Ploughing Champs success
Sean Leslie and Casey Tilson from Middlemarch, with horses Beau and Dough, took out the Rural News Horse Plough award at the Power Farming NZ Ploughing Championships at Horotiu, near Hamilton, on April 13-14.
Jim Brooker (83), of Darfield, recalls winning the first NZ Ploughing Championship at Oamaru in 1956 when he was 23 years old.
The sponsor was the Atlantic Oil Company, the NZ division of the Esso Oils and Fuel Company. The first prize was a round-the-world air ticket with Canadian Pacific Airlines, including flights to Hawaii and Vancouver, a train trip through the Rockies to Toronto, then a flight to Shillingford near Oxford, UK.
There a tractor and plough were provided by International Harvester Company – a B250 tractor and an Ace 8 plough.
“At 83 years old I remember the details probably easier than things that happen today,” says Brooker.
He finished 11th out of 25 ploughmen from 13 countries. He was farewelled from NZ by Prime Minister Sid Holland and his Minister of Agriculture Keith Holyoake.
“When I arrived to plough in UK, I was the only contestant who did not have a manager, judge or coach.”
Brooker started ploughing after he left school at 15 and worked on the family farm at Hawarden, North Canterbury, also doing shearing. He first competed using a plough borrowed from the neighbours – a TEA 24 and a two-furrow, Fergusson plough. All ploughing events were then run by Young Farmers clubs.
He qualified at an YFC event at Amuri, North Canterbury, and at 23 won the first New Zealand Ploughing Association final, using his dad’s IH W4 and an IH Ace plough. “That was a three-furrow plough that I changed to a two furrow.”
He recalls 26 competitors in a one-day event ploughing only grass.
Brooker bought his first 80ha farm at Lowburn, “covered in gorse” and over 13 years built it up to 324ha. It was flat, rolling to steep. He sold this and moved to 300ha at Kirwee, since built up to 567ha.
Wouldn't it be great if the meat industry could get its hands on the $1.5 billion dollars it's missing out on because of non-tariff trade barriers (NTBs)?
Independent Waikato milk processor Tatua has set another new record for conventional farmgate milk price paid to New Zealand farmers.
OPINION: Environment Canterbury's (ECan) decision recently to declare a so-called “nitrate emergency” is laughable.
An early adopter of a 10-in-7 variable milking regime, the Lincoln University Demonstration Dairy Farm (LUDF) is tweaking the system this season in search of further boosting farm performance and profitability.
The dairy sector is in a relatively stable position, with strong milk price payout forecasts continuing to offset ongoing high farm costs, according to DairyNZ.
A shameless political stunt is how Federated Farmers is describing the Canterbury Regional Council decision to declare “a nitrate emergency” on the back of its latest annual groundwater quality survey.
OPINION: If the comments about the deceased Tom Phillips posted on social media by keyboard warriors were representative of parenting…
OPINION: This old mutt is loath to sound like Groundswell has been topping up his bowl with brisket off-cuts, but…