I know you are never supposed to apologise over this sort of thing, but I had hoped to get the Comice story out there earlier than this. I blame a combination of being VERY tired indeed, extreme heat, the challenges of getting a new van, and a sort of general maiaise (not Covid - but we did check yesterday, we were so off) for not getting down to it sooner.
Friday night wasn't the best night's sleep as we worried about the podium and the rain. We were on the field promptly, but the forecast was still dodgy so we didn't unwrap things until about 10am when we could see no more clouds heading our way. There were also magnificent arrangements of dried grasses and grains, some with a bit of red paint to them, to give a classier air to the stage, in time for the hour and a half of speeches to open the event. I caught up with those on a live stream on Facebook - I really could not be bothered to wait around to see them in person!
The serious stuff on the Saturday morning, other than the speeches, is the Young Farmers' Ploughing Competition - held on slightly adjacent fields, and with its own bar, so the ones on the field were quite quiet. I don't know much about ploughing matches, so I didn't go and watch.
For those of us on decorations duty, the other thing to do was to ensure that the tables were decorated and ready to welcome diners - there were 580 metres of tables, each with benches on either side, giving a theoretical 1,400 covers. We certainly needed them on the Sunday!
There was a certain nostalgic feel to the event - while guingettes are becoming popular again, they were more of a 20th century phenomenon. It was therefore only right that there were a lot of old tractors knocking around and also a few other old implements - this is the chain oil application end of a two person chainsaw that was demonstrated a few times over the weekend. It did the job, but it was loud, fixed and needed two people to make it work.
Day 1 is also about livestock, with a cow competition and a Percheron competition (a local breed of heavy horse). The cows and goats were mostly only in for one day, although a few came back for the second day, just as an interesting feature.
While we weren't there too long on the Saturday afternoon, I did insist on going to see the Percherons. The mares are so beautiful, and the foals often behave so badly! A bit like a Lippizaner, Percherons are generally born dark and as they grow older, take on a grey white colour. They are good work horses - sometimes they are used by loggers to move tree trunks around as they do less damage to the soil than machines - and also make reasonable saddle horses for the portly with long legs and supple hips!
After that, we went off to feed cats, water plants, eat food and rest up as Sunday would be a long day.
The Sunday story should be available during the week - keep an eye out for it!
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