NOT ALL PLOUGHING

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30803, 15 July 1965, Page 21

NOT ALL PLOUGHING

A New Zealand ploughing final is no drab affair. There is colour and life about it. The 22 ploughmen who will be . trying for national honours and a trip to Norway later in the year will be led out on to their plots at Chertsey by a girls’ marching team from Methven (not inappropriately named the Snowliners from the recent performance of that district) and the Methven Pipe Band. The firing of a red Verey light at about 11 a.m. will be the signal for the start of the ploughing and in the next three hours the ploughmen will be working on their half-acre plots. While interest will naturally centre on the progress that the ploughmen are making, there will be a number of other side-attrac-tions to hold the attention of the public. Two special ploughing demonstrations will be given which are quite apart from

the championship contest. Mr Colin Brown, of Morven, the son of a noted old horse ploughman, Sandy Brown, will give a demonstration of high cut ploughing, and Mr G. J. S. Smith, of Rakaia, th oldest ploughing member of the Rakaia associa-

tion who has been handling ploughs for 50 years, will be showing coulter cut ploughing with Mr T. H. Blackley’s three-furrow coulter cut plough. Both these demonstrations will be with tractors. The judging of the Silver Plough Queen contest will also be proceeding during the day (this is discussed elsewhere) and the New Zealand Farmers’ Cooperative Association will be staging a mannequin parade featuring mainly wool fashions.

A wood chopping and sawing programme has also been organised by the Canterbury Axemen’s Association, of Christchurch.

Among a particularly good representation of high-class axemen will be a former New Zealand champion, J. Hagan, and he and D. I. McKay, of Methven, who will also be taking part, competed at the last Sydney Royal Show.

An innovation for a ploughing final was to have been the playing of a senior Rugby football match in the competitions of the MidCanterbury Rugby Union on a field adjacent to the ploughing, but this venture has had to be abandoned because there will be a licensed booth on the match site. Among alternative entertainment being arranged in place of this fixture will be the appearance of an old traction engine and wooden mill which will be seen threshing oats.

The Minister of Agriculture, Mr Taiboys, will be a gpest at the match and will present the trophies at the end of the day.