You may not know this but the National Bank Young Farmer Contest kicked off in November.
I know you wondering how you missed your local District Final
and you probably have.
Never fear,
I report here on the Christchurch District Final
held yesterday at Ellesmere A&P Showgrounds
that's els-mere to the locals.
Firstly let me make it clear that although I work for Young Farmers
I have little to nothing to do with The Contest.
Not my area of responsibility but is my area of fun,
all care and no responsibility for me.
So let me walk you through a District Final.
Organised by a committee of older and experienced ex-Contestants,
this year lead by Hayden Dorman
(with serious organisational support from his new-wife Jessie,
such are country ways,
the greatest asset a farmer can have is to be married to another farmer
(cause wives are farmers too!))
There are practical modules, in this case 11 of them lasting 30 minutes each.
All organised and manned by volunteers,
who are also the judges.
After the modules there is a quick answer quiz and a speech competition.
The person who has the highest points goes through to the Regional Final
or in this case,
or in this case,
the top four go through
cause Christchurch District has many, many members
so gets a proportionate number through to the Regional Finals.
Got that?
It's simple, straight forward and been this way for 42 years.
So the modules that I could be bothered* taking photos of were....
building casing for something
I didn't stop to ask cause I was hurrying on to...
slightly distract and embarrass Cole while he worked out building dimensions.
It's all good, he is laughing.
Then I wandered along to see Sarah completing her Environmental module,
*It was hot and there was hay. I'm allergic to hay so was starting to get a bit sinusy especially since I had a bit of chat with Greenie while leaning on his hay and watching Sarah load a trailer with hay and backing - actually backing says it all really. Yukky.
she is smiling too.
Oh and working hard to answer these vital environmental questions.
It's tough this farming gig these days.
Doesn't she have lovely cheek bones?
Then a touch of masterchef as the contestants made pikelets and then ironed a shirt.
This module was rather kind as usually they do not provide the recipe
and add in a few rouge ingredients.
I must admit I had to leave when the shirt ironing started
I wanted to help too much.
Lisa got into identifying sheep breeds from their wool,
harder than you might think
or easier
because I got two right
(thanks to a spot of wool classing in Central Otago)
I got the other two totally wrong mostly cause I haven't studied my sheep breeds poster lately
and couldn't remember any breed names other than the most common, hence only two.
The couple running the module here have been involved with Young Farmers since 1957!
Lisa then grappled with three little Suffolk hoggets
She was doing a bit of stock judging
which is also not super hard
until you have to explain why you've ranked the animals the way you have.
Lisa was the only one who checked their little feets.
I'm not sure what this signifies but it may be used against her in a court of law.
Back to Sarah again as she set about winning the speech competition.
Sadly or happily this section is easy for her and she usually wins it.
Overall Cole won, Woody was second, Sarah was third and Goose forth.
All go through to the Regionals and you bet it's game on for all of them.
If you want to know what the other modules are, go to comments
cause I'm sure Sarah will have written them up for me.
Hi Sarah... can you please write up in comments what all the modules were? Ta muchly
*It was hot and there was hay. I'm allergic to hay so was starting to get a bit sinusy especially since I had a bit of chat with Greenie while leaning on his hay and watching Sarah load a trailer with hay and backing - actually backing says it all really. Yukky.
Ok Sara I will write up module thingy's.
ReplyDeleteSheep Module: Identify 4 different wool breeds, put together a shearing hand piece, identify 4 breeds of sheep & then judge & place 3 wee lambies. A pretty good module for me :) I won that one.
Arable/Crop Module: Hook the drill up to the tractor, drive it out of one space & then back it into another. Then calibrate the drill, this is setting it so that you drill the right amount of seed into the ground so it can grow to the desired amount. Another good module. But having the instruction book on hand is useful, but not everyone knows to use it!
Building: This was 2 modules. The first make boxing for pouring concrete. Then we were given a building plan & had to list all the equipment needed. This was pretty simple because if you actually read the plans its all written on the plans anyway.
Electrical: An interesting one given I am not electrically inclined! Had to put together a 3 pin plug, make a light bulb go using 2 6volt batteries & then answer some questions about electricty, that bit I did pretty well.
Tractor: Load a trailer with 12 bales of hay, hook the tractor to the trailer & drive around a figure 8 course & then back it into a small space, harder than it sounds as the trailer is a turn table trailer, not like your normal car trailer, it has a pivot point under the front wheels so it turns alot when you don't want it too. I did get it done though!!!
Interview: Pretty self explanitary. Tell us about yourself, goals, ambitions, what you think of the world right now & the agriculture industry, etc etc.
Environment: Answer questions about the environment.
Homemaking: Bake 3 pikelets then iron a shirt.
Finance: Complete a GST tax return, given information that is both required for it & not required for it.
Dairy: Name parts of a milking machine. Fill out an animal health form for diagnosing & treating particular diseases. Put together a pasture meter & pasture walk. A pasture measure is used to work out how much grass there is in a paddock.
That was pretty much it. We were all given speech topics at the end of the practical day & had half an hour over lunch to write out 2 min speech. My topic was what are the key issues facing the beef industry? I did pretty well in this bit as Sara mentioned.
So thats the district final in a nut shell. Off to the regional next. Big step up :)