Fiona

I had a whole post that just went “whoosh!” and disappeared! Starting over!

As some of you who’ve read this blog for a while know, I have a stuffed cow who was supposed to be a present for my students during a senior year school trip. However, they were so awful that we came home after two days. I never gave away the stuffed cow and it was one of my only comforts on a ten hour train ride with two dozen angry teenagers.

Later, the cow got a name, “Foro” when my partner, a German speaker, mistyped “foto” and wrote “foro”. I wondered what a “Foro” was, and joked that it must be a “female toro”. (Okay, not that funny). But I had a “female toro”, my asexual stuffed cow.

Foro became a sort of mascot, and a reminder not to take myself too seriously, and to be kinder. I had a blog before, with another focus, and revamped it to host Foro, the star of the show.

Foro being so cute, I decided to sponsor a real cow with Pro Specia Rara. The cow I sponsor is named Fiona. She’s a Hinterwälder, a sort of breed which is neither wonderful for meat nor milk production, but not so bad either. They are hardy and less prone to disease, and tend to do well in hilly areas. For me, there are too many cows in the world, and anyone who has cows where you could grow crops is misusing resources. In hilly areas, though, it’s hard to grow anything and it’s possible to have cows, goats and sheep.

Fiona lives with German speakers, and it took me a while to learn enough to be able to put together a letter to write to her owners. They introduced themselves and sent photos of Fiona!