One Tired Turkey

The last few days have been an absolute blur and the Farmyard is a buzz with the work that the COA is doing.

I am still staying off twitter during my days because I do not want to be locked away in my shack when I should be out there and communicating our message to every animal I can.

I just wanted to pop on here tonight to say thank you for reading and that I hope you are all doing well wherever you are. 💓

The COA Is Taking Off

The Farmyard Four have been a busy bunch the last two days and we have hardly met at all just as a foursome because we have had so many animals coming to us asking what the symbol they have been seeing means.

Instead of having a big group meeting and drawing attention on the farm we have committed to all the animals to talk to them one on one about things so all of the animals who stopped by our lunch and learn yesterday we told them we would find them and come and talk to them and the same thing today and I think by now we have spoken with almost every animal on the farm!

When we are meeting with them we have all agreed to stick to the same message so that we are a unified front.

We ask them if they remember what was said at the big stump speech and we talk to them about their thoughts of how many animals get eaten every year. We hear them out and make them feel heard even if they are getting some facts wrong or are questioning some of the facts.

We tell them we hear them and we tell them we understand how they are feeling.

Then we tell them that what we believe, and what the circles represent, is that:

All life is valued.

We are all connected.

Balance is best.

That's what the circles mean.

We then ask them if they can name the circles themselves and sometimes they can and sometimes they cannot but that is why we have to keep repeating this message and that is the end of the conversation for the moment.

We do not want to overburden them with any information but we just want to introduce our ideas and we know we will have more opportunities to talk with them anytime they want in the future.

We have not had ANY animal come to us yet with a fight or an argument or a disagreement.

This is all going so very, very well.

Happiness Is

Happiness is being heard, really heard, when you have something important to say.

Today was very very good and I am a glowing bird and I only came in here very quickly to tell those of you who visit me every day that the response to our new symbol and our new message was so very well received and I am so tired because I talked more today than I have ever talked so I am going to go to bed now and get a good night's sleep because I feel like tomorrow will be much of the same.

I will fill you in on all the details tomorrow night.

Good night all you beautiful people, all you friendly animals.

Opening Up The Circle

Today instead of meeting as the Farmyard Four each of us went to different parts of the farmyard and we scratched our new symbol into the dirt and Petunia even took some mud from her pen and found a small corner on the side of the barn where she plastered the mud onto it in the shape of our very same symbol.

We agreed that anytime one of the animals asked us what we were doing or what the symbol meant we would invite them to come and join us anytime they saw us meeting together after lunch and we could talk to them about it.

My friends, so many animals asked me about this today and I think the others had the same level of interest and we wills ee what happens at tomorrow's lunch and learn but I am feeling very positive about it all!

Step Three

I am so proud of Carmel.

After we met yesterday we decided that the three messages we came up with the day before were perfect as they were and the next step was to draw a symbol to represent them and to represent the COA and Carmel came to us today with a symbol that we all immediately loved.

I was going to describe it to you but I also love google and I was able to find something very similar to what she drew and I will put that picture here now.

We wanted to have something that represented connections and equality and balance and I think these three circles all connected with another circle do that perfectly.

All life is valued.

We are all connected.

Balance is best.

Ladies and gentlemen I give you the official symbol and messages of the COA.

Anywhere I see this symbol I know that our message is being heard and supported. 💓

Step Two

We are all so happy with our Mission Statement and we think it is a very clear thing to communicate and we also think the Coalition of Animals is a good name. If we can communicate this well enough to people I think they might not mind also being called animals and it can help them identify with us a little better, or at least that is my sincere hope.

Step Two is to make all of our messaging simple and easy to repeat and here is what we came up with this afternoon and I would be interested to know your thoughts.

We made everything into three simple messages:

All life is valued.

We are all connected.

Balance is best.

There were many other ideas that were discussed and Jasmine was the one to keep reminding us that we had to keep things short and simple and she was so right and she kept us very much on track.

Oh boy, can you believe there was once a time I did not like her? That is pretty crazy, right?

Our Mission Statement

We met again today and we have decided that while we are The Farmyard Four we need to create a group or an entity that is more inclusive of others and so we came up with the name today of the Coalition Of Animals or the COA for short and we want to remind people that they too are animals and can be a part of this coalition.

We also revised what I wrote down the other day nd here I present to you, all you beautiful animals, our Mission Statement for the COA:

We value all life. Every animal has both a role to play in the planet's ecosystem and a right to fight for their self-preservation. There are alternatives to eating meat and our mission is to educate people about these alternatives with the goal being to reduce the amount of meat eaten per person, year on year, for the next five years.

If you want to be a part of the COA please connect with me on my twitter or comment here or send me an email because we would love to have you as a part of our group.

Woohoo!

Today was an excellent day.

The Farmyard Four loved my plan and we have all even agreed on Step One and our main goal and Carmel said she had heard of something called a Mission Statement and so we talked back and forth about what our Mission Statement should be and we came up with this:

We value all life. We understand that this means that some living creatures eat other living creatures to survive and we know that all animals everywhere must do their best to balance their own self-preservation along with fulfilling their role in the ecosystem of the planet. We want to address the issue of balance and educate the people of the world of the current imbalance many animals face due to the meat-eating habits that have evolved over time. We aim to seek out alternatives and present and educate people about them with the goal of reducing the amount of meat eaten per person on an annual basis.

I do not think I have ever written anything so smart and I was taking notes on my cellphone while Petunia was talking because oh boy she really got on a roll with our ideas and I think we really have something here.

We have all agreed to sleep on this for a couple of days and revisit it before we move to Step Two but I have to say that right now I am very excited by all of this and I think they are too because at the end of the meeting the four of us sent out a big Woohoo! of our own and I am pretty sure Barry could hear us all the way from inside the barn.

The Plan

This is the plan I want to present to the Farmyard Four tomorrow and I told them today that I was working on our Next Steps together and yes I have used capital letters for a reason because that is how important these Next Steps are.

How To Be Organized In Five Easy Steps

Step One: Identify our main goal and I think our main goal should be to educate people about the unsustainability of eating so much meat in their diets. I do not think our goal should be to eliminate meat eating altogether because I do not think we will ever be able to achieve that but I do think we can make an impact. This goal needs to be decided by the Farmyard Four before we can move to Step Two.

Step Two: Make our messaging simple and easy to understand and repeat.

In this step we need to take all the confusing numbers out of my stump speech and make our message one that can easily be repeated around the farmyard.

Step Three: Create a symbol for our message that we easily scratch in the dirt or find ways to have it around the farmyard so that when people see our symbol they are reminded of our simple message because we need to repeat it and repeat it and repeat it so that they remember it.

Step Four: We need to make ourselves available to talk to any of the animals on the farm who want to talk and so we should open up our Lunch and Learn to whoever wants to attend and we make sure to always meet regularly so that the animals can rely on us and know that we are animals of our words and yes that means if it is raining.

Step Five: We need to collect the opinions of the animals and share them with the people of the Internet and fortunately I already have this weblog and my twitter as a platform for us to do this but maybe there are other ways to share this message as well?

I must say I am feeling much better than I was yesterday about all of this and even though we have not even officially started Step One yet of the Next Steps just even seeing it all written down like this has given me some confidence.

If Barry and the chickens can be organized, we need to be even more organized and I think we already are with having this plan all written down because, to the best of my knowledge, I do not believe the chickens are educated enough to read.

Being Organized

Today I saw something in the farmyard that has caused me much stress and I could not even talk about it with Jasmine or Carmel or Petunia and I have been staying in my shack all afternoon because I do not know what to do with the thoughts that are in my head but then, I guess that is exactly what a weblog is for, right?

Today I saw Barry leading the chickens in a little marching parade around the chicken coop and they went around and around in circles around the coop and every time they passed the little ramp that is the entrance to the coop they would yell a big "Woohoo" and they looked like they were truly enjoying themselves and that is only one part of the thing that caused me stress but I must say it was unsettling to see them all so organized and not just running around like they usually do.

The other part of the thing that stressed me out was that I was standing near the older cows and I do not think they thought I could hear them talking but I could and one of the cows said to the other that the chickens seemed happier than usual and the other cow responded by saying that while the chickens were dumb maybe they had a good idea in not thinking about the harsh realities of the world that everyone on the farm has been talking about since my stump speech.

That is where the conversation ended thank goodness but if the cows are starting to think that Barry and the chickens are doing something right how long before the other animals start thinking the same thing and then how will the Farmyard Four ever get our message out properly? If we cannot even be united as a farmyard how will the humans out there ever care enough to help us change the world?

I think I am going to take a break from twitter for a while because I want to put all of my focus here on the farmyard and once we have our own heads organized then I can start to reach out more to my people friends with a unified message from the farmyard.

I think we need to be more organized and I think I need to make a plan for this to suggest to the Farmyard Four because I have a terrible feeling in my gullet that this is only the beginning of something that could go very very wrong.