Jolly green giant lucks out at virginia show

Damian McCarney
In Virginia Showgrounds

‘The waiting is the hardest part’ sang Tom Petty. So true, and Petty was merely singing about love. He had (presumably) never endured the interminable wait to discover if his cucumbers would be festooned with a Virginia Show winner’s rosette. Lunchtime in the crammed school hall and there’s growing impatience among the exhibitors to discover their fate. Winners or losers. Apparently the delay is down to one judge being, well delayed explains an apologetic steward. That clears that up.
A white screen stretches into the horizon, so the discerning ‘farm and garden produce’ judges can separate the pedigree cucumbers from the mangey mongrels without coming under pressure from competitors. Of course cucumbers are just one of 80-plus vegetable classes; that number climbs into the hundreds for the home industry entries. So time’s a necessary ingredient in divining the winners.
In recent weeks many’s the visitor has been dragged out to the McCarneys’ garden to admire a solitary fabulous, muscular cucumber dangling from the vine as it swirls in the breeze. It’s a holler short of being Tarzan.
The Virginia Show’s requirement for exhibiting two cucumbers did present an obstacle, but not an insurmountable one. Okay I had one jolly green giant, and one chubby avocado in disguise as its wing mate. But scanning the opposition on the Virginia Hall bench-top, they all looked the same. At least mine stood out - an unusually generous girth and prickly skin, gave it a unique selling point, in marketing parlance.
Virginia stalwart James Brady has been coming to the show “maybe 60 years” and used to exhibit livestock. James’s twin brother, the late Francie Brady, was a great breeder of charolais bulls and even has a cup dedicated to his memory. Now James is a chief steward, and has witnessed manys the judging, so the Celt seek his thoughts on the competition.
“There’s a good entry in cucumbers,” he opines, all the time wearing a 150-watt smile that Fáilte Ireland would be advised to sign-up. “They are reasonably uniform. The cucumbers should be equal. If there’s a big one and a small one it mightn’t work so well,” he says, eyes settling on mine.
Hmm.
It gets worse. Any hope that the taste would compensate for their brutish appearance was misplaced: “They don’t taste them,” adds James, “some of the produce they cut them, the turnips especially. To check for brown rot in them, they split the turnips. But they generally judge the cucumbers from the outside.”
Fellow chief steward Rachel Walker from Ryefield has “only missed one or two shows” in her life and is a frequent competitor for veg, cakes and jams.
“Most years I win something,” she relents when really pushed.
Has she ever entered the cucumber competition?
“I have, not this year.”
What’s the winning secret?
“A nice smooth, long cucumber.”
Hmm.
Changing the subject, the Celt asks Rachel if the Show in its 73rd year still retains its appeal.
“It’s getting bigger each year,” she assures. “Even the entries seem to be going up every year, because they keep having to put them closer and closer [on the display table] to get them to fit in.
“I’m over the jam the last number of years. Whereas, going back, say 2006-2007 it was at its lowest, and it’s increasing since then.”
At this point, the hall was cleared for the prolonged judging process, giving ample time to hoke about the market stalls. For many, milling through the stalls - where you can pick up hand-painted family trees, try exotic butters, savour a 99, sample gourmet sausage, buy jewellery or even have your spine examined - is a highlight. The dark allure of blueberries being sold by John Seagar from County Offaly caught my eye, particularly the bottles of blueberry tonic.
“It’s good for so many conditions from the head to the toe,” he promises. “Doctors are recommending it for a whole range of things, and the latest is gout.”
Nearby, Rosie Regan-East from Muff was displaying her crochet virtuosity.
“It’s tea cosies I like to make,” she says, needles doing a polka in her hands. The menagerie of knitted animal tea cosies in front of her, confirms she’s not joking.
Rosie returned home from England five years ago when her mother was ill, and it was her mum who rekindled her passion for this most creative past time.
“I started getting better at it, and trying different things and the tea cosies was where it started making me think - I’ll go to craft fairs and try it at that.”
And how’s it going?
“It’s okay, sometimes it’s not that good, sometimes it is good - it depends on the people and what they want.”
With no sign of judging finishing, the weary Celt is invited to take up an empty seat beside Joan McConn. The Rahardrum lady is promoting the fabulous work of Virginia Cancer Care who provide taxis and financial help for people who are accessing treatment in Dublin hospitals.
Asked if finance is a major pressure on cancer patients, she replies, “Oh yes, yes. Nobody knows better than me.”
Joan lost her husband to cancer on St Stephen’s Day seven years ago, and mercifully her daughter has recovered from cancer.
“That’s why I’m helping out with this. There’s 11 of us [in Virginia Cancer Care], and I must say the public are very very good to us. It’s absolutely fantastic the way people support us, even in this recession.”
Finally the screens were removed, judging was over, the rosettes were placed. I dashed like a diabetic past the hareem of tarts, cakes, and buns, beyond the pales of apples, tomatoes, turnips and beetroots, to the greens. No rosette. I’d missed out.
Consulting my programme I decoded the winner as Raymond Higgins of Roscommon, second was Peter Brady of Edenburt, Virginia, and George Whitely of Billis took third place. Crestfallen I sought to interview the cucumber judge. He politely declined the invitation, deeming it inappropriate to be grilled by a reporter-cum-cucumber-exhibitor. It was therefore left up to cheerful chief steward, Joan Fitzpatrick to pass on his considered opinion.
One entry was dismissed for being too curly, another for being too dark, another for being too cucumbery (I might have made up the latter; I was too disappointed to take it in).
“The ones that came first, he said, were a nice dark green colour,” Joan explained. “He says they are relatively unmarked, compared to some of the others and they are a good big size for cucumbers and you’d know they were grown at home.”
Revealing a little too much the Celt asked Joan if she thought there would be people filtering back into the hall who would be left heartbroken by not winning?
She says that for anyone who lost “there would be a note of disappointment”.
“My own children said ‘Mum look at this stuff, I’m never going to win!’ They said it whole-heartedly. But they still want to have an entry, and they want their name in the book.”