell into the baptismal font. For some reason it was in the middle of the aisle. I lost a couple of lenses and it was pretty embarrassing. Luckily God forgave me

One product, trend or fashion you’d like to see return: G.I. Joe with Kung Fu Grip

What really sets you off? Getting charged extra money for soy milk in my coffee

Celebrity encounters? Anne Rice once told me I was cuter than Brad Pitt

Favorite Web site: http://humanemyth.org

One thing you would change about yourself: I would like to become a Buddha, but not in this lifetime

People who knew you in high school thought you were: A crazy headbanger

Whom do you most admire? I admire my girlfriend, Monica, because she lives creatively, ethically and compassionately, she is sweet and amazingly beautiful, and she inspires me to be my best self

Parting shot: My favorite quote is from Thich Nhat Hanh, the Zen Buddhist monk, writer and peace activist – “People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth”

- Compiled by Steve Pfarrer

Farm Sanctuary is the original farm animal sanctuary in the U.S. founded in the mid eighties by a couple of vegan activists who made money selling soy hot dogs at Grateful Dead shows. One fateful day they rescued a sheep named Hilda from the Lancaster Stockyards “dead pile” and needed to find her a home. In the years since Farm Sanctuary has rescued thousands of animals, operates two sanctuaries, and has grown into one of the largest animal rights organizations in the country.

For a vegan the place is truly paradise, seeing farm animals living their full lives with dignity and the chance to be happy. I have been to photograph the sanctuary in Watkins Glen NY many times over the last decade. It is my retreat to nature. The animals give me inspiration to lead an ethical life. I try to render them photographically in a way that will give the viewer a direct experience of their being. Hopefully my photographs will influence people to choose compassionate lifestyles centered around a vegan diet.

The Farm Sanctuary Hoe Down is a chance for vegans and vegan curious people to get together. People like me come from all over the place to build solidarity and to celebrate our veganity. There are speakers and workshops, farm tours, food, and plenty of other activities to participate in during the weekend. Most participants sleep in tents on the farm, but some choose to stay in hotels nearby. On Saturday night there is a big dance party with more food as well as beer and wine. It is really fun to see people let loose. I get the added benefit of being able to put on a hula hoop performance that freaks people out every time.

I did not photograph the dance this year, I like to be able to put the camera down and enjoy myself. I did photograph the daytime activities as well as some farm animals. I hope you will enjoy the photos in this post. If you would like to see more my photographs of people and speakers are hosted on my flickr account and the photos of animals are hosted on my Pictage account where they can also be purchased. Please leave some comments on this site for me!

pigs are magnificent, intelligent, and beautiful. anyone who tells you different has an agenda.

this poem is my gift to you
in this prelude to the new swine flu
we all feared, but who really knew?

who knew these sweet and noble beings?
live confined in their own shit and vomit
on concrete beds beneath artificial light?
thank god they can not think and feel
like we do.

well who really knew?
it did not say so on the pinkish styrofoam
or even on the news.

if i said i knew
you would hang me from the highest tree
for lying to your children.

if i said i knew
you would put your hands around my throat
and choke the words inside of me.

in this time we have to dance tonight
in this sweet twilight of an era
i will say that i forgive you
and tell you that i love you
and that is the truth.

this way has been passed down
from mother to baby
father to child
like faery tales of santa clause and jesus
we flash our funny little teeth
and pretend to be carnivores
something about killing someone else
makes us feel immortal
something about someone else’s flesh
can taste like heaven for a moment.

the world is alive
her strangled seas
her burdened air
her sweet pigs
most noble and loyal of creatures
sweet sweet pigs.

who knew the consequence of commodifying sentience?
pigs so different from us on the outside
but to a virus perhaps not so different
from the impoverished worker
who had to kill mothers and babies
over and over until he was de-humanized

who knew that even a penny of our purchase
went to the man who came home with a pandemic?
it didn’t say so on the cellophane
dripping with blood
it only said cook to a proper temperature
and everything will be all right.

These photos are from my recent visit to Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary with my wondrous girlfriend Monica. It was her first time visiting the farm, and she was in vegan paradise! We picked a good weekend to go, as there were some new rescues who are both extremely lovable and ridiculously photogenic.

Anne the baby goat

One of the Valentine piglets

A man in western New York purchased 4 young pigs from an Amish farmer to raise for slaughter. He kept the pigs in a small, unheated garage, and one morning discovered that one of the pigs had given birth during the night. Twelve tiny piglets lay next to their mother, wet and covered with excrement. Eight were already dead and four others lay shivering and barely alive.

The Rehabilitator, Shanon Rumbugh, received the call on New Year’s Eve and she rushed the piglets home. She tirelessly nursed them back to health—but it wasn’t an easy road. Once they were stable, the original owners had the gall to ask for them back to raise for slaughter along with the others.

baby chicks march 2009

As happens frequently around Easter, we received a call from a school teacher looking for a home for 5 just-hatched chicks — the living, breathing result of a classroom project. These fuzzballs quickly grow into larger hens and roosters who have a lot of space, temperature and care requirements, and can live for over a decade.

As soon as the novelty is over, assuming the chicks or ducklings can survive the unnurturing classroom environment, the teacher or parent has to find a “home” — more often than not the end of the road for those animals. The takeaway for the kids is less about biology and more about the disposability of life. If you’re a parent or student who hears of an upcoming hatching project, please encourage that teacher to consider more humane alternatives to hatching.

Jenny Brown, Doug Abel and the baby goat named Anne

Monica, Ann and I

Check out www.WoodstockSanctuary.org to learn about ways you can help out and to see more of my fabulous photographs!