It's Showtime - The Accidental Smallholder

Posted: Sunday 27 June, 2004

by Rosemary at 8:50pm in Agriculture 1 comment Comments closed

Dan and I made our annual visit to the Royal Highland Show on Friday. The weather was lovely - which was great because it bucketed rain on Thurady and Saturday.

I love the Highland. I started going when I was a student - as an agricultural student, it was part of the course of study to spend four days a year in the late, lamented Herdsman bar. I don't do that anymore but I enjoy it justa s much and maybe more.

I was very fortunate to be introduced to Mr Willie Allan, renowned breeder of Highland ponies and, indeed, breeder of my own Smokey. Despite all the ponies he must have bred over the years, he seemed to remember every one and seemed genuinely interested in their progress. Smokey's (remember his proper name is Munro of Millfield) full sister was at the show (Misty) and his half brother, MacCallum (aka The Bandit). Smokey and the Bandit - get it! Bandit is much smaller than Smokey and yellow (I think) dun. He also had a wad of red rosettes to his credit.

Dan and I spent a good long time in the Food Hall, as always.

There seemed to be a lot of small scale poultry equipment for sale - more than I remember in previous years. The poultry tent was almost empty - I don't know whether the chooks had gone home or were still to arrive or whether the entry was very, very poor.

I did look longingly at the Jersey cows, but Dan said "No". We also had a wander round the goat tent but I think dairy is still out of our sphere at the moment.

Just before we left, we watched the heavy horse turnouts. There were 11 unicorn turnouts. There were teams of Clydesdales, Shires and Percherons. A unicorn consists of three horses; two are wheelers, directly infront of the wagon and separated by a shaft, with the third horse out in front. It doesn't look the easiest thing to drive, particularly since the horses must be about 17.2 hands and weigh about a tonne each. If they decide to go, I'm not sure it's that easy to stop them. One team did get a bit spookey and were withdrawn. The others were split into three groups and were asked to walk and trot round in both directions. Some of them didn't seem to do "walk".

All in all though, it was pretty spectacular and , for me, knocked all your Ferraris and Lamborghinis into a cocked hat!