STARVED of point-to-point action over the summer, the highlight for many people during these months is a visit to their local agricultural show.

Unfortunately, just as Covid-19 brought a halt to racing between the flags and on the track, so too it is having a major effect on this year’s showing season, with all but two of the 14 summer fixtures affiliated to the Northern Ireland Shows Association having been cancelled.

At time of writing, Killyleagh Show is listed as being postponed while Balmoral has been re-scheduled to August 19th to 22nd.

Joan Cunningham is hopeful that the unaffiliated Saintfield Horse Show will take place at its new location in Ballybannon, Castlewellan on Saturday, August 1st, allowing competitors a chance to get a ‘run’ into their animals prior to Balmoral.

The show, which caters for a wide variety of horses and ponies, is also an important fund-raiser for the I Am Family Ministries bore hole fund in Uganda as is the Saintfield Christmas Charity Ride.

Following last year’s Ride in the Co Down town, Joan presented a cheque for £3,000 to Pius Kulama who, 10 years previously, was a 14-year-old member of the Mawamba Choir who entertained all on the Ride and the many volunteers needed to run such an event.

Since then, with help and sponsorship from I Am Family Ministries, he went on to University and earned a Bachelor of Science in Quantitative Economics.

Pius now works for I Am Family Ministries in Uganda and is the principal of I Am Family Academy School which caters for 300 orphaned and needy children in his home village. His passion is to help change the lives of everyone in the village and one of the main requirements is clean, fresh water. A bore hole will cost £7,000 and Joan and her team intends raising the funds for this project.

Mitchell’s good news

WITH so many bad news stories abounding on the health front, it was great to talk this week to Comber breeder David Mitchell who is, albeit slowly, on the road to recovery.

Having suffered a very severe reaction to an antibiotic, David spent most of last year in hospital and was in intensive care for a large proportion of that time. He has been home off and on since January and is now out and about taking an interest in the happenings at Brentford Farm where he and partner Elizabeth Hamilton are waiting on six mares to foal with the first due to do so in about two weeks.