Final countdown

There’s nowt like a bit of pressure! My last show (Sturton) is a week on Saturday and because of that it ‘gets’ just about everything that’s left. That means I can often make multiple entries in carrots, parsnips, tomatoes, cucumbers and dahlias. So far I’m up to about 70 entries which means a lot of planning so I have to make sure everything is ready in plenty of time for loading on the Friday night. As staging is from 7.30am until 10am it doesn’t leave a lot of time for error so I need to be up and away by 6am. There’s nothing worse than having something go wrong when you have so much to do so I will have to make sure everything is packed safely and neatly and that my flowers are well supported for the 54 mile journey.

With so many entries I like to stage my flowers first as they take more fiddly effort to get right and it’s best to spend the time at the beginning rather than rushing at the end….that’s when stems can easily get broken. If I have to rush it can be with the veg at the end as they usually just need plonking down on the benches!

Sturton is unusual in that many entries are staged on the grass outside the school…….root crops, pumpkins, leeks, marrows, cabbages and caulis. I’ve never come across any other show that does this but it does allow them to spread things out and is fine as long as it doesn’t rain. In all the years I’ve been going I can only ever remember one drizzly day. And come 10am I’m usually bushed and ready for a kip so my routine is always to buy a paper at the village store, park up for a bite to eat and a read and then to get my head down for a couple of hours until I go back after judging. It’s a well run show and this year will be the 121st annual show which is some going. There are only a handful of shows older than that in the whole country!

And as I have many, many more 2nd's or 3rd's than 1st's from Sturton down the years it just goes to show that gaining a red card at Sturton really has to be earned.