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Gigantic fruits and vegetables grown by farmers in different parts of northeastern Bulgaria came in a close battle for the prizes of the Festival of Fertility. Pumpkins and quinces, beetroot and celery, peppers and eggplants, grapes and apples took part in the competition at Mall Varna‘s Market on Sunday. The heaviest competitor proved to be the white pumpkin grown by Petranka Atanasova from the village of  Solnik, which stopped the scales at a record 32.80 kg! The challenger in the competitio, a 25-kilogram pumpkin has been grown by Yana Kraleva in Kardam.

Among the winners were also Petia Ivanova from Solnik who has grown a beetroot weighing 1.950 kg; Stefka Keranova from the village of Priselci, who presented a bunch of grapes weighing 1.565 kg; Svetlana Karayancheva from Zdravets who participated with an eggplant with a weight of 1.065 kg. The harvest of Savka Atanasova from the village of Sunrise set five records: a 0.927 kg radish, a 0.142 kg red pepper, a 0.418 kg apple, a 0.615 kg potato and a celery head weighing 0.960 kg.

The participants in the Festival of Fertility from the community centers in Solnik and Izgrev, Dobrudjanska Zimnica and Aksakovo had displayed on their stands not only an abudnace of fruits and vegetables but also a variety of culinary specialties and home-made pickles. Hristo Dimov had crafted a unique two-meter stand in the shape of a basket for the presentation of the Aksako growers. The panel of judges were so impressed by the abundance, colourfulness and arrangement of all the stands that it failed to determine a winner and gave awards to all competitors.

Throughout the day, the guests enjoyed the performances of children's folklore group "A Bunch of Flowers" and the "Clover" formation from the Vladislav Varnenchik suburb, the "Voices of Aksakovo", the gadulka player Iliya Rusinov and the folk singer Plamena Petkova from the National School of Humanities and Arts, the folklore groups of the villages Solnik and Dyulino, singing group "Maternal Love" of the Bessarabian Bulgarians from Belgorod. The tasting the dishes from the traditional Bulgarian cuisine provoked many of the visitors to enrich their culinary knowledge with new recipes, while the most curious among them tried to learn how to weave mats of maize leaves under the guidance of the masters from the Izgrev village.