Thanksgiving With the Turkeys

On Saturday I attended Thanksgiving with the Turkeys at Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary for the second year in a row. This is an incredible potluck dinner with hundreds of people participating, but the best part is that it is all vegan... meaning no animal products whatsoever are used to make any of the dishes served. Andy and I have been vegetarian for about 10 years now, and look forward to this dinner ever since our friends Kate and Chris introduced it to us last year (we missed you this year guys... hope you're having a good time in Portland!).

First off, before the humans eat, the turkeys and chickens get their dinner in a ceremony dedicated to them. You can see some of the rescued turkeys in these photos. Turkeys are such cool looking animals... it's fun to watch them get just as excited over their dinner as we did for ours.



One of the larger turkeys runs to the dinner table set out for the birds:


This was what the human dinner looked like. There was too much food to even have a spoonful of everything. I maybe got to taste about a third of what was brought, and it was all delicious.


There were a lot of neat looking trees near the field where we ate, and I took a few photos of them. This is one of those:


After dinner, Andy and I wandered around the sanctuary to visit the various rescued farm animals that make Poplar Spring their home. There were goats, pigs, horses, sheep, ducks, and peacocks all just wandering around.

Andy pets one of the horses:


Some of the various animals we saw:




We came upon this sight in the makeshift parking lot: A peacock had perched on top of an SUV and was having fun checking out the herds of humans passing through his turf. It was really funny and created quite a stir. I'm not certain the owners of the vehicle ever found out that the peacock was up there though...


Then we went home and walked the Sasquatch and laid around - we didn't even eat dinner, we were still so full from the big mid-day meal! Thanksgiving with the Turkeys is always a good time, and we're already looking forward to next year...