SHERBORN - Emily the Cow is Sherborn’s best known bovine and her current home, the Peace Abbey, celebrated her miraculous escape from a slaughterhouse five years ago with an open house on Sunday for the Great American Meat Out.

Any family who showed up for a petting zoo, though, quickly discovered that as delightful as Emily’s story is, it was part of a much larger concern.

Inside the Abbey was a flurry of activity, with staff and volunteers greeting and engaging visitors, talking about the Abbey’s mission, pointing children to the playroom downstairs, and steering families toward the kitchen, where a garden of vegetarian delights were being offered.

The main attraction was a spread of various veggie burgers, which are apparently still mysterious to some, despite their availability in regular supermarkets.

"It didn’t occur to me that people weren’t even familiar with them," admitted Dot Walsh, the Abbey’s program coordinator, who hoped that the gathering would dispel some myths about vegetarianism.

"I think when people first become vegetarians, they think they’re going to be very limited, but in reality, there’s so much available right now."

Currently, the meat and cattle industry has the attention of the world, for good and ill, particularly given this widespread concerns in Europe and Argentina about foot-and-mouth disease.

Sunday’s well-timed open house on the Great American Meat Out was one way for the Peace Abbey to let people know they are doing their part to find a solution.

"I did get a call last week from someone who works in the Department of Health and they wanted to know about soy products and recipes," she said. "I told her that if sometime she wanted us to have a workshop for a group of people, we’d be willing to do that."

The main attraction of the day for many, though, was Emily the Cow. Families gathered around her to get a glimpse of the legendary cow and took photos while kids petted her and got their faces licked.

Kyle Hall, a Harvard Divinity School student who does volunteer work at the Abbey, fielded all Emily questions from families, his job for the day. Well, that and making sure some attention was paid to the Abbey’s other residents.

One was Gabriel, a friendly tan cow who shares a pen with Emily and excitedly nudged and licked some of the kids. He is also, Hall explained, Emily’s adopted son.

"Gabriel was going to be a veal calf. Emily adopted Gabriel and took care of him," he said. Hall whipped out a photo of Gabriel as a calf to the tittering delight of the kids.

There was, however, another purpose to meeting these cute, fuzzy animals, and it was made apparent as Hall handed out buying guides to non-leather products.

"Why do we need these?" asked a little girl.

"Have you heard of leather? You have to kill the cow to get leather, because it’s the cow’s skin," Hall told her. "These are clothes and shoes you can buy, but you don’t have to kill animals. So then Emily can live; she won’t be killed for shoes."

Some parents seemed uneasy right then and only looked slightly more comfortable with the story of how Thanks and Giving, the Abbey’s turkeys, were rescued from the slaughterhouse.

Outside, little kids gathered around a pen of goats. One, Annie, was rescued from a petting zoo, whose owners are interested only in the younger, cuter animals and routinely split up families.

Two others were the children of Belle, the oldest goat in the pen, who, like Emily, escaped from a slaughterhouse. Belle came knocking on a woman’s door one night and dashed inside when the door was opened, immediately claiming the dog’s water dish as her own. The woman called the Abbey immediately.

"What’s a slaughterhouse?" asked one little girl, after the story.

"It’s where they make hamburger," interrupted the mother.

"It’s where they kill animals," Hall added.

"I’m trying very hard not to drive that point home," the mother whispered.

These sorts of exchanges were rare, but they did happen and Hall tried his best to deal with them amicably, though honestly. Awareness of cruelty to animals - and that includes being shipped to slaughterhouses - was all part of what this day at the Peace Abbey was about, and that meant a certain amount of frank talk.

For Abbey staff, it was a bit like walking a tightrope. They wanted to educate children on the reality of eating meat, but hoped to avoid being too over the top.

"I don’t want to be too graphic with the kids, but I think it’s fine to say that the animals are killed," Hall explained. "Otherwise, the kids don’t make the connection, if you try and hide that. She didn’t seem to want me to say it, but I’ll say it anyway because it’s the reality."

Dot Walsh has observed many such exchanges and advocated being honest with kids about how meat is produced.

"Some parents don’t always want to hear it, but the kids have to know it," she said. Walsh practices this in her own life, with her grandchildren, and finds the information gives the kids a perspective on things.

"Children have more of an understanding than we give them credit for. It’s not as if you’re forcing them into vegetarianism, but I think they have a right to know that," she said.

Such difficult moments, though, did not hinder the day. Walsh proclaimed it a big success, with at least half the visitors being unfamiliar with the Abbey and vegetarianism, but departing with a great interest in both.

Preaching to the unconverted was the obvious goal here and no one could have predicted it would work so well.

In fact, several new vegetarians had their own ideas about the next event at the Abbey.

"They were asking about and talked about maybe having a kind of pot luck where you bring a recipe and a dish and share that and talk about that," said Walsh.

Having newcomers invite themselves over for vegetarian pot luck dinners was encouraging to the Abbey and a good indicator of the day’s success.

"That’s maybe something we would do later on," Walsh hinted happily.