‘Everyone goes to the Show’

Virginia woman Catherine McCabe has gone to Virginia Show all her life. She has competed in various categories since the 1980s, when she started entering photographs she had taken throughout the year of different things that had taken her eye.

“I don’t think I ever missed a year,” says Catherine.

“But I wouldn’t be the only one.

“A lot of the same people enter, and in the last few years, there were quite a few new people entering,” she adds.

“It’s nice to see what other people do.”

When the Celt visited Catherine’s home outside Virginia, she was flicking through the booklet for this year’s show, marking each category she might enter.

Last year, she won first prize for her tomatoes and potatoes, and her carrot cake and cherry cake. She also received second prize for her plain scones and third prize for her chocolate biscuit cake.

This year, she thinks she will probably enter a carrot cake, a cherry cake and scones; and tomatoes, provided they are red enough.

She will definitely be entering boiled potatoes, which her husband Padraig grows up the lane. He will probably enter hay himself, and he might enter straw. When the show was held in September, he would have sheaves of oats to enter but it may not be cut in time for Show Day.

Catherine later moved from entering photographs to flower arrangements, using flowers from her friend Sean’s garden. It is not a requirement to grow your own flowers for arrangements.

She stopped entering flowers around 10 years ago, and has since focused mainly on baked goods. Much of the baking is done the night before the show so that it looks and tastes as good as possible, and some may even be done that morning.

In her experience, the standard at Virginia Show is very high.

“The competition in flowers is serious,” Catherine says.

“I don’t know how they grow them, there doesn’t be a fleck on them. They are perfect.”

Catherine enjoys the healthy competition involved in taking part in the show. She also likes seeing other people’s presentations and the judging, as well as the cookery demonstration and having a look at the stalls.

“It makes you look at everything,” she says of entering the show.

Attending Virginia Show since she was a child, Catherine remembers that she “always looked forward” to it.

She has fond memories of different aspects of the show down through the years, and of sharing many of those memories with her five children - her four daughters and one son.

“We all loved the stalls on New Street,” Catherine reflects on her childhood.

“They were a big draw, and even when my children were small, that was their thing. There was always a real atmosphere on New Street.”

She also enjoyed sitting on the hill to watch the showjumping and going to the show dance, which took place on the night of the show in the farmer’s ballroom - now the site of Virginia College.

“You wouldn’t miss it,” she says of the dance.

“Everybody would be at it. It would be packed.”

Catherine sees the Virginia Show as “part of the year".

“Everyone goes to the show,” Catherine says.

“You meet so many people that you mightn’t meet from one year to the next.”