I still have no good pictures of the food from Strong Hearts Cafe. I have no idea why. Needless to say, they have an egg 'trick' muffin that tastes a lot like a sausage McMuffin (I barely remember them, but the texture of the tofu is distinctly egg-like, it's very good.) Their milkshakes are incredible, and so are their cupcakes, which are pretty fancy to look at. Most, if not all of their food is incredible, and I could spend the entire post raving about how great it all is. But I have the trip to post about.
On Chauncey's second touring day for Boonville and Old Forge, we decided to get them in at once so that we could take a trip he surprised me with suggesting. Farm Sanctuary's New York location was only a 2 hour drive from us, and they did tours from 11am to 3pm. I was pretty excited about that.
Boonville was impressive, a very small town with a lot of nice buildings. Here are a few pictures, though ugly cars are mucking up the scenery. First is a tree farm I saw along the way, I have seen a lot of these.
The river is Moose River, I think. Could be the Black River. They run near each other. I ran out of battery power at this point, which is a shame, since there was a cemetery with rolling hills and a beautiful view from the top.
I didn't really have any charge on my camera until Farm Sanctuary. This was by far the most touching place for me. It's worth visiting even if you have to drive four or six hours to get there. They were also having a Hoe Down soon after we left, I was sad to miss it.
You'll notice the pigs look very lazy. I scritched one on the tummy and he stretched out and turned a bit for more scratching. All the animals were very social. The freakishly large turkey you see is a bit old, and sat there while we talked, but after a few minutes he stood up and puffed out his plumage to show off.
The sheep were being sheared, so we didn't get to see them sadly. There was also a chicken who was shy of people, but had become friends with a blind duck. At feeding time, since he couldn't tell where the food is, she guides him to it.
The goats were super curious and nibbled on our clothes to check and see if they were food. One named Peanut kept following Chauncey around to nibble on him and get neck scratches.
The cows even showed a distinctively higher intellect, given the chance to socialise and spend time doing what they wanted to do rather than being penned up in crates.
The chickens and turkeys mostly had their beaks seared off at the ends and their toes cut off, which is common to keep tightly packed birds from fighting.
Here are some examples of factory farm treatment.
It was very inspiring for me and Chauncey as vegans, but, though my dad was interested, he had no problem eating Filet Mignon that night.
The next day was a stressful trip on two airplanes, fortunately with a very small layover. After that I was completely exhausted, and went to bed fairly fast.
The next post will probably be on the puppy soon to come into our lives, we are both very excited.
Excellent photos!! Surely we can shame commercioal farmers into humane treatment (and eventual retirement) for farm animals. These animals show all of the affection--and personality differences of your pets at home. Humans HAVE GOT to treat animals with kindness!!! Not ready to give up my filet mignon just yet--> but humane treatment needs to be required by law!! Also---we humans would be healthier without red meat!!??
ReplyDeleteIt would be nice to see all meat eaters have a concern for the welfare of the animals they eat. If we could get humane treatment (as humane as slaughterhouses can be I suppose) it would be leaps and bounds above what we have now.
ReplyDeleteKnowing that even the humanely labeled stuff isn't humane at all is sad, because meat eaters don't get a way to shop for "better" meat.
The only real option is political action to promote humane treatment, and you heard the girl leading us say how horribly slow it is. I thought they had done away with veal cages, and that hasn't even happened.