Moodley Manor

When I was about 3 years of age, I asked my parents for a toy kitchen, the kind you usually think girls would have as kids. I got it. At three I was imitating my then chef father, dicing fake carrots and serving plastic chickens.

Years later, much to the embarrassment of my parents, I wanted an easy bake oven. I wanted the damn thing to cook with, because I was not allowed use the actual oven. The idea of being able to bake a cake was magic, I could literally pull any treat I wanted…

I think I always instinctively wanted to be vegetarian. I don’t remember it, but my family tell a story about me, aged four, becoming hysterical one Christmas when we visited my Grandparents farm in West Cork. They were due to kill one of their turkeys to have for dinner, but I was so inconsolable they had to drive miles on Christmas eve to find a pre-packaged turkey as a last minute stand in, which I happily ate as I hadn’t…

My vegan story is slightly embarrassing actually, well the first part anyway. The dreaded Y2K was coming and New Zealand television was rife with doomsday documentaries. I was sitting on the couch watching one of said uplifting programs, when a segment came on about animals turning against human kind for all the things we had done to them.

Now, don’t get me wrong, our humble television networks in the 90’s couldn’t afford…

*Drumroll Please*

Thank you so much to all our entrants.

We have had some wonderful stories and each will be an inspiration to vegans, vegetarians and those aspiring to be.

Congratulations to our Winner, chosen by the lovely members of Moodley Manor ...

Claire Loader!!!!! Here's her story

I grew up in a rural, meat eating family. I ate what I was given & never thought about where my "food" came from or the life it had before it ended up on my plate. I remained like that throughout my childhood & teens.

Then one evening, sixteen years ago, while flicking through t.v channels, I stumbled across a programme about slaughter houses. That was it for me. I cried myself to sleep & from theat moment on became vegetarian. There was no going back now, my mind had…

Growing up on a farm perched on nature's shoulder in the West of Ireland, it's safe to say while organic vegetables were in abundance, vegetarians were not. As a slightly eccentric child at 10 years of age, my main companions in life were my animals - my cat, my dog, my chickens, my cow, my lamb and my pony. (Before you ask, yes, yes I did have friends but they lived reeallly far away..or so it seemed to me as a child who was not permitted to drive a car although I was trusted to drive a…

Hey Moodleys - Do I get one for being first to post?

EDITED *Moodleys say 'maybe'*

Here's my story. It's a simple one. I was in school, looking at my ham sandwich which I gobbled every day. I looked at it, saw a streak of fat in it which I didn't usually see in processed meat and noticed it was strange. I picked it out, brought it home in the tin foil and asked my mam what it was.

She explained the whole story of where meat come from and that was it, I was vegetarian at…

Details on how to win the fabulous hoodie have just been sent to you!