‘BETTER CONTROL THEN’

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32977, 25 July 1972, Page 15

‘BETTER CONTROL THEN’

One of the keenest spectators at the Atlantic Silver Plough contest at Chertsey was Mr Alexander Mcßobb, a retired farmer of Rokeby, near Rakaia, who ploughed on the same paddock 44 years ago with a six-horse team in the Rakaia Ploughing Match Association’s championship (illustrated). The event that year, 1928,

would have been a spectacular sight, with more than 200 horses in the paddock. Mr Mcßobb said the entry had 60 teams of three, four, and six horses. It was one of the last years that horses reigned supreme in this field; two or three years later tractors made their appearance and comprised about half the fields,

in the same events as horses. Mr Mcßobb had an outstanding record as a ploughman with horse-drawn ploughs, and at the Rakaia association’s event in 1928— on the same paddock as this year’s Silver Plough final—he won a gold ploughshare trophy for the best finishing, and trophies for the best ploughed pfot in his class,

and for the straightest furrows. He also won, for the fourth year in succession, the trophy for the best groomed ploughing team. Mr Mcßobb said that the horse team with which he had his successes was owned by Mr H. E. Cook, father of the manager of the Ashburton branch of Dalgety, Ltd. It was recognised as being the best six-horse team in New Zealand at that time. Although he bought his first tractor for farm work in 1935, Mr Mcßobb never competed in ploughing matches with tractors.

He said that much greater control of the ploughing was attainable with horse-drawn teams than with tractors, because of the ploughman sitting on and steering the plough. Mr Mcßobb lives in retirement in Ashburton.