UNEARTHING COMMUNITY GOLD Words by Kate Underwood
Annual Ophir Spud Growing Competition
Located right in the heart of Central Otago amidst the rail trail, a remarkable village famous for recording the coldest temperature in New Zealand is home to some unexpected tuber-related rivalry Enter the Annual Ophir Spud Growing Competition, held every year over Easter Weekend and hosted by the Ophir Welfare Committee to raise funds for the community. This hotly contested affair applauds the heaviest, lightest and weirdest potatoes and celebrates the warm and wonderful people who grow them. Most of Ophir’s permanent residents and ‘cribbies’ (holiday homeowners) compete, with 125 spuds to be unearthed over two days. Proceedings kick off on Easter Friday when the competition potatoes are dug up, bagged, and weighed. All the spuds come from seed potatoes sold to participants during Labour Weekend – with the variety selected by the previous spud champion.
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NZGROWER : MAY 2021
This year, ninety-one-year-old Peter Deloitter chose the red-skinned, all-purpose ‘Van Rosa’. At 5pm on Easter Sunday, the Ophir Peace Memorial Hall comes alive with a convivial prize-giving, a heated potato auction and a potluck dinner. Shared tables are set, and the stage is lined with paper bags containing spud entries of all shapes and sizes. To support this wholesome, worthy cause, the Potatoes New Zealand Charitable Trust donated the trophy for the ‘Heaviest Potato Shaw’, along with other garden-related prizes. A ‘shaw’ is the term used to describe the yield or group of potatoes that are grown from one single plant. To ensure a fair playing field, prizes are broken up into permanent and cribbie residents, as “some have more time on their hands.” During the lively and tense auction, bags of potato shaws are sold for anywhere between $40 to $100, with a few particularly proud growers pushed into paying big dollars to secure their own spuds!
