Produce Day 07
A report on BOG's 2007 Produce Day - Images in the Image Gallery. This report first appeared in BOG News.
On Sunday, 26th August, the BOG Produce Day, the first for several years, was held at St. Boswells Village Hall. It was, even with the fine sunny weather, a tremendous day which all our visitors really enjoyed.
Despite the really bad growing weather this year, members came up trumps and brought in loads of vegetables, flowers, fruit, and herbs to fill the display tables, together with delicious home made soup, cakes, jams and other goodies to make the teas as memorable as the exhibition. The hall looked stunning with loads of colour and all sorts of interesting items on show. I found it particularly helpful that many people had added written information on the varieties they had grown, the conditions they grew in and further details of interest to other gardeners.
Besides the Produce displays, we also had a display of photographs of members' gardens and a display prepared by Val Smith on varieties available through the Heritage Seed Library, which caused a lot of interest. The photographs let people get an insight into the bigger picture of real hands-on organic gardening, while the Heritage Varieties display showed how many traditional varieties were in danger of being lost, something many people do not fully realise. And in true organic gardener fashion, several people brought in seeds for other gardeners to take away and try.
There was also plenty to eat and drink. Besides the teas, there was also the opportunity to try tasting a selection of salads and raw vegetables and a number of potato varieties, freshly cooked in several ways. I was particularly interested in this as you rarely get the opportunity to make this sort of direct comparison. Surprisingly, Pink Fir Apple make particularly good chips!
As well as selling teas, we had a stall selling surplus produce as well as a devious system allowing people to buy items from the displays, at the discretion of the exhibitor, for collection at the end of the show. We had decided that all the proceeds from these sales would go to Farm Africa, a charity that works with rural farmers in Africa. I was delighted to hear that we had raised over £400 for this really worthwhile cause.
Although the Produce show is essentially non-competitive, there was, one hotly contested competition - the prestigious BOG Catastrophe Cup. There were several very impressively catastrophic entries, but our Chairman finally made the difficult decision and this handsome trophy was presented to Kate Potts of Newton by the Sea, for a truly pathetic cucumber plant which had thwarted all Kate's efforts at nurturing.
The BOG Produce Show really displayed everything that is best about organic gardeners and BOG members in particular. It was relaxed and informal, involved a lot of exchanging of ideas and materials, inspired many visitors to give organic gardening a go and spurred us all on to try something else in our gardens next year. A great day for everyone!
Judith Davison
