Fife Agricultural Show

On Saturday we had a stall at the Fife Agricultural Show at Cupar. Unlike the other shows we do (Haddington and Peebles - on the 27th of June and the 15th of August respectively this year, if you're interested in coming along) they didn't give us a pile of stone to play with, just a patch of grass between the sheep pens and the burn which flows through the site. They told us we weren't to keep the car at the site so we dutifully moved it to the car park, but some others nearby just left theirs behind their stalls. 

It was a cracking day - sunny but not too hot, with a bit of a breeze but not so much that we were constantly running after our leaflets. And after I'd moved the banner which I'd not very cleverly put across where our faces would be if we were standing in the stall we had a nice view of the sheep.

In lieu of an actual wall we had a table top mini walling kit. I built a demo wall for people to try to copy. Not my best work, but if you consider the largest stone was less than two inches long, not too terrible either. There was a shortage of hearting, so at least that was realistic.

Various people came over and had a go, a remarkable number of whom struggled to get over their preconceptions of how a wall should built - either that or there were a lot of bricklayers at the show this year. However, there were some who got the idea, including a few natural wallers who got it right without any prompting (I asked one lady who was making a very good job of the base level why she'd picked the stones she was using and she couldn't explain it more than to say, "They just seem right" - she was bang on, as well, all the same thickness, paired up so that they made the same length. Wasted in whatever it is she does, I'd say.). Most got the hang of it after a bit of help - here are a couple of the better efforts.

We had lots of interest and numerous words of support - there certainly seem to be a lot of Fifers who like dry stone walls. We didn't sell any books this time, but we had quite a few people interested in our courses and some people came over from a nearby community project ("Lucky Ewe", it's called) which might be a future project site for us.

Getting out of the show proved a bit of a nightmare as there was only one entrance/exit we could use, and the trade stands (i.e. us) had to wait to bring our vehicles in until all the livestock was moved - a process which took well over an hour. We gave up waiting and started moving the stuff out to the car by hand, which turned out to need about ten journeys back and forth carrying as much as we could lift each time. Predictably, they started letting the trade vehicles in just as we got the last of the stuff out, but at least it meant we got away smartly. If we do the show again I think we might just do as the others did and "forget" to take the car back to the car park ...

​On the way home I dropped the gazebo etc. off at our training site at Merryhill. There was a training course going on over the weekend, and by the Saturday evening they'd done a pretty good job of the bottom two-thirds or so of the wall.

And here's the finished job on Sunday afternoon, with the (rightly) proud builders (thanks to Kevin for the photo).