St Ives Flower & Produce Show 2011

It's the second year for the Show, and with a big increase in exhibits and visitors every sign our equivalent of the horticultural show or village show is now a firm event in the town’s calendar.

We had the advantage this year of starting preparation much earlier than the 10 weeks for last year’s Show, though the series of monthly meetings starting back in March still finished up with much frenzied activity in the last few days. But a great team effort, with everyone falling into their natural roles, saw us all go home after shutting up shop about 17:20 on Saturday with a great feeling of satisfaction and exhaustion.

I’m not sure how I managed to stay awake. Having issued the last draft of the table plan to accommodate all 378 entries, and with the response from Andie “… you’re the man with the slide rule, so I trust your calcs” I was up at 03:00 Friday morning in a sweat. What, the man trusts me. Really? Maybe I’d better check it out. So there I was tapping away in the early hours of the morning doing an even more detailed plan that showed the exact position of each exhibit on each display table. Worth doing though… the scale was exactly right and will remove any uncertainty from future Shows.

Then up 06:00 Saturday morning to pick the best raspberries from the allotment, before hurtling back home to prepare the exhibits. Why oh why didn’t I do some of this days ago… tie the onions for instance?

Finally, before getting on with the job of opening the Show with the rest of the team, a live interview at 07:45 with BBC Radio Cambridgeshire as we were gaining entry to the Corn Exchange.

Congratulations go to Mark Bottoms, clearly the Best in Show winner, taking the Preserves & Produce, Flower & Plant and Country Wine & Home Brewing Sections as well. Other Section winners were Robin Bletsoe: Vegetables, Tom Weightman: Photography, Hayley Weightman: Fruit, Melvin Morton: Bakery and Ella Braddock: Children’s Section. More detailed info below as well as lots of images.

One of the highlights for me was Mark’s offer to let me taste his wines… superb, fruity and red! Couldn’t believe my luck when other competitors made the same offer… just as well I’d completed the scoring for the Show by then.

After last year’s quality entry, this year I went for quantity, entering a whopping 26 exhibits. Here’s what I got an award for…

Fancy bread	1st
Pumpkin	1st
Raspberries	1st
Squash or gourd	1st
Tomatoes on the vine	1st
Fancy bread	2nd
Bottle of home brewed beer	2nd
Bottle of sweet white wine	2nd
Parsnips	2nd
Squash or gourd	2nd
Bottle of home brewed beer	3rd
Oddest shaped vegetable	3rd
Oddest shaped vegetable	Highly commended

You can find out more about the Show as follows…

• To view all the images from the Show click here
• To view a summary of the Show results for all exhibitors click here
• A small sample of images from the Show are shown below, click any to enlarge
• To view all the images from the Show click here
• The first St Ives Flower Show was held in 1876. You can read about it's history, including transcripts of newspaper articles giving lists of winners that are searchable by family historians, at Allotment Heaven: St Ives Flower Show from 1876.
• And if you’re really a glutton for punishment, listen to my live interview with BBC Radio Cambridgeshire by clicking here. And to save you counting, there were a total of 72 ‘erms’ in the interview… all from me unfortunately!

Here are the Best in Show winners, Mark & Colette, with their fantastic set of exhibits.

The night before, with all the tables laid out in the Corn Exchange by 21:00.	Let judging commence! In this case the Preserves & Produce Section.
Judging finished by 12:30, Richard lines everyone up for the official opening to the public, watched carefully by the Town Crier.	The hall fills with visitors admiring the almost 400 exhibits with their results cards displayed.

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