A Great day at The Benty Show

Yesterday we headed up to Bentpath early morning so Gaye could enter 6 of her lovely house plants into the Benty Show. We had them all in the tent by 9.00am and then went for Coffee to Wilma and George's house and to look round Wilma's beautiful garden, which it turned out was an award winning garden as she won the Shield for Best Garden in the valley. 

This was an award winner last year but the flowers are just a week later this year so Wilma didn't enter it in the show. 

The plants in our car boot, with the exception of the beautiful Japanese flowering one which Gaye held onto in the back seat for our drive up the valley. 

Wilma's lovely greenhouse and the area surrounding it was full of plants in pots.

 

After Coffee I headed back to the Show to see the Sheep Judging. My reason for this was the entry in the Sheep classes of Tarras Valley Nature Reserve Shepherd William Nixon from Cooms Farm which is now owned by TVNR and as a subscriber to the buyout from Buccleuch I feel I own at least one of the Sheep on show. 

Due to the decline in sheep farming in the area with many of the Buccleuch Farms being sold off for forestry there are fewer farms left to enter sheep. The remaining few farmers and Shepherds had however supported the show very well by putting more in than usual so it was still a large turnout of sheep.

It was great watching the judge at work and it took him a wee while to reduce each class down to 4 sheep from which the eventual winner would be selected.

William with his prize winning ram

This was yet another class with over a dozen sheep 

The judge looking at the teeth of one of the sheep

Another class and another win for TVNR and Cooms Farm

The Best in the Show

After we had a lovely lunch in Benty Hall we headed back to the main tent where Gaye Discovered she had won First prize with her Japanese Floweing plant. She also won 2 seconds in other classes.

William being presented with the first of his 4 trophies for the day

Just some of the rosettes for TVNR Cooms Farm and Shepherd William Nixon

The top award

A proud man and a well deserved win. 

Our friend Wilma collecting the first of her 2 Cups and 1 Shield

A lovely view of the showfield with Westerkirk Church in the background

Four Cups for Cooms Farm and TVNR

Walking and Bowling

This was Tuesday and a nice walk in Upper Tarras valley to show Fraser and Tommy the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve

Tommy never wears anything else but shorts back home in California and intends to do the same here. 

Fraser found time to make 3 loaves of lovely bread just like this one.;

We visited Cooms Farm now owned by TVNR and Tommy enjoyed having a go on the Quad Bike as he often uses the one his granddad has in Utah

Many thanks to William the Shepherd at Cooms for making us so welcome. 

Wednesday morning and a walk round the Pheasant pens and the Curly Snake followed by lunch in The Buccleuch Centre.

After lunch we headed to Langholm Old Bowling green for the annual match Grahams v Weatherstone and for the first time the grandchildren competed as well. Tommy soon got the hang of it and his delivery was excellent.

The 2 families plus Tom who took over from Fraser when he had to go to meet his long time friend Alistair Hutton who he hadn't seen for 9 years.

Another action shot of Tommy

Lochan with a nice delivery as well

Gregor the oldest grandchild playing today. He is a natural sportsman and an excellent tennis player and one of the best of his age group in Scotland having recently won a trophy which had been won by Andy Murray over 20 years ago.

And finally the youngest grandchild Struan who also shows great promise. The result was a narrow win for the Weatherstone family but Tommy reckons he will get revenge next year. A most enjoyable day and we ended up visiting Alistair and his family where Fraser and Tommy played a rather complicated card game resulting in another Graham family defeat. Once again Tommy reckons the return match will see a Graham victory.

 

Dry Stane Dyking with my Grandchildren

Last Thursday I along with our grandchildren Hannah & Leo who were spending a few days of the mid term holiday in Langholm volunteered to help Tarras Valley Nature Reserve (TVNR). The plan was to repair a section of Dry Stane Dyke at Cooms Farm ready for Lambing time. There were a couple of gaps in the Dyke and thankfully we had volunteer Mike White with us to show how it should be done. There was 7 volunteers including Kat who is in charge of this. The youngsters worked extremely hard and cleared away the stones as directed by Mike and then begun rebuilding the wall. 

Leo directing operations

The largest section of the Dyke to be repaired

Mike White working very hard at the job. We only did a couple of hours so it will need at least another set of volunteers to work on it next week or even the next 2 weeks. I could hardly get out of bed the following day as my joints ached from lifting heavy stones and I doubt if I will do it again as it is so tough for an old man like me. I was very proud of Hannah & Leo and the other young girl who volunteered.  

Hannah & Leo on their way up to the work site on a truly beautiful morning

Mike telling Hannah what to do. Mike used to work for me at UPS/Atlasair over 30 years ago and was a tremendous worker then and still is today. We could not have managed without him. We did enjoy doing this but I really suffered for a few days afterwards.