For the past month I have been living on a farm working as an intern. This is not, however, your average farm. The animals here will never be slaughtered for their meat and humans will use nothing they produce. Every animal here is considered an individual, not a production unit. I am talking about Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, NY. To be an intern here you have to be a vegan; this wasn't a big deal for me as I had already gone back to veganism by the time I came here. One of my favorite aspects of interning here is getting to be around so many like-minded people. Many of the staff and all of the interns care about animals in the same way I do. I feel a sense of relief that I do not have to be on guard for the animals’ welfare because I know everyone here is watching out for them. I also can eat any food that is offered and not have to ask or wonder if it is vegan. Living here it is easy to forget the whole world is not vegan!
Working as a shelter intern, I must say the work is not fun. Interns are given the jobs nobody wants to do. I spend a majority of my time cleaning up after the animals here. This is especially unpleasant with the sick birds who are in cages. Everyday I work with these birds I have to scrape the poop off their kennel pads before I can put them in the laundry. There is also a rooster who has free reign of the kitchen and poops every five minutes (maybe a little bit of an exaggeration but not much). Yours truly gets to clean up after him all day long. Some days I am put on cleaning. This means working outside no matter the weather. I have spent days stripping barns—picking up all the old hay (and I mean all the hay) and then laying new hay. I don’t do this on my own though (I’d never finish) I work with other interns and cleaners who are on staff. Stripping barns isn’t bad; I mean it isn’t great but it isn’t bad. Some of the really bad days have been raking roads for hours on end, picking up stray sticks, and pulling weeds and dead plants leftover from the winter. The work may seem pointless but it’s not; it is done to make the farm look pristine for tour season, which starts next month.
I have another month left here and while I won’t miss cleaning up shit, I will miss being here. As I write this I can here chickens outside my window. I love watching them peck at the earth. They are beautiful and their snipped beaks (debeaking is the technical term) remind me of the world they came from. Some days when I leave the house I can see pigs across the street; I like to walk over to them. I call to them and they walk over to me to say hi. They grunt happily and I can see they are covered in mud from rooting. Farm Sanctuary is the antithesis to factory farming. This place reminds me why I am vegan and I hope I will take what I have learned and seen with me into the unvegan world we live.
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| The chickens who live outside Vegan House, where I'm staying. |
P.S. During the month we (the interns) took a trip to the stockyard. I hope to post on it soon. Stay tuned.
