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Everytime I pass a sign announcing an agricultural show, I get a little yearning to request a catalogue and see what I can enter.
My very first time entering one was for the Mountbellew Show. I was still in school and had notions as to the prowess of my baking. I entered so many categories the oven was on all day, and as I started to run out of time and patience, I cut corners and cooking times. The end results were scones with the burnt bottoms scrapped off, buns covered with too much icing to hide their irregular shape and a sponge cake that didn’t just have a soggy bottom but a soggy uncooked middle. Despite all this, I got two ‘highly commended’ rosettes for my apple tart and blackcurrant jam, and that was enough to keep me entering for years to come.
Agricultural shows are great community events, where farm families meet socially and rural and urban people share the joy of a very wide range of activities in a big field. Apart from the competitive classes, shows often have live music, dancing, cookery demonstrations, tug of war, vintage agricultural machinery and lots of activities for children. I’ve danced Shoe the Donkey with a man from New York, thrown a few horseshoes (badly), and explained what a hay bob was to a group of visitors from Belfast.
All that aside, the competitions are key to the shows. Where else would you find two farmers washing and blow drying their sheep? Or teenagers proudly walking their animals around a ring dressed in pristine white coats; all in anticipation of a rosette. We didn’t enter the animal classes, but every other class was considered over the years. Most years, way too many classes were entered, but once the form was delivered with the relevant entry fee, the planning started. The house would be full of art projects with glue sticking to every surface, bobbles were made to finish off a knitted hat, numerous spuds used to make pictures of potato prints and home ec cross-stitch pieces were hand washed and framed.
The weekend of the show was filled with collecting armfuls of wildflowers to fill jam jars, trying to decide which six eggs were exactly the same size and fighting over oven space.
I focused on flower arrangements. I arranged flowerrs in a teacup, a shoe, only using greenery, for a coffee table and - my favourite - on a hat. While I was never going to win the largest cabbage class, my tray of mixed vegetables once qualified for the Tullamore Show, which was mega. At one stage, it took both our cars to bring entries from everyone into the Claremorris or Roundfort Show.
Over the years, a tradition started where I would spend my winnings on dinner in the local Chinese that evening, which was a great chance to start planning what we would enter next year. There were years when the entry fees for the children’s classes were more than the winnings, but that’s all forgotten as they collect their rosette or trophy (and a fiver or two).
Following several persuasive conversations with Martin Waldren (RIP) and Maureen Finnerety, we started to get involved in the Claremorris Show, as it - and most other shows - are run by volunteers. John was in the livestock rings, I was in crafts and our girls in poultry and face-painting.
Walking around with the judge, you could feel all eyes on your back and there were necks craned to see if they could spot where I was placing the 1st, 2nd and 3rd cards at the request of the judge. There would be grumblings of, “she always wins,” to, “well, I wouldn’t give that a prize,” but we always escaped unscathed into the tent for a ham salad and cuppa.
If you haven’t been for years, maybe this is the year you’ll have a look at the catalogue - or consider entering that fine head of cabbage. Or, maybe, that dress and hat you got for a wedding might encourage you to enter as a best-dressed lady. You might make enough prize money to have an auld Chinese on the way home.
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