I have a skewed view of saturday’s kickball tournament. As an organizer, any event is always a little stressful. As the tournament umpire… even more so. But it was still great fun. Myself and the other organizers have had several people come up to us over the past couple of days to tell us how it was one of the funnest days they’ve experienced in awhile.

Event Sponsors

In case you were wondering, The KickAssers won the tournament after defeating The Qix eight to seven. It was a close game that was won in the bottom of the final inning. The winning team took home some really nice Kickball Championship tshirts, tickets to the haunted train, raffle tickets, and an amazing trophy. I was a little too busy to take any pictures, but I’ll try to track some down.

In addition to kickball (and the obstacle course that decided one tie game), we had a lot of vegan ice cream (donated by Chicago Soy Dairy), veggie hot dogs, and a raffle with several prizes donated by the local companies listed to the right. We also introduced our new tshirt, which will be for sale on this site soon (and several places around Bloomington).

Even though this event was meant to be more of a community event than a fundraiser, we were able to raise enough for the retainer fee for the lawyer. Which brings me to my next point… we are buying land! We’ve been in the process for a couple of months now, but I’ve been waiting to write about it until we got a little closer to signing the contract. The land is absolutely gorgeous, and it already has a large house (which will be used for housing sick, injured, and adoptable animals). Sticking with our commitment to environmental sustainability, one wall of the house is earth berm, it is heated and cooled geothermally using radiant floor coils, and the windows are triple-paned. We will also work on implementing renewable sources of energy such as microhydro. I’ve included a map of the land below so you can check it out.

As you can see, we are buying 21.79 acres, which is part of about an 150-acre parcel. We plan to buy a good portion of the additional acreage (if not all of it), not too far down the road, but one thing at a time, right? Beside, the current owner of the land is nice enough to allow us to lease the land for free for the first four years. As you can image, 22 acres with a fairly new (and big) house and a lake is pretty expensive. A little over $300,000, actually. We are hoping to pay off the land within three years, but we need your help today to help us with the down payment and monthly mortgage (not to mention the cost of building a new intake center and caring for dozens of animals). I’ve set up a fund-raising page through change.org where you can easily donate using your credit or debit card. You can also donate on our site via PayPal or send a check to:

Deep Roots Animal Sanctuary
P.O. Box 171
Bloomington, IN 47404

Every bit helps, but please give as much as you can. And remember, right now we are a completely volunteer-ran organization so 100% of your money will go towards housing, rehabilitating, and otherwise fighting for the animals. I’ll keep you informed on our progress! Thanks in advance for donating and passing on the word.


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