NSA Sheep Centre at the Royal Highland Show
Date: 23rd June 2016 - 26th June 2016
Location: Royal Highland Showground, Ingliston, EH28 8NB
As ever, this year saw a fantastic turnout at to Royal Highland Show with the Sheep Centre’ marque proving to be a busier than ever with everything ‘sheep’, incorporating stands with everything from woollen fabrics, to fleece displays and tagging information. George Milne, NSA Scottish Region Development Officer, reports: “The marque is located in a prominent site is one of the largest promotional marques if not the largest at the RHS. This year the Scottish Region committee and office bearers did a fantastic job in putting on a great display. The marque included sheep breed stands, BWMB, fleece competition, Moons high quality woollen fabrics, tag manufactures and a tweed forum showing the importance of an active integrated farming system for the reduction in water pollution. Live displays included stick making, spinning, lamb tasting and lamb dressing competition for the younger generation. A new business area was also created this year and proved very successful allowing members and guests to sit and have a coffee and catch up with the NSA office bearers on duty.
Lamb tasting proved to be another popular attraction, having returned to the line-up after its successful introduction at the show last year. George continues: “Following the success of last year’s relitivley small scale lamb tasting opportunities, this year saw the NSA Scottish Region Committee decide to up the heat. Picking the theme of ‘Simple, easy, bbq lamb’, we demonstrated how easy and versatile lamb can be to cook on the bbq. With the assistance from Scottish Craft Butchers, Stewart McClymont butterflied a leg of lamb and spoke about the benefits Scotch lamb. The butterflied leg was then cooked on the bbq to show how simple it is to cook a large cut of meat to feed several people.Chef Chris Trotter was on hand to dish up salsas and sauces to go with the delicious tasty cuts, including lamb leg steaks, lamb chops, rack of lamb and lamb kebabs, were then dished up cuts for the public to sample, having kindly been supplied to us from Aldi.
I would like to thank everyone involved in the marque for their huge amount of time and effort in making a spectacular display for the many visitors though the stand. What a great PR exercise.”
Maximising their ‘fame’ since appearing on the BBC’s This Farming Life, George and Sybil Macpherson pulled off a fantastic charity fundraising stunt at the Royal Highland Show. Sybil, who is NSA Scottish Region Chairman, took to the main ring to perform the annual ‘official clipping of George’! His beard was removed in just over five minutes using a combination of traditional shears and electric clippers. The pair have already raised more than £4,000 for Macmillan Cancer Support Scotland. If you missed the show, the video is well worth a watch - click here to view it.
