NZ Plough 2010
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Methven’s Bruce Redmond will represent NZ in the world conventional ploughing class, Paul Henson (Palmerston North) in the reversible class. Their coach, Alan Wallace won the world title in 1981. The only other New Zealand winner was Ian Miller in 1982 in Tasmania.
While international contestants typically bring their own ploughs, tractors are usually provided through a local machinery agent. This year, twenty international competitors are freighting not only their ploughs but also their tractors to Methven.
A battle camp set up by the Ashburton Vintage Military Club will be open to the public. The camp features trenches, a bunker, military vehicles, field guns, tents, and plastic barbed wire. At 3pm on Thursday and Sunday the club will demonstrate the artillery fire power in the ring. Another attraction will be the PGG Wrightson Vintage Machinery Rally which covers more than 40ha and features an unprecedented 120 vintage ploughs. Trade, craft and food stalls, live entertainment, scenic helicopter rides and the Aorangi Young Farmer of the Year regional finals (Sat, April 17) offer a great way to end the school holidays. Children have free entry.
Although Australia and Kenya are annual competitors in the World Ploughing Contest, New Zealand is the only Southern Hemisphere country to host the event. New Zealand has hosted three previous world finals - 1967, 1980 and 1994. It is unlikely to host the contest again until 2025.
Dad's Army
World War One-&-A-Half will break out on the opening and closing days of NZ Plough 2010 when Ashburton’s Vintage Military Club and associates let loose with pyrotechnics and vintage guns.
Soldiers in this unlikely army typically wear clothing most suited to the equipment or machinery they are exhibiting. Their ranks therefore comprise World War One and World War Two soldiers from Great Britain and Germany; a motley but enthusiastic lot whose thirty-minute NZ Plough 2010 battles would be the envy of Captain George Mainwaring and his ‘Dad’s Army’ troops.
Vintage army search lights will glare down on a specially constructed battle camp comprising tents, military vehicles, trenches, a bunker and two World War One German field guns. The coils of plastic barbed wire are not intended to keep the public at bay but non-military personnel will be evicted and plough horses led out of earshot shortly before 3pm Thursday 15th April and Sunday 18th April when World War One-&-A-Half will erupt in the ring. The camp’s search lights will be put to good use each night as part of NZ Plough 2010’s security measures.
Resplendent in a World War One German uniform, Hamish Bruce of Staveley, will put his restored field gun through its paces. The weapon is one of 200 such guns brought into New Zealand in 1920 with the intention of housing them in a military museum to be built at Trentham. The museum never eventuated and the guns were instead distributed to communities around the country.
In 1941, concerned that Japanese aerial surveys might identify the guns as a real war threat, the New Zealand government ordered them to be removed from public gaze. Rotted wooden wheels meant most of the relics could not be trundled to safety so were instead pushed into holes and buried. Bruce says around 60 have been located nationwide but attempts to locate Methven’s gun failed, despite the best efforts of those convinced it is buried under the Ashburton County Council yard on South Street.
Vintage love of ploughing
Bill Ward’s love of vintage ploughing stems back to his childhood when he learned to plough with horses at the age of nine.
The Wards lived near Timaru on a small holding which struggled to support eight children. Ward says his was the last family in the district to buy a car and the second last to replace horses with tractors. They couldn’t afford new gear so always had "old stuff".
Ward began competitive vintage ploughing as a teenager when he joined the local Young Farmers club but the sport took a back seat when he became a truck driver. At age 24, he became engaged to Irene, the girl next door whom he had escorted to school the day she turned five.
“I haven’t been able to shake her off. She still comes home and climbs into my bed at night,” he jokes. He admits now that driving trucks 12-14 hours a day while building a house for his bride-to-be in his ‘spare’ time, was not smart.
“I was burning the candle at both ends. Then we got married and I lit the middle of the candle as well. The resultant heart attack at age 25 was entirely my own fault.”
Back on his feet, he reduced his driving hours, finished the house and got on with raising a family.
It was not until 1999 when the family moved to Rangiora that Ward had time to once again indulge his passion for vintage ploughing. He joined the North Canterbury Ploughing Match Association and since then has competed in matches all around Canterbury.
Current president of the North Canterbury Ploughing Match Association, he believes strongly that ‘if you get something out ploughing, you have to give something back.’ He regards the World Ploughing Contest at Methven as an opportunity for his family to do just that. Accordingly, the family has donated a framed cross-stitch depicting vintage tractors in a rural scene. The art-work will be auctioned at NZ Plough 2010’s New Zealand Presentation night, Friday April 16. Bill and Irene will be amongst the nearly 600 potential buyers in attendance. They have offered their practical help for ten days while NZ Plough 2010 officially hosts the competitors, their families and visiting officials.
Probing the Vintage Buff Psyche - story by Erena McCaw
The PGG Wrightson Vintage Machinery Rally being held in conjunction with NZ Plough 2010, represents countless hours of unpaid labour.
So what drives them - these otherwise intelligent men who spend hours in draughty sheds resurrecting past glories from rusty junk?
I decide to probe the vintage buff psyche. The opportunity arises when I’m asked to promote a vintage rally - not this rally, mind - a different one.
Robby, unaware of my real agenda, welcomes me in. His wife Mildred is not at home but he’s gathered reinforcements. Shorty, George, Fred and John are dead keen to help.
That’s fine by me; if one vintage buff psyche is worth probing, five must be a gold-mine…
We go through to Mildred’s front room where the men rifle through photograph albums looking for something to help me promote their cause. They settle for a rare 1944 Massey Harris 203, the biggest Massey Harris made during the war and possibly the only restored example in New Zealand. Robby remembers a 203 from his childhood but this one, spotted by Shorty in Australia, is the first the others have seen.
I ask Robby how many restored tractors he owns. He hesitates.
“Fourteen Masseys, one David Brown and one John Deere” volunteers George. (Or was it Fred.) “He’s got all the Massey models except a Colt, a 20 and a Wallace. He wants the complete set.” (Definitely Fred.)
I’m beginning to see why I’m interviewing a panel. This lot hunt as a pack, work as a club and think like brothers.
They remind Robby he began collecting Masseys in 1984, not ’89 as he thinks.
Eighty-nine, they tell him kindly, was the year he naively entered an un-restored 1940 101 Super in the Centennial of the Tractor celebrations. The shameful experience transformed him into a dedicated and discerning collector.
So how many hours go into restoring a tractor?
The panel deliberates... It depends whether you’re talking a quick paint job or complete remake. Four hundred hours is OK but it can take 2000. Too many anyway. George admits keeping his hours – once. He’s never done it again.
John regales me with tales of his 1000-hour restoration of a 1928 semi-diesel, single cylinder, Hungarian-made, two-tonne, 1.25 Hofher-Schrantz-Clayton-Shuttleworth, HSCS for short. It’s one of only two known in the Southern Hemisphere and it matters little that its faulty design meant it was pretty useless anyway.
“Some bystander said I was lucky to find one in such good order and asked if I had to do much before starting her up. It was a compliment really – I guess.”
Shorty suggests vintage buffs were starved of toys as youngsters. Everyone agrees that few buffs have formal training in overhauling motors. They rely on their ‘natural bent.’
“If we can’t do it ourselves, we don’t do it.”
We? Does this include wives?
The all-male panel confidently assures me women are very supportive. I think of the absent Mildred…
“Shorty’s wife polishes his spring washers. Both sides,” crows George.
Fred’s wife and grandson are renowned for their wire-brush attacks on rusty springs.
Dates and data are flying faster than my shorthand.
“I reckon you guys are likely to know when Massey and Harris merged but not when your children were born,” I observe. There’s a howl of recognition. Robby remembered Mildred’s birthday only when Shorty reminded him at 10pm that night.
I’m confident I have the psyche of the vintage buff sussed.
Starved of toys as a child, he is a natural hoarder, unafraid of hard work, married to a long-suffering woman (or he’s a bachelor) and congregates with like-minded fanatics who between them, manage to remember everything – eventually.
‘50s Up Brass Band
The Christchurch ‘50s Up Brass Band’ is all set to make music at the opening ceremony of the World Ploughing Contest on Friday April 16.
The band, whose members have an average age of 74, will play for 30 minutes before and after the official opening of the World Ploughing Contest on Friday, April 16.
They will of course, be seated – and marching is definitely off the agenda.
Cornet player and oldest band member is 91 year-old Mel Smith. A founding member, Smith is one of the team’s solo cornets, or ‘first five eight’ in rugby vernacular. He may not charge up the field with a ball but his solo musical charge with the melody line scores gold each time.
Band spokesman John Nimmo says the group was founded in 1992 to provide an opportunity for senior brass musicians to make music together in a relaxed and convivial environment.
“In those days, people were expected to retire at 60. The 50s Up Band proves that age is not a barrier when it comes to making music.”
The 50s-Up’ has more than 50 active musicians who between them, have a total of 3500 years of brass banding experience. There are no weekend or evening concerts but the band often treats rest home groups and seniors’ organisations to a concert afternoon. It also performs hall concerts in rural centres around the Canterbury region.
The annual highlight is the Seniors Variety Concert staged in the Christchurch Town Hall Auditorium. Last year’s two hour concert featured the Topp Twins and attracted a capacity audience of 2500. This year’s concert, (September 29th), will feature Dame Malvina Major.
The concerts have raised over $35,000 in the last four years. To date the money has been used to assist Arthritis New Zealand with its educational programmes in the Canterbury region.
History of ploughing matches
Ploughing competitions are rooted in an age-old British farming practice of helping new neighbours settle in.
Just as in New Zealand, where ‘gypsy day’ the day on which dairy farmers move into their new farms, so too did British farmers move on ‘Candlemas Day’, February 2nd.
Known as ‘flitting’ day, the tenancy and occupation of farms all around Britain, began and ended on Candlemas Day.
It was customary for moving farmers to sell all crop, implements and livestock, including horses and ploughs. These ‘lock, stock and barrel’ sales began as early as November. Farmers remained on their destocked properties until ‘flitting’ day, using the time to find another property. That accomplished, they attended sales within the new neighbourhood, buying to equip their new farms. The only thing they didn’t need to buy was muck - the law of good husbandry decreed that farms be on-sold with farmyard manure in place.
Come ‘flitting’ day, farmers loaded furniture, family, goods and chattels onto carts and moved into the new property as the previous occupier moved out. Neighbouring farmers plus staff helped with the loading, transport and unloading so that by nightfall, the families were settled in their new abodes.
The system’s enforced early sale of horse and plough, meant incoming farmers were faced with a back-log of ploughing. And so the tradition grew for surrounding farmers to give their new neighbour the benefit of a ‘boon’ ploughing day. Up to a dozen local farmers could turn up at the agreed time, each with a team of horses and plough.
‘Boon’ ploughing was never rushed but was conducted in a festival atmosphere. Well[groomed horses were smartly turned out and each ploughman was intent on out-performing the next. While horses rested, ploughmen walked the headlands, reviewing plots, exchanging comments, criticising, praising, sharing ideas, eating sandwiches and drinking cold tea sprinkled with oatmeal.
A committee of locals judged the finished plots and awarded a prize for the best, often giving special prizes for the best crown, the neatest ins and outs and the best finish. When ploughing was over, a feast was held in the farmhouse, or barn if the house was too small. By nightfall, newcomers were part of the community circle and their ploughing was up to date.
Thanks to Alfred Hall, founder of the World Ploughing Organisation and author of ‘Ploughman’s Progress’ for the above information.
The World Ploughing Organisation was established at Workington, Cumberland England on Feb 5 1952 and held its first internationalcontest in Ontario, Canada in 1953. The New Zealand Plough Association was established at a special meeting in Oamaru in 1956 when it was realised that without such an association, New Zealand would be unable to host a World Contest.
Kerikeri Plough
The plough replicated in silver on the trophy awarded annually to New Zealand’s champion plougher, will be on display at NZ Plough 2010 in April, courtesy of the Auckland War Memorial museum.
Thought to be the first plough used in New Zealand, the implement was used by the Reverend John Butler at Kerikeri on May 3 1820 on a site adjacent to Kerikeri’s historic Kemp House and Stone Store.
The good reverend’s pompous record of the event reads: “The agricultural plough was for the first time put into the land of New Zealand at Kiddee Kiddee (Kerikeri) and I felt much pleasure in holding it after a team of six bullocks brought down by the Dromedary. I trust that this day will be remembered with gratitude and its anniversary kept by ages yet unborn. Each heart rejoiced in this auspicious day and said “May God speed the plough”.’
The day may be forgotten, but the plough is not. Once its historic significance was recognised, it was housed first in North Auckland’s Old Colonists’ Museum before being preserved in the Auckland Museum.
Ploughing enthusiast and unofficial (but undisputed) custodian of the artefact is 76 year-old Shaun Reilly. Reilly escorted the plough to two New Zealand Ploughing Championships in the Auckland region and two World Contests (Lincoln 1980 and Taieri, 1994.)
This month he will personally deliver the much travelled plough to Methven for the 54th New Zealand Ploughing Championship and 57th World Ploughing Contest. As at Taieri, security guards will watch the plough by day and it will be securely locked away at night. For all its years, the plough remains in excellent condition. With the addition of a plough share and a few centimetres of coulter, it would still be capable of turning a furrow.