I will not forget you

I leave in a few hours.

Yesterday the man was sharpening his axe and all of my friends came to see me. Saying goodbye to Sally was very hard and I thanked her. Without her, Barry would still be here trying to rule the roost and I would not have the turkey trail in front of me.

Carmel was the hardest, one of the original Farmyard Four back where all this began, back when I could not even type a capital letter. She brought her nose to my beak and we both closed our eyes and stayed there a while. The world was quiet around us.

I love them and I love all of you. Thank you for memories I will take with me forever. I do not know if I will ever be able to write on here again as I do not know if there are computers ahead of me on the turkey trail, but know that having this outlet to meet and talk to all you beautiful has made me a better turkey. Thank you. I love you.

In a few hours I will sneak to the gate and... ah... the man is awake and coming down the

Packing up

It has been days now and I do not think that this presidential pardon will be coming my way. Whoever the lucky turkey is who gets the pardon this year I hope you do something amazing with your life.

I am going to head on the turkey trail in a few days time, my decision is made. I will not be able to carry my cell phone with me for I must move quickly. I hope the COA has spread out before me as planned and I have a safe route ahead.

The next few days are going to be difficult ones to say my goodbyes. Your old friend Goebbels is going to miss a lot of these animals. I can't even believe there was once a time when I wanted to use voodoo tricks to bring harm to Jasmine. That was definitely the old me and I appreciate every one of you beautiful people who have supported me along the way.

Time to pack up and head out. I will return for one more goodbye here before I leave.

Good night, friends.

The time is getting close

No response today on twitter when I asked about the presidential pardon. Some of you beautiful people liked my tweet but I was not introduced to the President of the United States.

Maybe tomorrow.

Pardon me?

My friends, I was going to come on here tonight to say my goodbyes but, more importantly, I wanted to charge my cellphone which I have found and will try to bring with me on my journey.

I wanted my goodbye to be simple and quick and not to be too melodramatic because I am many things but I think you will not be able to say I am dramatic with a straight face, right?

So I was waiting to write my weblog post and I decided to use Google to search the words "save turkeys" because it occurred to me that my journey could b about a lot more than just my own skin but could maybe be used to help more turkeys along the way.

And I learned about something called a presidential pardon for Thanksgiving turkeys and oh my have you ever heard of such a thing?

So I have a new idea and I will be staying here for a few more days before hitting the Turkey Trail.

What if I could get the president to pardon me?

What if, somehow, your old friend Goebbels the turkey could get the president to spare my life and give me a pardon?

I am not only excited about saving my life but mostly about how much more I would be able to spread the word about the Coalition of Animals and encourage people to just start eating a little less meat than they currently do.

I am excited to have my phone back because tomorrow I will go onto twitter for the first time in a long time, since before my big sadness, and see what more I can find out about the president and this idea of pardoning.

I still have the turkey trail to follow if this does not work, but if it does...

If it does...

If any of you beautiful people know the president, please let him know that I am very interested in being the turkey he chooses to pardon this year.

The Turkey Trail

It has been decided.

With less than a month to go before Thanksgiving, I am going to make the trek to the next farmyard, Maude's farmyard.

What we are hoping is that I can find support and assistance to remain hidden with Maude and her crew, but I cannot leave just yet.

After staying with Maude for a day to rest, the idea is for me to head straight to the farmyard beyond hers that Ben found, with the hope that the message has continued to spread and there would be more farmyards beyond that one to travel to.

The turkey trail.

And if I wait to leave for just a few more days, perhaps there will be more links in the chain for me to follow.

Eventually I hope that the farmyards lead somewhere safe before Thanksgiving because I do not want to be on a farmyard near Thanksgiving, that is for sure.

But whatever the road holds, I am ready for it and I am going to look to leave a week from today.

My friends, I know I have said this before, but it is looking like our time together is coming to a close.

I will come on here to say goodbye for sure, and from there I will be in the hands of the COA in the farmyards beyond.

I love you all. 💓🦃

The farmyard beyond the farmyard beyond

Sally started to show Maude the little map she had been carrying with her and as Maude started to earn more about the COA and about our message trying to get people to eat less meat, she grew very interested in becoming a part of the cause.

"People will always eat meat," Sally told her, "we have come to accept this, but they have been eating more and more meat per person than ever before and we are trying to slow that down a little bit."

Sally gave all the statistics I had given during my stump speech. She said she knew turning all people into vegans was not realistic, but did they have to eat SO much meat?

Sally remembered her talking points well.

Maude had a small group of animals of her own that she confided in and they agreed to send a scout towards the direction further on from where Sally had come from, the farmyard beyond the farmyard beyond her home.

They agreed to help form a chain of farmyards to try and spread the message and unite the animals of the county. Next steps were vague as to how they would influence actual humans but the first step was clear: to get as many animals to understand their place in the food chain as possible.

They sent a brave duck named Ben with the message to the farmyard beyond the farmyard beyond, Sally told me, and it was at this point that she had a decision to make.

She could either return to us and report back as promised or wait until Ben got back from the next farmyard on with his report and she'd have even more to say.

She decided to stay and Maude agreed that it was not safe for her to return to our yard and then risk another whole journey just to learn what Ben had learned.

So she stayed there.

Ben returned after a week with the news that not only had the farmyard beyond his agreed with their messaging, they had agreed to send their own scout to find the next farmyard.

Sally could not wait to come back and share this news with us. She left that night and almost got scooped up by an owl on her way home but managed to run and hide until morning.

Then she came home a couple of days ago and you are nearly caught up now.

All that remains is to tell you what we are planning to do with all this information, but that will have to wait for another night as this turkey is very tired.

Love love love you all. 💓🦃

Barry Behind Bars

Good evening all you beautiful people! Let's pick up where we left off, shall we?

I know this was not a saintly thing to think but as Sally described Barry behind bars, his orange fur once so proudly groomed, dirty, clumped together, slinking in a corner instead of proudly yelling from the fenceposts, I felt a little good that he got just exactly what he deserved.

If she was surprised to see him, he was equally if not more surprised to see her.

"What are YOU doing here?" he hissed, a hiss that would have once scared didn't now with him being behind bars and Maude's words telling her she would be safe echoing in her ears helped too.

"I'm here to see who they locked up for making trouble around here. What did you do Barry?"

Barry answered with a look of contempt, "As if I need to explain myself or anything to you."

Sally looked around - the cage was set way back in a shed, surrounded by bales of hay and it looked as though no human had been there for some time. There was dust on the tools hanging from the wall, she told me that she remembered noticing that, and this small shed was very far away from the farmhouse or any of the animal pens. It had all the appearance of being forgotten.

Then, our little Sally, said pretty much the best thing she could have said in that moment and I just know how riled up Barry would have gotten about it.

She looked at him and said, "That's okay, it looks like your words don't matter much anymore anyway."

An with that she left him and Arnott took her back to Maude.

How good is that??

I will try to tell everything else that happened in as few words as possible because there is work to be done on our next steps.

Maude told Sally that Barry had come up to their yard and had introduced himself as the leader of a nearby farmyard who had been sent to get more farmyards to see him as their leader. He did not go about things in a very good way and was immediately starting to talk about how some animals were better than other animals and he did not realize that Maude's yard - as she was the leader - was one of fairness and equality.

He was caught trying to attack the chicken coop by an old ram that he had ignored, thinking the ram too old to do anything about it. Boy was he wrong. The ram butted him so hard he fell unconscious and when he woke up he was in the cage and had been there ever since.

They fed him but didn't pay him much attention other than that.

He was always yelling about the COA and how they had been against him from the start.

"When you said you were with them, I knew you were against him and were probably my kind of animal," Maude said smiling.

Sally was welcomed fully into the yard and even though she was supposed to come back and report to us right away she saw an opportunity and took it, and that next part will explain why she was gone for so long which is a question I am sure you were waiting to ask me and one that I will answer when I return tomorrow.

Remember that writing out all of these words in one sitting gets very tiring on this old neck of mine. 

Thank you for reading and good night to you all.

Sally is fine and here is her story

I am so sorry and I hope I did not leave you hanging in suspense for too long and made you worried about me from my weblog post the other night. The man woke up and was coming downstairs and I had to turn everything off very quickly and I was so nervous that I have not come back for a couple of days but also the last few days have let me fully digest all of the news that Sally brought back with her.

I will tell you the important part first: Sally is fine and was treated very well by the farmhouse near to us. She was invited to stay with them but oh boy was there ever drama at first and let me tell you it has to do with a barn cat named Barry.

But Sally is fine and we have a plan moving forward and I will see how much I can tell you about everything tonight.

Sally left us and headed in the direction of the farmhouse from my map and she hopped along for almost a full day before she reached the edge of what she could see was a farmyard that looked a little bit like ours.

She is a very bright little chicken and of course I always knew that but she showed it in how she handled herself as well because she did not go running right up to the fence. She spent the first evening nested in amongst some tall grass and she spent some time observing everything and seeing which animals she could see and which ones she could not and assessing the best way to approach the yard.

She noticed there was a chicken coop that was very close to the fence and she thought that the chickens might be the best place to start because she was a chicken but then she also remembered how loud chickens could be and she did not want to rustle up any mayhem on her very first visit so she decided not to go to the chickens but instead to approach an old sow who rarely moved but who seemed to get a lot of attention from the other animals as they passed by to say goodnight.

She thought that this sow was very well respected and it turned out she was very right about that.

The next morning Sally approached the sow and hopped up onto the lowest plank that made up her fence and introduced herself and at first the sow did not pay much mind to her but when she said that had come from this farmhouse and that she carried a message of importance from the other animals the sow perked right up.

The sow, whose name is Maude, asked her about our farmyard and asked some very specific questions and I will tell this next part like a story if that is okay because I think it will be easier.

"Is there a big stump in your farmyard?" Maude asked.

"There is," Sally replied and was surprised that the old sow might know such a thing.

"And do the animals gather there for speeches and the like?"

"They have, yes," Sally said and was again surprised. "In fact," she added, "the message I have come to share comes from our leaders who call themselves the Coaltion Of Animals and they're trying to raise awareness around how many animals get eaten by people every year."

"I've heard of this already once before," Maude said, and Sally was shocked.

Before she could ask any questions, Maude added, "You will be safe and welcome here, know that, but there is someone you should see first."

Maude called a smaller piglet over to her who came running right away and told the piglet to take her to the cage.

"Arnott here is going to take you to see someone who is in a cage and I'd like you to see them and then come back and we shall talk some more."

My friends, I think maybe you can guess who it might have been who was in the cage and I think I was able to guess who was in the cage when Sally was telling me this story and I was right and I think you will be right too.

It is getting very late and there is so much story to tell so I will come back tomorrow night to tell you more but for now I can tell you that, yes, smartypants, the animal in the cage was Barry.

Sally!!!

My friends, I am not going anywhere just yet because Sally came back to us today!

Happy and healthy and so full of news that she