From Luna: “When the sun comes up each day, I feel gratitude to be included in another day. I don’t like winter or being cold, but, on a cold day when I see my breath float away from my body, I am grateful to see the breath I take for granted each moment. Life is a sacred gift and opportunity. In every second and with every breath we can make a difference to someone else and even to ourselves. Moment by moment I remember this to get me through the times that are not as easy. Sometimes gratitude comes from looking at things once they are behind us. But we need to hold in our hearts the truth that in the tough times, things will move if we let them, and the sun will come up again – and we will have another chance to feel grateful.”
Holiday Open House – December 6th, 6-8pm
Animal Messenger of the Day: Misty Mew
Animal Message of the Day:
From Misty Mew: “I am grateful to have purpose. Someone threw me out of their car and left me on the side of the road. You can’t get much more lost than that. I didn’t know what to do. But, I saw a light and headed for it. I was lucky. It brought me here. I waited at the door. It was the only thing to do. It turns out that I was very lucky. We have a lot of cats here. All of us have different stories. But I wanted something different. I realized that this place needed a cat to greet people at the door, just like someone greeted me when I was most lost. Lots of people come in our doors who truly feel lost inside. They may not say it, but I know it, because I’ve been there. Now, I’ve made myself the greeter cat. And I let everyone know they are welcome to be here. Their hearts can rest a minute or two here with us. I am grateful to have found my purpose.”
Animal Messenger of the day: Noah
Today starts the beginning of our annual tradition of a message a day from the animals of Spring Farm CARES, from Thanksgiving thru New Year’s Eve. All messages are through co-founder, animal communicator Dawn Hayman. We hope you enjoy them!
The animals were all asked, “What are you most grateful for or wish for the most?”
From Noah: “It is my fondest wish that Dawn will post my message first. I have so much to be grateful for that I couldn’t possibly list it all. But I’d like to take this chance to say something more. We have a lot of animals living here that were cast away because there was no space for them where they were, or they couldn’t be cared for any longer, or they were abandoned and forgotten. Some of us have seen great pain and suffering. Many of us are old. Some of us are still young and learning the basics. But all of us, every single one of us, is loved now that we are here. There is a feeling in the heart that only comes from being safe and learning to trust. I can tell you that when I walked in the door here, I hadn’t much understanding or faith in finding my place in life. But someone with a lot of patience taught me that life is learned one tiny step at a time. Step by step we can find our true selves and the meaning and wonder of all of life. I learned to walk beside another by being valued for who I am. No one pushed me. No one tried to “break me” into pieces to mold me the way they wanted me to be. Instead, they looked to me and asked me who I am. And they listened. All of us here on this farm want to share this gift with you. We are grateful for each of you. And we hope you can find peace and love and gratitude for being who you are. Thank you for letting me say this. You are perfect the way you are and you need to know that. Now go start your day with gratitude and love and forgiveness. Whatever it takes, just take one tiny step to start and your journey will begin.”Animal Messages for the Holidays
It’s that time of the year again! Back by popular demand, we will once again be bringing you our traditional holiday offering to all of you. From Thanksgiving, 11/ 28 – 12/31/19 we will daily post a message from an animal along with their photo. Dawn Hayman, Animal Communicator and co-founder of Spring Farm CARES, will be asking the animals of SFC what they are most grateful for in life. You won’t want to miss their messages. To start things off as a preview, Dawn’s dog Jessie weighs in:
From Jessie: ““Hi Everyone! This is Jessie and I am the dog that looks after Dawn. I wanted you all to know that I am helping her prepare for the messages from the animals here coming up soon. It’s a full-time job for me to help her. It’s not always easy, especially when she worries all the time. So, we are going to be sending you all a lot of messages about gratitude and kindness and love – you know, the real important stuff that we don’t want to forget. I’ll do my best to keep her on track. I’m very sure that you won’t want to miss this, so stay tuned. And when it’s all done, you can thank me for keeping her on track.”
A Day in the Life of Elsie
Come join us for a look at a day in the life of our sanctuary cat Elsie.
Gone With The Wind – The Windmills Come Down
Today marked another milestone day for Spring Farm CARES. Those of you driving by probably wondered what was going on with all the cranes. Sadly, two of our three windmills had a catastrophic failure this past month. Even more sad is that it was due to negligence in how they were assembled when they were installed. Turbines that we thought we’d have for 20-30 years were suddenly made useless after 11 years. Although the parts to fix the problem were not that expensive, the turbines could only be repaired by taking them down, and then putting them back up again, and that was a huge expense.
We made the decision to take the turbines and towers down and call it a day on our wind project. Our goal is to add to our solar arrays to make up the difference for what we lose in generation from the wind. Thankfully, the infrastructure for the windmills can be used for solar generation.
The purpose of our wind and solar project has always been to be able to provide for our animal sanctuary if there were a prolonged outage of the grid. And, as important, to lessen our footprint environmentally. Twelve years ago, as this project was put together, wind power was the way to go for us and held an advantage that solar did not offer. Today, with advancing technology, that is no longer true. So, you can say, that we needed to shift to where the winds take us next. While the windmills end an era of their own today, the sun will come up tomorrow on the next generation and we will move ahead.
A special thanks to Rig-All for coming so quickly with their cranes and expertise to help us get these down before winter set in.