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From a tiny seed a mightly oak can grow! What to many would be a small and insignificant event set off a series of chain reactions resulting in an annual event that just grows and grows. Our fair is a fundraising event that raises money for animal and vegan charities, here is how it started…

Blondelle the cow was destined for slaughter, she was spotted in a set aside area when my mother and I went to visit my Father who lives in France. When we asked why she was on her own we where told she had been separated ready for collection and slaughter. We quickly expressed an interest in buying her since my family owns a field in France where we could retire her. The farmer thought we where a bit strange but whether it was us or the abattoir giving him the money it didn’t really make much difference The farmer agreed to give us a few months to raise the money as he knows my Dad quite well. On top of the price of the cow we needed to raise the cost of her full vets MOT which is required when an agricultural animal transfers owners in France. After all the discussions mum and I came home and organised an event called “A Very Veggie Autumn Fair” in the space of 8 weeks. The fair was a success and most importantly we raised the money to save Blondelle.

Blondelle has all her life been part of a dairy herd where she has undergone repeated pregnancies, as all dairy cows do, to produce milk for human consumption. We learned that at the end of her last pregnancy Blondelle's milk had dried up. When a dairy cow is no longer capable of producing milk she is sent to the abattoir. Blondelle had done incredibly well, statistically most dairy cows are slaughtered between the ages of 4-6, their bodies have been put though such an intensive cycle of pregnancy and milking that their milk fails at a quarter of their natural life expectancy which is about 20-25 years. Blondelle has held on until 12 years of age, twice the statistical slaughter age for a dairy cow. In those 12 years she had given birth to 10 calves, all of them taken away from her. If you have never heard the bellowing of a mother cow whose calf has been removed then you have been spared a genuinely distressing experience.

Blondelle was retired onto my fathers land in the autumn of 2006. After initially being very wary of human contact she soon realised that my father was here friend and soon her personality shone through. My father’s dogs would lie next to her for hours in the field with Suki regularly touching noses with Blondelle. In the summer Blondelle loved her coat to be brushed from nose to tail, in fact wave a bush and she would hurry straight to you. Quite often you could see Blondelle looking over the hedgerow into the adjacent field and there would be another cow looking back at her, like 2 neighbors chatting over a fence. Everyday my father visited Blondelle twice a day and at the beginning of 2008 plans where being drawn up to build her a new shelter, big enough for 2…big enough for another rescued companion.

However a companion for Blondelle was not to be. Blondelle died very suddenly of suspected heart failure in January 2008. My father made his usual afternoon visit to her, saw her eating in the barn, patted her left her to walk his dogs round the field. Half an hour later he returned to find Blondelle collapsed on the floor, there where no signs of life. A cremation was arranged. Blondelle was not ill, she did not look or act “old” and we expected her to live for many years so her sudden death was both shocking and distressing. Anyone who has lost a companion animal will know how upsetting it is when they pass away. However I am incredibly proud that Blondelle ended her days in rest and quietness and that she was spared from a terrifying death inside a slaughter house.

What Blondelle started we will finish. We still plan to build a shelter for 2 and plan to retire other mother cows otherwise destined for slaughter. Dairy cows have it incredibly tough and they do not deserve the life that humans force upon them. Please spare a thought for the 1 billion animal slaughtered annually in this country (not including fish) simply for human consumption, despite the fact that we can nourish our bodies with many other foods instead and live all the longer for it.

Everyone is welcome to our event which was born out of a very simple encounter. We will continue to build on our fair year after year which in our household is affectionately called “the animal fair”.