Actually, Lewis and Harris’s regional show time has just ended. For my work with the Horticultural Producers, I attended each one (save the Westside Show in Barvas). These agricultural shows are only partially about the competitions to show off the best tup [see thecroft.wordpress.com blog] or largest potato.

 


Is that Mikey D?

 

I associate shows more with English counties. Cider-drinking men in flat caps or jodhpurs or Paisley cravats. But as this is Scotland and the region is lumped roughly together as the Highlands and Islands, the fetes up here can include pipers, some dancing, and games of strength (the most impressive of which involves a bloke slinging some huge weight backwards up over his head and hopefully over a bar (rather like a pole-vaulter’s target) raised impossibly high above the ground). There are exhibits of baking, knitting, and art, as well.

 


South Harris showground before the drake herding demo

 

But more important than all that is the community feel; a day where local people come together to chat and schmooze. Typically, many island expats, earning their bread in Glasgow or London, are present, too. Add tourists to the mix and the events tend to be surprisingly well attended, even if the days are a bit grim and dreich. At Carloway, bouts of sunshine were interspersed with lashings of rain, driving people to take cover in the marquees and halls.

 

During one, I was looking at the vegetable competition, taking note of winners so that I can chase them to present exhibits at the Horticultural Producers show at the end of the month. Suddenly the room filled, and I thought in typical naivety, “how wonderful that people have such an interest in horticulture.” Chump. Outside it was bucketing.

 


Nice veg at the Carloway show

 

As I am trying to encourage others to exhibit, I thought it only proper that I should try to enter a few exhibits of my own. So all the potatoes I planted in old compost bags and big pots were tipped out. I baked a loaf of my semi-sourdough (Shettleston starter). I started looking at our eggs in a different light. I put my oddly growing but thriving Phledobium aureum (fern-like house plant) out in a gentle shower to wash away the open fire’s fine peat soot (which seems to be clogging the old iMac).

 


Unshown produce from Shelby



 

In the end, the question is: did I lack the nerve or correctly judge my labours as unworthy? I understand better the reluctance that many – particularly new growers – will have towards competition. But as the Royal Horticulture Society’s show handbook points out in more than one place, there is an educational value to these shows.

 

In our case, showing visitors what can be grown on this wind-swept hunk of rock in the Atlantic Ocean.