Great day out ... and I met Toby

Southampton Allotment and Gardens Association stand
(photo taken towards end of day - couldn't get it all in before as it was always so busy!)

We had a lovely day yesterday at the Hampshire Pumpkin festival I wrote about in my last post. Alex went early to set up the allotment association stand, providing details of the allotments and gardening, and selling wares made from things grown by members.

walking and dancing to the park

They had a great day, when Imogen and I arrived about an hour after it opened their stall was heaving with customers.

Busy stall selling soup, cakes, jams, chutneys, etc

anyone for soup?

Alex was serving the pumpkin soup (from a 45kg pumpkin! - above) we spent most of Friday making, along with a mini roll that I had been making the dough for all week, freezing and then baking on Friday evening. We reckoned that we had made enough for 200-250 servings, and another member made some for probably about 50 servings. It was all sold by about 4pm which was fantastic. The cakes made by the two ladies running the stall with Alex sold out within 2 hours, and the jams, chutneys and preserves sold well too with them only taking home a small amount compared to what they brought with them. Taking out costs, and a 10% donation of takings to the Jubilee Sailing Trust, they made over £500 for the association, more than they ever have anywhere else.

Imogen on the Jungle Run

A good time was had by us all, Imogen and I went around the show for a while, we saw some familiar faces, Imogen made a scarecrow at the Scrapstore stall where we saw a good friend from school so I chatted a while to her Mommy and Nanny (who used to live 4 doors away from our house when she was a little girl). Imogen had some fun on the Jungle Run bouncy castle.

Pumpkins on parade

Pumpkins being weighed

We then watched as they weighed the big pumpkins ... and they were big. Unfortunately the Paton brothers didn't break the World Record, but did break the British one with a whopping 1504lb pumpkin!

The winning 1504lb pumpkin - New British Record

The scoreboard

Toby at the weighing of the pumpkins

Toby Buckland (of Gardeners World fame) was there with a pumpkin grown at their garden - 244lb, and he later walked past me 3 or 4 times as they were filming random shots of him walking through the show, which on the 4th time I was almost laughing and he said hello to us. He then came around to a stand next to ours - Well Seasoned - a new venture promoting seasonal food, nice people. Alex asked Toby if he would have his photo taken with our scarecrow so we were introduced and shook hands and got a pretty good photograph.

Toby and our scarecrow "Sydney"

Imogen had a lovely day running around, marvelling at the pumpkins, drawing, crafting and dancing in her costume which we had some lovely comments about from customers at the stall and people around the show.

Dancing in her costume