You sometimes hear it said that the ubiquitous supermarket and the increased mobility of the rural community have between them almost done away with the kitchen garden, even among farmers. But as those great autumn festivals known as Agricultural Shows - the modern replacement for the gatherings of long ago so well recorded and recalled for us by Maire Mac Neill in her great book The Festival of Lughnasa - demonstrate, the kitchen garden lives on, and even the farmyard keeping of fowl, though that may be rare enough. For, although the biggest draw at such shows is always among the champion horses and cattle and sheep - indeed they are the main reasons for having such an event - you will find that in those newspapers which report them in detail (good for them), that prizes are still given for "five stems of parsley" or "best two cucumbers" or for "five shallots".
You might argue that when the honours are given to "Five tubers of Golden Wonders" or "Five tubers of Roosters" or of British Queens, that these came from a huge acreage of these potatoes, but five sprigs of parsley surely can only come from a spot not far from the kitchen door. And there are clearly defined classes of Home Industries, notably in the baking of bread and cakes: potato cakes, wheaten cakes, sponge cakes, boxty cake, apple tart, shortbread and much more. Jams, too, of course, gooseberry, blackcurrant, rhubarb, apple jelly and so on, then chutney, bottled fruit and homemade pickle.
Wines, too, white and red. Would the white be elderberry flower and the red from the fruit of the same? We are reading all this in the two-page coverage in the Anglo Celt of Cavan (September 3rd) and the page in its contemporary and neighbour the Meath Chronicle of September 5th, of the Virginia Show, one of them remarking that "the Show seemed almost threatened by its own success, with packed car parks on all approaches." And there's also craftwork and fruit and flowers and dogs, and, because all the community gets on stage, children's classes including - bravo in this mechanical and electronic age - handwriting. Many, many more classifications while, as noted above, the main raisons d'etre of an Agricultural Show - horses, showjumping, cattle, sheep etc. - take pride of place. But so much has been made, even here, of the apparent decline of the kitchen-garden and farmyard poultry, it's fair to show how much contrary evidence there is. Y