Page 68 - Simply Vegetables Winter 2021/22

Welsh Branch
As we all know we have all had another disrupted year due to covid. At long last we held our A.G.M. on 9th October, seven months after our normal date.
We have been quite a while
without a branch secretary. Well
at long last we have one, David Thornton has volunteered, and
with a person of David’s experience
we are all delighted. I am the new chairman and Arwyn Edward is
our new vice chairman. We were
lucky to have Owain Roberts as our treasurer for the last year and Owain has agreed to continue. Likewise, Gareth Morris continues as our membership secretary. Sue McCall
has agreed to continue as minutes secretary. In the last issue of Simply Vegetables, I appealed for people
to consider coming forward to join
our committee. Well, I’m pleased
to report three people have come forward. This pleases me most of all, it’s a great feeling when people want
to get involved with our great hobby. All other committee members were re-elected. We also had a longstanding vacancy for a trustee. We still have Robert Holmes as a trustee. The Welsh Branch also encompasses Ireland,
and we were very pleased to welcome Raymond Higgins to our committee. Raymond attended via Zoom.
We are all looking forward to next year’s Royal Welsh show and hope we can put up a display and engage with
the public once again. These are the sort of things we’ve been missing, along with our branch show obviously. Because our branch show has not taken place for the last two years, we had two Banksian medals for those years. The advice from the RHS was to award them to two people who have done sterling work for our branch.
We awarded one to Eirian Jones our longstanding committee member
and show manager. The other to Alan Hopkins. Alan was a top exhibitor at our show until 3 or 4 years ago, Alan has still grown some lovely vegetables and given them to us for our Royal Welsh display.
Congratulations must go to all the Welsh branch members who exhibited at the national show, including the first three places in the collection class, and the same 3 people did
it again at the Midland branch championships at Malvern.
Eirian Jones
Our committee meetings have been arranged for 27th November 2021, 19th March 2022, meeting followed by A.G.M. 25th June 2022 and 1st October 2022.
Our Branch show is planned for 20th and 21st August 2022 at Wrexham. Let’s hope its third time lucky.
Ivor Mace
Next year’s committee meetings:
Saturday March 19th 2022 Committee Meeting Saturday March 19th AGM 2022 2pm start Saturday June 25th 2022
Saturday October 11th 2022
Saturday November 26th 2022
All meetings start at 11 am, except the AGM
All the meetings will be held at:
The Lamb and Flag, North Street, Rhayader, Powys
Obituary: John Warren FNVS 1948 -2021
It is with great sadness that I report the passing of John Warren. His sudden and unexpected death on 10th September came as a great shock to everyone. John loved the world of soil and seed and appreciated the beauty of life. Born in Enniskeane, Co. Cork, from an early age John would help his father grow cabbages in a small plot adjacent to their house. On school holidays John and his brothers would go with their father to work for local farmers thinning turnips, picking fruit and harvesting potatoes. He was a gifted student at school and graduated with an engineering degree from University College Cork in 1971.
John started work with the Department of Posts and Telegraphs in Dublin (Later
Telecom Eireann). From 1977 onwards he began exhibiting at horticulture shows in the greater Dublin area, starting with Vegetables first, then fruit and flowers as well. Later
on he went further afield to shows such as Tullamore, Virginia and Belfast. He became involved at an organisational level in his local show in Malahide where he served as secretary from 1984 onwards.
John took early retirement from his day job with Vodafone in 2008, then his real work began, he could dedicate more time to his roles as allotmenteer, organizer, exhibitor and winner at shows. In addition to all this he did Astronomy at nights. Most days he would read the Irish Times, then go to work on the allotments. He always had time to
68 Simply Vegetables