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Autumn Show
A time to relax and enjoy the fruits of your summer labours, and indulge in a glass of wine at the Clubs expense – the Autumn Show on Thursday evening 13th October 8pm in the Village Hall for members only. Bring a few pennies to spend on some lovely bulbs for the garden and the raffle, and something to enter in the Show, especially that marrow grown from the seed you collected at the AGM in February. The schedule is available from Brian Ray on 599728 and consists of:
Harold Blyth Cup – three different fruits or vegetables
June Jones Cup - - marrow grown from AGM seed
Mary Green Cup - vase of 3 different perennials
David Haylock cup - an autumn country arrangement
Domestic Tropyh - blackberry and apple crumble
The Coffey Cup - anything you can make from 5 tomatoes
Evelyn Arnold Cup – photo depicting sunrise or sunset
The Show is very much a Social evening with a light-hearted competition, but this year’s entries were FANTASTIC. Every class had beautiful and imaginative entries that made judging really quite difficult. The increase in vegetables being grown was quite noticeable this year, and reflects the latest news that sales of vegetable seeds are taking over from flowers for the first time since the 1940's.
The class entitled 'anything you can make from 5 tomatoes' produced some wonderful jewellery, edible dishes, drinks and pictures. Jim Rennie's Tomato Smoothie (with a kick) was judged the finest and the Rennie household had a glittering evening all round with Jan taking three trophies. What a star!
Overall the winners were:
Harold Blyth Cup – three different fruits or vegetables - Jan Rennie
June Jones Cup - marrow grown from AGM seed - Sean mcCarthy
Mary Green Cup - vase of 3 different perennials - Diana Frost
David Haylock cup - an autumn country arrangement - Jan Rennie
Domestic Trophy - blackberry and apple crumble - Jan Rennie
The Coffey Cup - anything you can make from 5 tomatoes - Jim Rennie
Evelyn Arnold Cup – photo depicting sunrise or sunset - David Haylock
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H&DGC Recent events
Wandlebury Woods
In recent times, and through the highly informative talks of Simon Leatherdale, we have taken to walking our local woodlands. On Saturday the 15th of October John Gibbs is giving the Club two hour guided tour of Wandlebury with all its history and beauty. To book a place on this tour, ring Sue Ray on 01799 599728. There will be a small charge.
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And then to Sandyfords Vineyard
As the hot days of summer lingered on and talk of severe drought in France and fires in Portugal abounded, our thoughts turned to the impending grape crops of the UK and our local growers Mike & Sue Lindsell at Sandyfords Vineyard in Gt Sampford.
Sue kindly entertained 14 of us on Saturday morning the 13th of August, to talk to us about their venture into grape growing, how they planned it, selected a site, worked the land, sought advise, chose varieties, and eventually stuck hundreds of tiny sticks of vines into the ground. These have flourished into magnificent vines on a masterly staking system that makes them easy to manage and allows enough air circulation.
We walked the site and asked questions galore all morning which Sue never tired of answering, and then tasted the produce.
It was fascinating that the same wine two years running could taste so completely different. How do the big growers do it – they must blend for hours.
All in all a fabulous morning, and we wish Mike & Sue continued good luck with their venture.
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Horse and Pony Show
The Horse & Pony Show took place by kind permission of David & Meryl Haylock at Hill Farm, Hempstead at 9.30am on Sunday the 17th of July. This show offers a wonderful mixture of showing and jumping classes and is ideal for the young horse/inexperienced rider/child/older horse/ new jockey etc, and there is always a clear round ring. There are also more senior jumping classes for the accomplished rider. The H&DGC BBQ team were out in force with their ever-extending menu for meat-eaters and vegetarians, and plenty of cold drinks on hand for the lovely warm day that it turned out to be. Too warm in fact, and by mid afternoon, not everyone could wait for their class. Overall, another dozen horses attending the day would have been great, but a thoroughly good time was had by all who came, and long may this village speciality last.
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Flower Show
The Annual Flower Show took place in the Village Hall on Saturday the 9th of July. The schedules were updated with some new classes and were issued with the Hempstead Newsletter in June. Entries needed to be in the Hall early in the morning as the Hall is cleared for judging at 10.15am. The Hall re-opened at 2.30pm for viewing and the Cups were awarded at 3.45pm. This year saw good entries in the flower, cookery, vegetable and young children’s classes and weak entries in handicrafts and older children. The ‘drinks classes’ have grown in popularity with ‘home brew’ definitely on the agenda in Hempstead.
Our class winners this year were as follows:
Sydney Haylock Cup - Robin Lee, Fruit Cup - Nora Boyd, The Harding Cup - Robin Lee, Thesiger Rose Bowl - Chris Bampton, Milford Haven Cup - Stella Burden, Colonel Smith Award - Anthea McCarthy - Domestic Trophy – Diana Frost, Presidents Cup - Stella Burden, Ken Jones Cup - Robin Lee, Jean Goff Award - Julie Jarman, Sue Walker Cup - Sophie Boreham, June Jones Cup – Harriet Jarman, Margaret Lambkin Cup - Jamie Moses.
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Gardener's Mart
This was held on Saturday the 21st of May 2005 at the bus shelter, one week earlier than usual and is the weekend before the Bank Holiday. This proved successful an we will repeat this date i.e the Saturday one week before the Bank Holiday in 2006).
This year we extended the garden plant section with delphiniums, hardy geraniums, day lilies, rudbeckias, echinaceas and more with prices will be from £1 to £2 generally. There were also the topical plants of trailing fuchsias, verbena, geraniums, petunias, begonias and much more, plus a selection of vegetables, with prices here between 50p and £1.50. We offer extremely good value for good quality plants, and consolidate our prices to simple numbers only for everyone's ease. This event makes up a huge part of our fund-raising for the year, so your support was much appreciated in the £600 taken on the morning and we were delighted to make up the hanging baskets for the Bluebell Inn this year. Next year we will make sure we have more appropriate plants for this venture!
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A Walk in West Woods
In April we set off on Saturday the 23rd for a walk round West Wood. To those of you who live in Gt Sampford reading this, the woods are just a local stroll away, but being 1.8 miles from Gt Sampford itself, we Hempstead folk needed transport for the visit. We met at the Bluebell Inn to maximise occupancy of each car and at the wood, managed to park all the cars holding the 24 occupants with a bit of organisation. We had timed our visit to see the early spring plants take advantage of the light before the trees fully open their canopy of leaves, and this proved to be excellent. Sun filtered gently through the trees to show the bluebells just opening their first colour and the purple spotted orchids in full glory. The path round the wood is easy to walk apart from one boggy section at the southern tip. At a brisk pace you can make the circuit in just over half an hour, but the 24 of us of all ages and fitness, strolled and chatted and explored the regeneration work being undertaken.
As with any good Hempstead outing, a sup of ale back in the Bluebell Inn finished off this short morning, and has hopefully encouraged more walking of our lovely local environs.
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Talk on Dyffryn House and Gardens
What a fabulous evening we were treated to by Mike Thurlow on the 8th March with his slide show and talk about Dyffryn house and gardens in Wales.
Mike is such an energetic speaker and his descriptions of people, events, buildings and plants are wonderful to hear. Augmented with some beautiful colour slides taken all over the Dyffryn gardens and during all seasons, we were treated to an evening of delightful images from the time he spent working there.
We were pleased to give £50 to Mike's preferred charity, The Teddy Charity, at his request.
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