Get Me To The Church On Time

Saturday just gone, it was the event of the year in this neck of the woods. Literally. The annual "Sioe", or Show, was held in the flat field just below the Brigand's Inn, overlooking another lower field where the sheepdog trials were run throughout the afternoon. This being rural Wales there was a distinct emphasis on sheep, with the speed sheep-shearing competition and the stall advertising all manner of evil brews for your sheep-dip needs, but other animals were also celebrated - a number of ponies being ridden round a small track by straight-backed immaculately-dressed girls, a sad-looking long-eared donkey from the Donkey Sanctuary offered rides to whoever would pay, and of course competitions to compare and contrast canines of all shapes and sizes.

Not many stalls at the Sioe

I had been invited by the organisers to set up a vegetable stall so I duly went along at 11 with my current range of crops and a miniscule table from my caravan and pitched up. Luckily the stall next door belonged to some friendly neighbours of mine who offered me a spare table so my display didn't look quite so ridiculous. They were much better equipped, having proper gazebos erected over their tables, which is where I retreated to whenever one of the clouds scudding above decided to empty themselves upon us. They did so with depressing regularity.

My first harvest of carrots ready for bagging up

For the first two hours there were simply no punters. Nobody was there. It was a ghost town, a macabre ghost fete where all the rides are working and coconuts being thrown but nobody is to be seen. We assumed everyone had checked the weather and decided to stay in bed, and were resigning ourselves to a pointless day of standing in a field. However around lunchtime a few started to drift in, the ponies showed up eventually, and things lurched into gear by about 2pm. I even began to make a few sales between rainbursts.

Courgette, carrot and Crown Prince squash, chopped and ready for roasting

One woman rather dismissively eyed my runner beans and remarked "So if I were to stand at the side of the road and sell my beans I could charge £1.20 for them could I?" I replied she could charge what she liked for them. Fortunately most of my other encounters were more positive and often ended up with a sale. A couple conversed with me for a while, or rather he did, about vegetable growing and how it was difficult to sell veg at the Sioe because all the prize veg that were submitted for the various competitions ("One Brace of Ridge Cucumbers", "One Dish of Parsley"...) were then auctioned off at the end. My argument was that my veg were bred for taste not size or uniformity and I think he agreed although he still didn't buy anything, having his own large veg garden. His parting shot was to inform me that he was the local vicar.

Spot the lonely ripened tomato. What's holding the others back?

I knew that the village had a church, an ancient squat stone building with what appears to be a mammoth's tusk hung above the entrance, and had even nosed around inside but had found no evidence of a regular service being held. There was a sheet pinned to the notice board informing anyone who cared of a few special services throughout the year at this and other churches, but nowhere that I could see did it say "We meet every Sunday at 11:15am". So it was left to the vicar to tell me that in person.




Two mighty walls of runner beans


A regular reader of this blog may be forgiven for not being aware of what religious beliefs I may or may not hold, although the fact that I had previously been volunteering at a Christian-run community in Dorset might have given a clue. The fact is I try to follow the way of Jesus Christ and had been rather missing the chance to meet up with other like-minded souls for worship. So I went along the following day at 11:15am and sure enough there was an actual service, led mostly in English although the occasional hymn and reading were in Welsh. There were perhaps fifteen or so there, a couple of whom chatted to me afterwards, and the vicar invited himself over to see my vegetable garden.

So despite Saturday's rain, having a stall at the Sioe proved useful not just for the thirty quid I made but, primarily, for the new connections with people I've made. I'd better harvest some cucumbers for sandwiches ready for the vicar's visit!

The garden as of yesterday