Young Farmers!

As you can probably tell from my lack of blogging, classes are now in full swing here at Lincoln. During the week, I try to attend 17 hours of class, workout five days a week (so I won’t have to buy another plane ticket to fly home), eat (a lot), sleep, study, occasionally wash a few pieces of clothing and oh yeah… enjoy this B-E-A-U-tiful country and the wonderful people that call New Zealand home. With all of this going on, I’ve found it hard to keep my blog up to date on my activities but… I just had to take the time to blog about THE SOUTH ISLAND AGRICULTURAL FIELD DAYS!

This year, the Lincoln University Farm played host to this one-of-a-kind, three day event. For the last 60 years, Field Days have been the place for farmers and city folks to find out what’s new in the industry. From machinery to chemicals to effluent storage tank dealers, every aspect of farming is represented at the field days. They bring their A game, too; I was almost talked into buying a pair of stylish overalls made specifically for women that had a sweet zipper so you could go to the bathroom without having to take them off! There was also several areas where they provided live, life size demonstrations of processes such as direct drilling, bailing/wrapping and ploughing (yes… that’s how you spell plowing in New Zealand). There was also a booth giving out ancient bird poo (I still don’t understand why…. Something to do with nitrogen….maybe), and a place that was selling bull whips that made a very distinct sound as they broke the sound barrier that brought me back to the days of watching “Man from Snowy River” with my sisters.

At the end of the day however, the most spectacular part of the farm show for me was the Regional Young Farmers’ Competition. Young Farmers is a club at campuses across the nation that is very active in the agricultural industry. As a member of the young farmers club, students are provided with leadership opportunities as well as opportunities to get involved with other agriculturalists. Members also have the chance to participate in the young farmers’ competition, a competition that tests students on their well-roundedness in the agricultural field.

As part of this competition, contestants had to participate in several practical challenges. The one shown here is a where each contestant must follow their given directions and make a pitch fork from scratch. It was sweet as!

There were other practical challenges that included fencing (aka building fence), hanging 12 foot long metal gates (with no assistance), sorting/crutching/medicating/tupping a group of sheep and setting up a sprinkler system. After a day of doing this, the contestants finished their day outside with the Agrisports competition.

This competition was intense!!!!! At the sound of the blow horn, contestants had to put on their protection shaps (because everyone wears stubies [aka rugby short shorts]!), assemble a chain saw and saw the branches off a tree that was lying on the ground.

Next, they had to saw the pole of the tree into smaller pieces. From there they put the back to wheels on a quad bike (aka a four wheeler) and then place two logs on the ground that they had to park the quad on without it rolling off.

After parking the quad, contestants had to attach four pieces of the tree they cut off at the first section of the race to the bottom of a flower box and plant an assortment of flowers in this box. From there, they moved on to the instruction reading section where they had to put together a pump sprayer by following the instructions on the box.

Next they had to wrap two bails with plastic and then run to attach their tap to a trough to build up a decent amount of water. Next, they had to throw straw over a string line above their heads (with the pitch fork they made earlier in the practical) so it could be set on fire by the local fire fighters.

They then had to put the fire out with the water they had collected in their trough. Once the fire was completely out, they had to throw enough water onto a slip’n’slide so they could slide to the finish line and hit their buzzer!

The contestant from my Uni, Reuben Carter, placed second in the Agrisports challenge and first in the practical challenge. That night, the contestants participated in the "night show" where they had to give an extemporaneous speech and buzz in for quiz question points.  Reuben finished 2nd, losing by only 3 points!

At the end of the day, I left the Uni Farm feeling rather satisfied that my time and money (it was only 10 NZD) had been well spent. New Zealand Ag is a very innovative industry; they know what works here and what doesn’t. As I’ve been learning in my dairy and plant science classes, systems that work in other countries, don’t always work here. That is why it is important for Kiwis to do some of their own research and then promote their findings to the rest of the country at things like the South Island Field Days. New Zealand farmers are very open to change and hardly ever “do things like dad did” so these events change the industry and will continue to make New Zealand farming stronger and stronger every year.

Oh! And I almost forgot!!!! I did bring home something from the field days…..

A funny looking, rather sunburn faced, ginge (aka red head in Kiwi slang).