I love Autumn. Cooler days, boots, jumpers and scarves. The gradual change of season which brings with it so much fun and wonder.

We live in a fairly rural community. The town we call home surrounded by rich, fertile fenland soil. As Harvest is celebrated around the country, here in my little corner of Cambridgeshire we celebrate by competing with giant vegetables!

Every spring in preparation all local school children are given a pumpkin and sunflower seed to lovingly nurture to gigantic proportions. I remember the crushing disappointment as a child when your sunflower peaked too soon and your pumpkin seed? Well that didn’t do anything!
Now with children of our own we have space in our garden patch for their seeds. Yes, still early with the sunflowers and whilst experiencing some success with pumpkins these days, they certainly won’t be entering any competitions.

Many do though and the final Saturday in September is the annual Pumpkin fair. Whopping vegetables from the town and surrounding villages are brought to the local recreation ground for weighing and judging. Huge pumpkins, heaviest tomatoes, largest onion, longest bean and even heaviest Mangel- what on earth is a Mangel? I’m the country bumpkin and I have no idea!
My favourite category; oddest shaped vegetable. A knobbly potato won this year if you were wondering!

Aside from the vegetables it’s pretty standard country fair fayre, 😉 with a few rides for the children, local groups have tombola stalls, cake stalls, hook a duck and generally the community gathering together. Proceeds from the event are distributed back into local community groups.

I really do love a traditional country fair, being outdoors and hopefully inspiring the children to appreciate what goes on in our local farming community.