100 Wins At Ploughing Matches

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30811, 24 July 1965, Page 10

100 Wins At Ploughing Matches

This has been a notable season for the well-known match ploughman, Mr J. G. (Jack) Carter, of Templeton. When he won class B (the coulter cut class) at the recent Lincoln ploughing match he recorded his 100th win—either first placings or champion plots. In addition he has won innumerable special prizes, such as for feerings and finishes.

Mr Carter, who began his ploughing match career in 1924, is not certain whether he will retire from match ploughing. He said this week that it was the only vice that he had and he might still keep his hand in occasionally. His ploughing experience began about 1920 on his father’s farm at Templeton. The late Jack Calder, of Halkett, the famous one-armed ploughman of earlier days, went to the Carter farm twice to help the young ploughman set his plough and when he first saw Mr Carter try to strike out he predicted that he would go a long way in ploughing. Mr Calder said that the young Carter had “the ploughman’s crouch.” Otherwise apart from a little encouragement from a few people Mr Carter said he had had to work things out for himself and that, he believes, has stood him in good stead—the lessons that he has learned have “sunk in.” His first match was at Lincoln in 1924. Men like the late T. L. Hayman, the former Minister of Agriculture, Jack Forsythe, the Wyllies and Pat Dugan senior were ploughing at about that time. Mr Carter was about 18| at the time and was not eligible for the youths’ class, and coming from outside the district had to go into the open class and was unplaced. He then used a two-furrow plough drawn by three horses and while his horses were only ordinary types he recalls that he made

a speciality of grooming them and won his share of prizes for grooming, harness and decorations. In the early 1930 s he sold his plough feeling that he did not have the implement that was ideal for the job. In 1939 he resumed again with a three-furrow plough, this time drawn by a tractor, and that year at the Royal match at Timairu on a bitterly cold day with snow lying on the ground at times he had his first major success winning his Class in a field of 15 or 16 competitors and also winning his first two cups. It snowed on the night after this match. Mission Almost immediately afterwards the ploughing match associations went into recess for the war but in 1940 Mr Carter was taken to Blenheim to endeavour to prevent a trophy that had been won twice being won a third time and outright. He succeeded in this mission. The rules for the competition'for this trophy were subsequently changed so that it was for perpetual competition. After the war Mr Carter took up ploughing seriously still using the three-furrow plough with some modifications, and since then he has won more than his share of trophies. One of his best wins was at a North Canterbury match where with 16 in his class he won all the prizes it

was possible to win on a very wet day and probably ploughed one of the best plots that he ever ploughed with that plough, which had been classed as an ordinary farm plough when he bought ilt. In the early 1950’s Mr Carter went back to a doublefurrow plough, in the main because it was easier to transport to matches. He bought it at a clearing sale but it was not his first association with it. He had borrowed this same plough from Mr William Carpenter, of Yaldhurst, to plough at Lincoln in 1925 when he won his first ploughing prize. He started to rebuild it in 1952 and that year it took a fourth placing at Lincoln. Between that season and the next Mr Carter put a lot of thought into improving this plough and eventually designed a skeith stalk and buckle which he feels has contributed very materially to his subsequent successes. At one stage Mr Carter had 16 wins in succession with the plough—he has only been beaten with it five or six times—and he believes that it is the most versatile plough that he has ever had anything to do with. He remembers a Rakaia match held under most difficult conditions when most ploughmen had great trouble in doing what they were aiming to do, and yet he had finished up that evening winning all the trophies that it was possible to win. Mr Carter was a successful competitor in the first two New Zealand championship matches. He was placed second at Papakaio in 1956 and third at Prebbleton in 1957. Judge Over the last year or two he has been taking match ploughing less seriously and has not been competing so regularly. He has been judging for five or six years and has twice judged in finals of the New Zealand championships—at Invercargill in 1962 and at Templeton in 1964. In this his actual experience of ploughing in this event has been of real benefit, he says. Yet, so far, he had never had to judge coulter cut ploughing in which he is an acknowledged master. While he was still an active competitor Mr Carter felt that he could not be an executive member of ploughing match associations but he is now a member of the committee of both the CourtenayPaparua (his home association) and the Lincoln associa-

tions, and last year took a leading part in the organisation of the national final at Templeton. Among four ploughs which he still owns is the threefurrow that he used before and immediately after the war, and this was converted to a double-furrow for the use of his son, Ken, while he was working at home on the farm. With this Ken won a first placing at Lincoln in the boys’ class and a second at Courtenay-Paparua in the same class and won the cup for the best district ploughman. In his ploughing, Mr Carter acknowledges the encouragement he has received from his wife and family. Effect The disappearance of the horse teams from the ploughing match scene had been disastrous as far as the gates at matches were concerned, he said, but it had made it much easier from a competitor’s point of view. In former days an excursion to a Timaru match would have occupied three or four days, whereas now it was possible to load up a tractor and plough and be in Timaru two and a-half hours later and be home again by 8 p.m. on the same day. In earlier days, too, ploughmen had been supplied with horses by the host association and a ploughman could strike a very difficult team with some slow and some fast horses, yet surprisingly enough the average team would settle down to a ploughman’s requirements. Mr Carter can remember the day when there would be 40 teams at a Lincoln match. On the Issue of horse ploughing v. tractor ploughing, Mr Carter believes that a good ploughman using a tractor can do a better job, or at least an equally good job as with horses, so long as the plough behind the tractor has been remodelled for tractor work. "You have not got the horses floundering over the furrows—you have more control with the tractor," he says. After the death of his father Mr Carter and a brother farmed the home farm at Templeton until about 15 years ago, when his brother had to give up on account of ill health, and until he retired about six years ago Mr Carter then farmed on his own account.