Let's start with the first farm. Like we wrote before, the family lives on 2 acres as part of a long standing eco village. Not to mention the hosts started a small New Zealand based NGO about 3 years ago. Even though it seemed from their profile that the farm was their main focus, I was fairly excited to work again with a smaller organization, especially since it seemed like I'd learn quite a bit working directly with the people who started it. Turned out that not only was farming and gardening FAR from their main focus (I have no idea if any of the food we ate was actually grown there) but they also had no idea what to do when it came to fundraising. The only introduction I was given to their organization, OceansWatch, was a small brochure and right away I got the impression that there was a fair bit of disorganization and one hell of a lot of stress. Their website is a little more straightforward, but their projects span the entire seemingly-unrelated-spectrum of education programs to marine conservation to "humanitarian work." And they work all over coastal nations of Oceania, which is an incredibly large area for an NGO that is run on a largely volunteer basis. Which is not to say they aren't running some very cool projects; I just wish I'd gotten a better introduction to their work. Since Chris, the NZ director, is away for 6 months of the year, the bulk of the fundraising work falls on his wife, who openly admitted she had no idea what she was doing. I can't say I really did either, since I'm used to fundraising for huge well-known organizations. However I had some experience grant writing, so my "work" on the farm was to basically cruise the Internet and find fundraising opportunities and grants they could apply for. Um. Yawn. Not exactly what I had in mind but I figured I'd at least get to work right with them and learn how they got the organization going, where previous funding has come from, major projects they are working on, etc. etc. Disappointed again, I instead got to sit in a room alone for two days and Google environmental grant databases. Or maybe it was suppsed to be education grant databases? I don't even know. On the last day I gave them some basic tips for effective grant writing and we talked a fair bit about resources for small non-profits and some cost effective methods for fundraising. Off to a fairly boring and unstimulating start...
When I found out the name of our next farm, Gentle World, which is advertised as a vegan education center on 400 something acres, I immediately pictured a quaint farm house surrounded by huge gardens with lots of birds and flowers and sunshine. Which it pretty much was, only Birds and Butterflies and Flowers and Meadows and Deer were some of the middle aged hippies who reside in caravans scattered all over the property. Not previously mentioned are Magic and Golden and their son Soul, the dog Kisses, Angel, Sky, Love and Light, and a few others who hadn't yet arrived from the group's second property in Hawaii. By the sounds of their profile, we were expecting to learn tons about veganism: why go vegan, vegan recipes, large scale organic gardening, how to stay healthy on a vegan diet, those kinds of things. Instead, we ended up doing most of the cooking, most of the cleaning, and learned a bunch of totally crazy shit, including, but not limited to, the following "facts:"
-vitamin B12 is a "myth." Nobody, especially vegans, have any need for it
-becoming vegan will cure my allergy to cats
-if you're vegan, you never get sick. Ever. No more colds, flu, food poisoning, you name it, you won't get it. (by the way, Flowers sounded pretty under the weather the day we left)
-cutting out milk products from your kids' diets will ensure they never have their tonsils removed and they'll never suffer from anything like laryngitis or cancer later on in life
-being vegetarian but still consuming dairy products makes you a worse person morally and ethically than a meat eater
-wool products are terrible because once a sheep is shorn it can never grow back again and it is a painful and crippling practise
-the meat/dairy industry is black and white. All meat is full of hormones and all chickens are kept in tiny cages. Small scale organic farms, or even ethical beekeeping, are not possible.
Now my other beef (so to speak) with these people is their total disregard for human welfare. Yes, commercial farming practices are horrific, but they all had made in China towels and Starbucks coffee mugs. I suppose cramming hundreds of mammals into a small space and making them work in awful conditions is ok if we're talking about people. I really wanted to get a conversation going about ethical practices outside of the farm industry but I have a pretty strong feeling it would just fall on deaf ears. After all this romanticizing about having meaningful relationships with animals and treasuring their friendship rather than their skin or flesh, I'm no closer to becoming a full-fledged vegan than I was before.
Goodbye, Gentle World.
-Amy
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