Award-winning farmer - tea and trophies!

For the last 3 years, the farmer has been invited to enter the local agricultural show with his dairy cows. It’s no skin off his nose, he says modestly – the judges come to the farm rather than him schlepping to the show with the cows – but I can tell he’s secretly delighted when he wins in every category. Who wouldn’t be?

I’m just green because the one time I was shortlisted for a long lusted after Glenfiddich Food & Drink writing award, I lost to a bloke who wrote about beer in a Yorkshire rag. I was bereft! The prize giving (or not, in my case) was hosted at the swanky Hempel Hotel in London, all sunken white seating and sculpted bonsai trees. Pre-ceremony, the farmer ordered us 2 glasses of champagne at the bar and handed over 20 quid; it wasn’t enough.

A fortnight ago, the annual prize giving for the Nairn Show was held at the lovely seaside Golf View Hotel. Recently refurbished in muted tweeds and soft chocolate leather, the bar certainly looked the part but sadly didn’t do champagne by the glass, I was told. I settled for a glass of pinot grigio that tasted of oak thanks to a communal bar measure, but I hadn’t the heart to complain – it was the farmer’s big night after all.

The function room was laid out with big tables swathed in white linen bedecked with polished silverware, but this was nothing compared to the trophy table. Dazzling silver cups, rose bowls, salvers and coffee pots (don’t ask me why) of all shapes and sizes twinkled and shone under their spotlight. There were even more trophies than I remembered from the last time we were here - mysterious double-booking had prevented us from attending the previous 2 years...

Taking a seat beside the farmer, I searched the trophy table...and yes, there it was, not quite hiding in the middle – the cow trophy. Of the six prizes that the farmer wins every year, the cow trophy is the least tasteful. (Despite my love of all things 'farm' in our house, the moulded Friesian does not fit with my definition of farmhouse chic!)

A fortifying meal of tasty lentil soup followed by roast local beef with all the trimmings preceded the surprisingly speedy prize giving. And when my lovely farmer went up for his prizes, I clapped loudly and proudly, silently hoping the ‘cow’ might slip from his grasp amongst all the other trophies. (It didn’t.) And once again, I passed suitably feminist comment when the WRI trophies for best housewife, best chutney and best jam were awarded, while inwardly cursing these doyennes of domesticity. ‘Granny always used to win best jam,’ the farmer remembered fondly. That figures. His mum, his granny...clearly he has the jam-making gene!