Swizzle and friends at the Devon County Show

A grand day out in Devon

Last week, we went to the Devon County Show and every year, child one and child two look forward to going this South West celebration of all that is produced in the county.

It’s a great event that highlights many of the good things that are produced in Devon.

Organised by the Devon County Agricultural Association, farming is at the heart of the occasion.

A few highlights

One of the highlights of the day is wandering through the livestock areas. The best cattle, sheep and pigs are all prepared to be shown off to their best effect in the show rings and when they are not parading before the thousands of visitors, they are resting in their pens.

The cattle just settle down to chew the cud, sheep may do the same or they may take a greater interest in the food in the next door pen and the pigs, well they just grab forty winks and sleep in the straw.

One thing that often proves to be a popular competitor between child one and child two is who can collect the most freebies and goodie bags so we were interested to see what they came back with.

Well, the answer was, very little. Usually they have at least one bag full of the likes of key rings, fuzzy bugs, little plastic tubs of mints and a handful of plastic bags with one leaflet inside and a company logo on the front.

It was totally different this year. There were some bits and pieces but not nearly the volumes of previous years, so we have two theories - either the children have lost their collecting skills or the message to reduce waste is getting through as most of the stuff ends up in the bin. So that’s a positive sign.

At Swizzle and friends, we are trying to do what we can do to reduce the use of plastic but we are part of a growing movement of many individuals and organisations.

We did meet up with one such organisation that operates out of South Devon. Surfing Cow Devon Ice Cream is also a young company that is run by Lawrence and Lee Glanville and uses milk from their own dairy herd - so it travels just metres from the milking parlour to the ice cream parlour.

The couple and their family have chosen their core flavours and, being close to the coast, they are very aware of the issue with single-use plastic.

Often, when you buy a tub of ice cream, you get a plastic spoon to eat it with but at Surfing Cow, they offer you a wooden spoon instead. Some may consider this a little thing but if everybody does little things then between us, we can achieve great things.

So, that was two great things to discover at this year’s Devon County Show - less waste being given away to probably end up in the bin and delicious fare from Surfing Cow Devon Ice Cream.

To see pictures from the Devon County Show click here, here and here.

To find out more about Surfing Cow Devon Ice Cream, click here.