ON THE ROAD TO PUMPKIN MECCA
There’s a lot more to gourds than just soup, as Julienne du Toit discovered when she helped to judge a Nieu Bethesda beauty show
IF you thought being a judge at the Nieu Bethesda Pump Palooza Festival was a walk in the park, think again. You have to know your way around a bunch of varietals such as Big Moose, Jack-be-Little, Turk’s Turban, Blue Doll, Red French, Long Island Cheese, Lesotho Charlie and the locally bred Bethesda Big Flat Pink Lady.
When we were invited to the festival on Easter Saturday last year, I initially had light-hearted thoughts on the matter. A series of pumpkin scarecrows on street corners pointed us to the venue, a lovely stretch of grass between the Karoo Lamb restaurant and the local drinking hole.
Organiser Reinet le Roux had seen fit to appoint my husband Chris Marais and me as two of the six judges. In a cunning move designed to avoid bitterness and blood feuds over pumpkin arbitration, all six judges were from out of town.
I was in a cold sweat. One look at the displays and I knew the competitors were deadly serious. Categories included Sexiest, Most Beautiful, Weirdest, Funniest, Smallest, Best Dressed and Best Carved. There was even a mystery category called The Hidden Beauty. Hey?
The place was, as is usual on holiday weekends, packed with visitors from all over the country and abroad. Nieu Bethesda remains one of the hottest drawcards in the Karoo. The locals came bearing pumpkins of all shapes and sizes, a bakkie-load of great expectations and a wondrous thirst, to be slaked throughout the day at Ian Allemann’s Ramstal bar.
Sexiest Pumpkin seemed, to most of the judges, to be a no-brainer. There was a gorgeous Hubbard squash, shaped a bit like one of those love nuts you find in the Seychelles, adorned with a pole-dancer’s thong. A clear winner, by all accounts. But no, said a dissenting fellow judge, the artist Albert Redelinghuys. “It’s just too obvious. Spend more time with the pumpkins, look deeper and you will see most of them have amazingly sensual curves.”
So that’s why, if you were a fly on a gourd that day, you might have spotted half a dozen people wandering about, surreptitiously fondling rival pumpkins.
There was a bit of an issue with the Best Carved section. Shake the Nieu Bethesda creative tree and all sorts of artists will drop to the ground. Ceramicists Charmaine and Martin Haines, sculptor Frans Boekkooi and painter David Langmead all recused themselves, otherwise you would have had to fly in some famous European art critics for the judging — and immediately sneak them out of the village after they had rendered their verdicts.
There was also a pumpkin on display that was so lovely it would have won most of the categories, hands down. Unfortunately, a Sneeuberg-based porcupine had had its way with the curvaceous veggie and it was now a nibbled shadow of its former self.
“Bloody ystervark ,” cursed one passing sheep farmer. “That was the best one, and now it’s all ugly.”
As the storm clouds gathered over the looming Compassberg, farmers noted the drop in the barometer and the direction of the wind and advised master of ceremonies Willie Olivier to get on with the final event — the auction of something special. Olivier exhorted the crowd to spend generously — proceeds went to old-age homes in nearby towns.
The auction “article” was a brilliant painting by Redelinghuys of a giant pumpkin hovering above Nieu Bethesda, like a supremely edible Starship from a cabbage patch in a galaxy far, far away.