It’s show time: Region gears up for our major gatherings

Nothing better demonstrates the pleasure farmers get from their livestock – or the public’s fascination with the industry – than an agricultural show, writes Nancy Nicolson.

At the heart of the long summer season is the satisfaction breeders get from showing off their lumbering bulls or precision-perfect tups to one another.

It’s about the competition with neighbours and deadly rivals, and it’s about leaning on a fence post and criticising the judge’s decisions for weeks and months ahead.

A show is about tradition, business, a social outing and a lot of talking. Deals are done, drams are drunk, and after a few heady hours it’s over for another year – unless you’re a young farmer and the dance beckons in the marquee.

Agricultural shows are also increasingly about the public’s fascination with the industry that produces its food. Gone are the days when a greasy burger van or watery coffee at the back of a tent were the only catering options.

Twentieth century shows boast an impressive turnout of talented artisan producers who showcase food that’s otherwise only available at farmers markets or by mail order.

You can graze all day on samples of sausages and jams, fruit wines and chutneys, olives, breads and raspberries. Or you can give in and stand in a long queue for delicious hot Arbroath smokies, Aberdeen Angus steaks, venison burgers or flavoured porridge from local oats. Then there’s the machinery. Those in the know arrive early when everything is still pristine, before little children have been levered up into oversized tractor cabs, getting sticky fingers on complex equipment worth tens of thousands of pounds.

And it’s not just the little kids – there’s a lot of machinery envy at a show.

You see it in the faces of farmers as they edge around the latest Claas combine, a mighty Grimme potato harvester or John Deere super tractor.

It’s not just looking or touching either – the dealers don’t haul the huge equipment out for fun. Serious money changes hands, especially at the bigger events like the Highland.

All the senses are engaged at a summer show – oils, powders and polishes as you pass the mysterious closed kists in the cattle and sheep lines. The soundtrack is the commentary of the grand parades and the noise of industrial-scale hair dryers fluffing fleeces and the coats of Simmentals and Shorthorns.

And few passers-by are able to resist reaching out to touch the curved horns of a Blackface tup or Highland cow.

It’s expensive and time consuming for the farming industry to groom and haul their animals to shows week after week.

Dyed in the wool show-goers have their whole summer planned already. And the same goes for your farming editor.

This will be my first summer reporting the show circuit for The Courier, and while the names of the sheep, cattle and horses currently being groomed and secretly pampered are still a mystery to me, I’ve no doubt that by the end of August I’ll know the vital statistics and genealogy of every prizewinning animal in Perthshire and Angus every bit as well as the breeders.

See you at the show.