“I still love the place,” he tells Rural News. “And the opportunities and challenges it presented to a young lad from Gloucester back then has helped me get to where I am today.”
One of those challenges – or opportunities – resulted in Taylor winning a national Ploughing Championship in 2010 with a reversible plough. He went on to represent New Zealand at the World Championship in Sweden in 201, finishing eighth in the stubble and winning a bronze medal in the grassland section.
It was the now defunct Dairy Association, based in Morrinsville, advertising for staff in the UK that attracted Taylor back to NZ. And the day after he was married, in May 1973, Malcolm and wife Angela – along with his brother and wife, and 64 other couples – set sail for farm jobs in New Zealand.
The Taylors’ first job was working for a Tatua Dairy Company supplier for two years. This was followed by bigger jobs, which eventually led them to sharemilking.
They bought their first farm in 1981 and moved on to their present farm of 104ha, adjacent to the Arapuni Dam in 1990. This was originally a sheep and beef property, which Taylor waited two years before converting to dairying. A further 80ha was added and they now run as two separate farms one with 36-bale rotary with a Jersey herd, the other with a 24-aside herring bone with a Friesian crossbred herd.
“We started in a golden era in New Zealand farming with butterfat in pounds and farms in acres and believing that nothing is impossible and we’ve had 40 glorious years.”
Since arriving in NZ, as well as farming, Taylor has also been involved in contracting starting with silage making and conventional bales.
“I have always liked machinery so contracting became a paying hobby.”
The business grew rapidly until he had eight tractors and was servicing 36 local farmers – just doing hay and silage.
Malcolm Taylor’s interest in ploughing started seven years ago when he met Alan Wallace, who set him in the right direction. Wallace was New Zealand’s first World Ploughing Champion when he won the title back in 1981.
“He continues to inspire me and acts as my mentor.”
Ploughing also activated long-held memories of ploughing with his father when he was 10 years old.
Angela Taylor started ploughing in 2005 and has won several qualifying events. “I think she got bored watching me.”
Her highest placing in a New Zealand championship was fifth in the stubble section.
Malcolm Taylor has only ploughed in competitions, never for cultivation purposes. He started ploughing with a conventional two furrow plough and competed at his first Nationals at Rotorua in 2004.
“I didn’t want to come last, so I felt I’d achieved by coming 18th out of a field of 23.”
In 1995, the World Ploughing Association invited reversible ploughs for demonstration purposes and in 1997 they became part of the competition. Each country sends one conventional and one reversible to the World Championships.
Taylor bought his first reversible plough in 2005. In 2008, he won the New Zealand title and he competed at the World Championships held in Slovenia – finishing 14th.
“I took my own plough and I learnt as much as I could.” He has modified his plough and now only uses plastic mould boards. Taylor, again, won the New Zealand Championships in 2010 and ploughed at the World Championships held in Sweden in 2011.
“This time I finished 5th overall, eighth in the stubble and a bronze medal for third in the grassland section.”
For the competition, he sea freighted his McCormick CX95 tractor and plough from New Zealand to Sweden. Following his success, Taylor then drove the tractor and plough from Gottenburg to catch a ferry in Norway to the UK, where he based himself at Nottingham where his son was working on a family farm.
Then he had a true “ploughman’s” holiday, spending seven months competing in the UK. Transport was expensive so he drove his tractor and plough to most events. Taylor says his proudest achievement was to plough the “Five Nations” competing in England, Wales, Eire, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
“I especially wanted to compete in Scotland, Eire, Northern Ireland, as well as Austria as that is where the best reversible ploughmen come from and I wanted to learn from the best.”
At Clinton in 2011, Taylor again won the Reversible Plough Championships and in September 2012 will be representing New Zealand at the World Championships in Croatia.
At present, his tractor and plough are in Inverness Scotland, where he last competed, and he will make arrangements to shift them to the World Championship site.
Taylor is on the organising committee of the Waikato Ploughing Association, organising and running the New Zealand Ploughing championships being held at Cambridge on April 14 and 15.
