I wasn't quite sure where to put this post - it involves growing stuff, making stuff, and generally busy life stuff. So it ended up here, and will be linked to from the other two blogs.
This weekend was the village show (as you may have guessed from the title of the post...) I was aiming for saturation this year - I entered 14 different classes. Frankly, this was a mite foolish, given the sort of week we've had, but hey. I failed to enter any photography this year, having misplaced the relevant card. I'll put the photos up when I find them, though, so they'll have their five minutes of fame (appearing in a post on my blog; fame? Hardly!).
I'll start with the things I didn't win any prizes for:
Some lovely flowers. Well, not lovely enough to win a prize. Looking at them in this shot, the left most stem does look a bit feeble, but I'm pretty sure there were more flowers just out of shot...
A large pumpkin. Ok, so it's not going to win any national awards, but it was big. Again, not good enough for a prize though. Mr Peach's very fine cucumber took first in this class (can you sense the slight bitterness in my voice?).
Any this is the entry that bore the brunt of my bitterness. 'Under cooked', apparently. In my humble (and entirely unknowledgeable) opinion, they were, if anything, slightly over cooked. I can't stand dry flapjack. The vast amount of treacle in Granny's amazing recipe means that they are, by nature, squishy and sticky. Under cooked, my foot.
Bit gutted that the jam didn't pick anything up, but comments are to be learnt from in this case :) So I'll have another bash next year. I've just found a blackberry and sloe gin recipe. Sounds good!
Ok, so runner beans aren't really my forte, it would appear. The ones on the left are mine, the ones on the right are those of Mr Peach (yes, he of the cucumber). His won. Mine fell far short. In fact, there are two classes for runner bean. One is 'six beans', as seen here, the other is 'longest bean'. My longest bean was shorter than a number of others' regular beans. More manure needed perhaps...
And blackberries. Turns out they're supposed to be displayed with stalks on, according to the comment on someone else's entry. Live and learn.
There was also some elderflower cordial, though I don't appear to have a photo... Oops (it also means I somehow miss-counted my entries and only put 14 on the entry form, when there were, in fact, 15. Thankfully, I paid more than enough to cover the error!)
So, they're the things that didn't get anywhere. A couple of third prizes:
Tomatoes. These were five of the six ripe tomatoes. I have about a billion tomato plants, and only six ripe tomatoes. Still, they bagged a third prize.
One vegetable and one bloom. A pumpkin (same type as the large one, just a lot smaller!) and a rather smashing dahlia. I was pleased with the dahlia!
Then some second prizes:
More dahlias. Though there seems to be some confusion over what prize this was awarded... The judges comment card says '3rd', the certificate (which I'm choosing to believe) says second. There were only three entries here. One entry seemed not to have garnered an award, while first prize went to, yes, you've guessed it, Mr Peach. Again, deservedly so:
And then my proudest moment was this:
Second prize in the bread plait class. And the first time I've ever made a bread plait. Wholemeal, at that. It actually tastes quite lovely, too.
And finally the firsts:
A plate of five eating apples. Feel a bit of a fraud with this sort of thing, as I can't really claim to have 'grown' them, given the tree's been around for a while. I suppose I did select them quite carefully though... And I'll happily accept a first, anyway!
And a squash. Which I can take full responsibility for, having grown it from seed. I'm a bit baffled as to what makes it first-prize-worthy, but again, I won't complain :)
Mr Peach won the best veg and the best flowers (the man is an allotment machine) and Mr Johnson won best fruit (cooking apples). Most points (awarded the Crockett cup) went to Robert Crockett.
A few reasons why I enjoy the village show:
It's about creation. Some of it needs to be created by those who enter; much of it is merely delighting in creation itself. Both these aspects of life are very important to me. I enjoy doing stuff in the garden partly because I think that takes us back to our roots - created in a world with responsibilities to fend for ourselves in so many ways. But also with the responsibility to see the way God's creation continues to provide for us.
It's about competition. Not vicious competition (at least, not in our village...), but a bunch of people doing something they enjoy with the added bonus of coming together to share what we've done (and, in my case, to marvel at the abilities of other people to grow perfectly straight beans!)
It's about community. Our second year here, it was a very quiet show, and there were classes (categories!) that had fewer than three entries. (This led to perhaps my lowest moment at a village show - my sweet peas won third prize, despite the fact that they were the only entry in the class...). This year, it felt like the village show was very well supported and many people were involved. Of course, like anything, a minority of people do the majority of stuff, but there were plenty of people involved, even if that simply meant turning out for a village event.
