The poster, shown left, is now available for download. Please consider printing some copies and putting them round local shops – it’s a great way to spread the word about the show. The poster is sized at A4 but is sufficient quality to scale up to A3 if you can print to that size.

Members

Are you preparing for the Show?

Do you grow any edible nuts or seeds?

There should be plenty ready -
hazels, sunflowers, pumpkin etc.

Just prepare them as you would normally for eating.

Lots of people make their own non-alcoholic drinks – bring along a bottle with appropriate information, eg to be used diluted or not, and the judges will make them up before they taste them. We are now going to be judging both hen and duck eggs, and some of the ‘any other’ vegetables now have their own class.
In the new ‘Miscellaneous’ section even non-growers can enter the
photo competition to celebrate organic growing in West Yorkshire -
interpret that how you want. And not a new class but a fun one! Bring
an example of this season’s disaster as a photo or the actual plant -
but nothing that will spread pests or diseases. Eg – the most eaten
brassica, carrot or potato, the most pathetic pumpkin or sweetcorn –
don’t be ashamed – we all have them!

In order to publicise the show and get more people to come and look
and hopefully to enter something we need everyone to put up copies of
the schedule or print out the front and back pages and display them
where you work or in local shops etc, or send to your local paper.
Also there will be a stall at Saltaire Farmers’ market on Saturday
21st August giving people a chance to see how we judge the produce and
to have a go themselves as well as our local growers available to give
gardening/exhibiting advice. We had hoped to do this in Keighley but
have heard that it is finishing – a great shame for Keighley – but are
planning to send a piece to the Keighley News instead.

We always need helpers at the show, especially to act as volunteer
helpers for the exhibitors while staging their exhibits and stewards
to support the judging. Also to help with the refreshments, at
registration time and setting/clearing up in general. The thanks you
get for being a volunteer are FREE REFRESHMENTS! Don’t worry if you’ve
not done any volunteering with us before – there will be guidelines to
help the stewards and plenty of people to tell you what needs doing.
Helpers tend to start arriving from 8/8.30 but most help needed
between 10 and 1.30.

Please let me know if you would like to act as a helper and what time
you will be available. We will be very grateful for any help you can
offer.

Finally we are producing a new leaflet to publicise WYOG and are
looking for some photos to go on it. Please email anything suitable to
me – an organic garden/allotment, pictures from recent potato days or
the last show, children gardening or anything else you think might be
suitable. Thank you.

Marion
marionpencavel@gmail.com

The 21st Annual Organic Fruit, Vegetable and Flower Show will take place on the 18th of September, at the Exhibition Hall in Saltaire.

There are sixty four categories you can enter, ranging from ’3 french beans to eat fresh’, to ’3  hens eggs – 1 boiled, 2 raw’. New categories this year include ‘Seeds, one dish ready for eating’, ‘non-alcoholic drinks’ and  what should prove to a fun category – ‘This year’s disaster’!
In addition, there will be:

See The Show page for full details of categories, important information for exhibitors and directions to the show.

The origins of the Group go back to a meeting held in February 1955 to arrange for a display at the Great Yorkshire Show.

When the show moved to a permanent site in Harrogate, two organic growers in Yorkshire – Arthur Ball a market gardener from Masham and Michael Thompson, a farmer from Raywell, suggested to the Soil Association that it should be represented at this major event, to spread the organic message in this part of the country.

The response was to put them in touch with each other and to supply a list of members in Yorkshire and to challenge them to organise it.

They called a meeting and 15 to 20 people met in February 1955 to take up the challenge and to start the group. A committee was elected and Col. Bob Coates (later Sir Robert) Coates became chairman.

They were allocated an awkward triangular site, subject to water logging on the showground, but they got a bell tent and had a display arranged for the Show that July. Thus began an association that has run continuously to the present day. The ground round the tent was used to grow farm and garden crops, with members coming in regularly to tend it, from as far away as Raywell, near Hull. During the Show composting methods were displayed and literature was sold from the tent.

After a few years a better site near the fifth entrance was negotiated, where we had two good fenced plots flanking a decent rented tent in which display boards, literature and bread baking demonstrations were sited. The latter was always extremely popular and the product sold as fast as it was ready, like, well, hot cakes.

The Show Society moved us eventually to the educational area, but rent kept rising. To ease the burden of hiring a tent each year the Chairman started an appeal to buy one. In 1976 the national association had it 30th annual general meeting at York and the local society arranged all the catering for the two-day event and the profits from this effort finally provided enough money for a tent to be bought.

The farm and garden crops grew well and attracted considerable attention before the time when organic methods were generally known and accepted. The national Soil Association supplied posters and literature and in the early years, help from their personnel, including more than once, Lady Eve Balfour – a leading founder figure.

Three sub-groups formed

In 1975 the group was becoming stronger and had enough members throughout Yorkshire to divide into three: for Mid Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and Sheffield areas. The West Yorkshire section was first called the Kirklees Branch of the Soil Association, being especially strong in the Cleckheaton area, but as people joined from the surrounding area it changed its name to the West Yorkshire Group of the Soil Association.

Yorkshire Coordination

The three groups continued to cooperate, in running an information stand at the Great Yorkshire Show – retaining a coordinating committee to do so. This committee formed itself into formal body, to register as a charity (for benefit of tax relief) on 5th November 1991, with the official name of “Soil Association – Yorkshire Groups”.

However at the annual general meeting held on 20th November 2007, it was agreed that the coordinating group had served its purpose as the Soil Association headquarters in Bristol was now regularly running a stall at the Yorkshire Show and staffing it with professionals. It was therefore agreed that the group would wind up and donate its remaining funds equally to the HDRA and the Soil Association.

West Yorkshire

The West Yorkshire Soil Association continued the tradition of local activities.
An account survives of one event, in a programme of a Festival of “Life and Tradition in West Yorkshire” held in Spenborough, the borough then around Cleckheaton, in 1977.

” Talks and demonstrations [were given] on composting and growing a year’s vegetables without using chemical fertilisers; preparation of whole-food and baking whole-wheat bread; food from the hedgerow for salads, cooking, preserving and bottling… We went as a party to York to the national AGM when [National President] Dr Schumacher and Lady Eve Balfour addressed a packed lecture hall.”

The Soil Association was well recorded in the programme, as the Festival Director was Miss Chris Sumner, who had become chair of the Kirklees Soil Association when it came into existence. She was also a very active member of the Bronte Society.

At our AGM in October 1988 it was agreed to invite local members of the Henry Doubleday Research Association to join, and several responded. Following this we visited their new National Centre for Organic Gardening at Ryton, near Coventry on 13th August 1989. We were the first coach party to visit the site, and were met, as we descended, by Jackie and Alan Gear. Lawrence Hills, the founder and Grand Old Man of the Association, had moved into his bungalow on the site and came and chatted with us while we had lunch at the cafe (already producing excellent whole-food menus).

On 7th October 1989 we broke new ground again, by running an all organic vegetable show. It was a great success with plenty of good quality produce submitted and it was clear that we must continue it in later years and that something bigger than the small church hall taken that time, would be needed.

We struggled on with the name West Yorkshire Group – Soil Association / HDRA until the AGM of 4th December 1992, when we agreed to the new name of West Yorkshire Organic Group (WYOG)

In 1998, for the first time, the Show Society formed an Organic Area near the Brown Entrance. This persuaded the national office of the Soil Association to bring a mobile display unit to the Show in 1999. Their professional staff talked to farmers interested in converting to organic methods.

Our joint groups tent (shown above) stayed in the more central site it had used for many years, and catered for the general public, as consumers of organic produce and potential members of the Association.

In 2000 we moved our tent to a position alongside the mobile display unit,and the following year the new Gold Gate was opened – immediately to the side of the Organic Area.

Our last Potato Day was held on Saturday 20th February
at Shipley College, Saltaire

You can find details of other potato days at the potatoday.org web site.

There were thirty-nine varieties of potato on sale at 15p each.

Varieties on sale included:

Ready to open the doors

customers rush in

Selling steadily

Our New Year Meal is at the Boathouse Inn, Saltaire on Friday 29th January 2010 at 7.30pm.

The pub, which was refurbished in great style earlier in the year, is at the end of Victoria Road, Shipley BD18 3LA overlooking the river.
Walk down Victoria Road past Salt’s Mill on the right and turn left at the end and down the steps. There are lots of buses along Saltaire Road and trains to Saltaire station.

Good menu including vegetarian options.
Please let Marion know if you are coming by 25th Jan or phone 01535 663737. We look forward to seeing you there.

Patrick Holden, the director of the Soil Association talked to us at the Bingley Arts Centre on 14th October, on food security in the 21st Century.

He gave us an inspiring and heartfelt talk of his personal journey from London childhood to Welsh dairy farmer, and thus on to his crusade with the Soil Association to turn farming organic as part of the worlds need to meet the challenges of the future.

Patrick Holden was brought up in London. He visited a dairy farm near Epping aged five and decided he wanted to milk cows. He studied biodynamic agriculture at Emerson College in 1972 and started a community farm in West Wales in 1973.

The 93 hectare mixed organic farm is now the longest established organic dairy farm in Wales, with a herd of 65 Ayrshire cows – the milk from which is being made into an unpasteurised cheese by his son Sam. Patrick still milks his cows at weekends.

He has worked for the Soil Association since 1988 and as Director since 1995. During that period income has risen from £200,000 to £10 million and sales of organic food from £50 million to £2 billion.

He is a regular broadcaster and speaker and was responsible for Tony and Pat Archer’s conversion in 1985 and still advises for the Archers on matters organic. He was awarded the CBE for services to organic farming in 2005.

The Bingley Arts Centre proved to be an excellent venue as, with its excellent anteroom to the hall, everyone could enjoy the refreshments and meet up and see the displays.

The 20th Annual Fruit, Vegetable and Flower Show was held at Shipley College on Saturday 19th September.

Martin Bijl introduced Ann Cryer, our local MP, to present the prize. He said the number of entries at 554 was about 150 up from last year. It left the judges with an extremely difficult job deciding on the winners in all the classes.

Mrs Cryer then presented the cups, bowls and the shield.

During the day there were stalls with organic fruit, vegetables and home made products to buy, as well as a selection of hot and cold meals to keep us going.

The Show remains as popular as ever, and we seem to be the only organic one running in the country – some others have run for a while since we set the ball rolling 20 years ago, but none survived for very long.

This year’s Great Yorkshire Show was held from the 14th – 16th July 2009

This year’s Great Yorkshire Show was held from the 14th – 16th July 2009The national Soil Association were represented by their Fund Raising Team at this years Show.
Our group assisted them on the Wednesday and Thursday, answering questions and distibuting our own leaflets.

We held a Plant Stall at Saltaire Famers Market on Saturday 16th May.

Thanks to everyone who helped in any way towards the success of our plant sale on a wet Saturday in Saltaire – helpers, growers, customers, we made a profit of over £210 which was an excellent result. This will be divided between WYOG and Garden Organic.