Sentebale Sanctuary & Autumn Farm

11/15/2018

I would love creative suggestions for pig play toys that stand up to two magnificent and playful pigs. Our barn aisle regularly looks like a kindergarten due to my lame attempts to amuse Harriet and Sky.

11/15/2018

Winter preparations require much outside work and very zero facebook content being added. My beloved barn family are being cozied into winter in a barn laden with hay and straw, peppermint treats, beautiful squash, the final round of Halloween pumpkins and apples. Many wonderful photos coming of our expanded outdoor pigscape.

10/17/2018

Yesterday was a very difficult day with one of our beloved girls. Harriet Hereford pig made it very clear at breakfast that she was ill and in moments everything appeared to fall into a deeper and steeper decline. Emergency vet called, heat lamp, heat pad, hot water bottles, syringe hydration every 8 minutes and many prayers, meditations and songs sung and spoken to bring her comfort. I sat with her I looked at her face and into her eyes and hoped she knew how much I loved her. I was stricken with the thought that as I was present with my cherished friend beings just like her were being loaded into trucks, gassed and their lives and bodies STOLEN from them. The meaning of them cast off into oblivion.
Today Harriet is much improved. Interventions, love, miracles, prayers, good luck--I am deeply grateful to all and parts it may have played. Harriet requires syringe hydration with an electrolyte mixture that she clearly enjoys. Perched on my knee, her eyes gleaming with delight she gnaws on the syringe and gulps down the contents. I exhale a long slow breath and embrace an outcome I wasn't sure would be mine to enjoy. I tell her I love her and I was stricken with the thought that as I was present with my cherished friend beings just like her were being loaded into trucks, gassed and their lives and bodies STOLEN from them. The meaning of them cast off into oblivion.

10/08/2018

10/08/2018

10/07/2018

I watch them when the rise. They awaken to greet the day and celebrate the smell of their breakfast, the feel of the scratchy straw on their feet, a gentle hand stroking their ears and backs. They are joyful at the sight of familiar friends. They greet me too with snorts and whinnies, grunts, meows...sounds of the beginning of their day. I feel the miracle of their breath and collective beating hearts. I am pleased that they share my life. I want to save them all.

10/07/2018

Giving Thanks. Praying that we will celebrate a planetary ThanksLiving

10/07/2018

Thanks a lot,
Thanks for Sun in the sky.

Thanks a lot,
Thanks for clouds so high.

Thanks a lot,
Thanks for whispering wind.

Thanks a lot,
Thanks for the birds in the spring.

Thanks a lot,
Thanks for the moonlit night.
Thanks a lot,
Thanks for the stars so bright.

Thanks a lot,
Thanks for the wondering me.

Thanks a lot,
Thanks for the way I feel.
Thanks for the animals,
Thanks for the land,
Thanks for the people everywhere.

Thanks a lot,
Thanks for all I've got.
Thanks for all I've got.
--Raffi

10/07/2018

Friends, we have some wonderfully AMAZING news!!! After four years of living under an eradication program by the Canadian Government, today Sunshine is a free person! His smile shines bright! www.piebird.org/sunshine

Brief background story: Sunshine is a goat-friend here at Piebird Farm Sanctuary who was targeted in 2014 by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) in an eradication program, they wanted to kill him for testing. Animal Justice helped us save him from this fate — but then the CFIA placed Sunshine and the sanctuary here under a heavy-handed legal order of control. After four years of us resisting that, Sunshine is now free!

Watch for further updates over the next couple of days. At this link www.piebird.org/sunshine you can read the beginning of the story of how we learned to style our peaceful defiance in ways inspired by Sunshine himself. In helping to uplift Sunshine to now be free and hold autonomy over his own life, we learned to use our voices in the way that Sunshine himself may stand up for a friend in need. This understanding became one of the most grateful gifts through this difficult experience.

Sunshine’s story: www.piebird.org/sunshine

About Piebird Farm Sanctuary: http://www.piebird.org/sanctuary

10/04/2018

PETA has posted a billboard in Windsor ahead of Thanksgiving weekend that depicts a turkey pleading with people to see it as an individual, and not a piece of meat.