A particularly busy week means our blog is later than normal – mainly a result of spending hours watering trying not to let everything die, and spending Sunday night prepping or cooking various overgrown food we found in the garden and that needed freezing before it went off. A rather unusual random find was a giant lettuce that had grown semi-soft spikes – not really suitable for a salad so we made lettuce pesto out of it instead to freeze for another day.
The new experience for us this weekend though was our first ever flower show – our local village has been running the Yarcombe Flower Show for 50 years now! We weren’t really sure what to expect – we’ve heard stories about some shows that are very serious and have seemingly-professional growers; and others that are more intended as a bit of fun. There were 108 classes in total, split across flowers, vegetables, cookery and handicrafts/photography, with a section specifically for children too, so it felt pretty serious and thorough.
It felt a little overwhelming looking through them all – we wanted to enter something so as to take part and contribute to the event – but not really knowing the quality and how many people get involved, it was hard to choose! We ruled out Flowers given that we don’t spend much time on the ones in our garden (and don’t even understand what some of the flower classes were (‘penstemons’??) – and Handicrafts aren’t really our strong point. And quite honestly, we didn’t have much time to think about it or investigate the multi-veg classes (were all 6 runner beans supposed to be the same size, or the same shape, or be a certain ‘snap’?). So we went for three easy options – ‘Jar of chutney’, the ’Longest runner bean’, and the ‘Any other vegetable’ class. We dropped our entries off in the morning and waited…
When we arrived for the results in the afternoon, we were amazed by the number and quality of entries, despite being told that morning that this was designed to be a fun event that brought the community together! The whole village hall was filled with entries all laid out in sections – with the ‘gardening’ section full of bright flower heads in vases or displayed in trays of sand (this was a novel concept to us!); huge and perfect-looking vegetables; and amazing flower and vegetable arrangements. The ‘cookery’ section prompted a lot of people to ask how to become a cake taster! Even the children’s cakes looked good enough to be served in a shop.
It was also really nice to see so many people turn up for the event – our village is only small (500 people in the whole parish) and it’s been good to get to know a few more people over recent months. We were particularly proud to win second prize in TWO of our classes (in fairness only two people entered the ‘Any other vegetable’ class) and I’m told it’s the first time a chilli has ever been entered in the Yarcombe flower show!! It’s certainly given us an idea about what’s expected and the quality, so gives us something to aim for next year :-)
Ley Farm Cottages 
Well done!! Dahlias too next year I hope!
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