rural awesomeness

Just so you know,

no self-respecting rural person would use the word awesomeness

unless they are a relatively uncool 13 year old

but it is the most appropriate word for the

2012 National Bank Young Farmer Grand Final.

This guy Elliot Scott was the man in charge

of a team of a fair few people who pulls together a massive,

a huge, an epic year of organising, planning and challenging

all for their fellow Young Farmers.

Early in the morning inside Forsyth Barr Stadium, Dunedin,

looking down on the modules on the concrete at the right end and

on the field the AgriSports set up to be raced through in a few hours.

So this is how the volunteer side of Young Farmers works.

We have these great young people who

join Young Farmers.

They blithely go along to meetings,

having a few jars,

meeting people,

talking harvest and calving stuff.

Then they enter the National Bank Young Farmer Contest.

At first they are having a good opportunity for a skills day with their mates.

They have a go at skills modules welding, building, digging, or calving/lambing

(really gross defrosted, limp dead calves or lambs).

They do this for a couple of years

then one year they make it through to a Regional Final.

Then after a couple of goes a Regional Final

they might, might make it through to a Grand Final.

Only eight from each Region make it through to a Regional Final,

only one from each Region makes it to Grand Final.

Katherine Tucker (Northern Region Grand Final Contestant)

in the dairy module at 2012 Grand Final

Along the way the Young Farmer volunteers

will have chaired a Club,

run a District/Regional Contest Final,

organised fundraising, bus trips, hunting trips,

a million and one social activities

and

making really great, life lasting friends.

Chris Will, Cam Lewis (elected the NZYF Board just now)

and Cam Brown (Regional Chair, Taranaki/Manawatu)

Contest is like no other event in anywhere in the world,

the rural world or otherwise.

Three levels - District, Regional and National

400 enter, then 56 (8x 7 Regional Finals)

then just 7 at Grand Final

then just 1.

There is only one winner each year.

We've have been doing this Contest for 44 years.

There have now been 44 Young Farmer of the year.

2012 is Michael Lilley's turn.

That's Micheal in the cloak with his wife Kelly

and the six Grand Finalists.

Grand Final is a gruelling three day event

that has a day of mental challenges,

a day of physical challenges

then a night of conquering rounds of mastermind type ag questions

all the while being filmed, photographed and interviewed.

There are only seven each year.

Only one wins.

Don't worry we train them young these days.

We have AgriKids with their own Contest in teams of three

and TeenAg in pairs.

Training Grand Finalists for the future.

We have a TV series called

The Road to the Young Farmer Final 

so click above and hopefully TVNZ will be generous

and allow my overseas peeps to watch a little of what we do.

at laaaassst....

Firstly and nothing to do with this post but I have to say do eating crumpets make your teeth feel funny? They do mine and I have eat marshmallow Easter eggs to get my teeth equilibrium back.

Right back to todays post, yes this is the big one, the one I've been working my up towards all week....

Yes the Thomas and Sara (and Jim) road trip to the Northern Regional Finals in the metropolis of Dargaville. Auntie Sara Jane made sure Thomas was chocolated up (that's like being liquored up for Mormons) and off we went from Hamilton heading towards Auckland airport (to add Jim) and then on to Dargaville.

So the road north of Auckland, the new toll road is fantastic. Instead of the epic hours and hours of driving it was two and half speedy hours all the way to Dargaville. The Far North is just not that far anymore. However the road to Auckland from Hamilton had a 15 km rolling traffic jam which added 45 minutes to our journey to the airport.

But back to Dargaville. Arriving in the dark and being talked into getting up at 5.45am on a Saturday (Thomas too) to get breakfast and down to the Dargaville town hall to watch over the Regional Young Farmer of the Year contestants as they did two 25 minutes exams in the semi darkness, due to the TV cameras filming.

Thomas went with Bron my co-worker from AgriKidsNZ to help set up. Sod child labour laws. After the cameras left I didn't think to turn the lights on but the sunrise through the windows was lovely. Besides those farm boys are used to getting up early and doing things in the semi-darkness...

what? oh they aren't dairy farmers? oh in that case sorry fullas for forcing you to work out the GST and an Animal Status Form in the dark. I thought all farmers in the North Island were dairy farmers.

But it gets better, 8.30am I meet back up with Thomas and Bron at the AgriKidsNZ contest. That's wonderBron on the left.

Let's see there were 17 teams of three kids between ages of 8 and 13 from schools all around Northland there to win the prize - a trip to the AgriKidsNZ Grand Final in Gore! The greatest thing about NZYF, the Contest and AgriKidsNZ is that we totally rely on volunteers like Michelle (yes right there above) who with wonderBron did an amazing job of keeping all those kids on track, engaged and winning.

Meanwhile, once I had finished with examining the big kids I moved on to judging Animal Health... don't worry no animals were harmed in the process

Me and Andrew (that's Andrew three photos ago thrilling parents around Northland by teaching their kids how to use a dog whistle) spent quite a bit of time in a tent with the first aid test (Andrew's partner Sarah who was the accident victim who screamed 17 times through the morning - Andrew and I plotted about really injuring her) and our Animal Health activity/test.

What the kids had to with us was put the bits of the cow back on in order i.e. in the right place and with the ribs over top of it all (please note the cows bits are ply wood not actual bits, though when they get to TeenAG they get to feel real cows bits - I love my job), they had to identify four breeds of dairy cattle (i.e. cows - fresian - black and white, ayrshire - a lovely shade of brown and white, guernsey - looks like a jersey cow but with white and jersey - lovely light brown with the biggest doe eyes), four breeds of sheep (I do get the different uses for sheep breeds but once they are past lambs who cares, the cuteness factor is gone) and match fleece samples to the sheep breeds then answer 20 animal health questions all in five minutes (did you know milk is 38C when inside the cow? nope? now you do).

The teams who did well did so with good time management because it was really hard to answer and do everything in a measly five minutes.

Here's my team, well my lane but these little beauties worked their 5th place getting butts off. Here's what they had to do

1. put the wheel back on the go cart
2. push one team member up to the far end
3. 'milk' a 'cow' into a bucket and ear tag the 'cow'
4. in the go cart, push the team member back to the start with the 'milk' in the bucket
5. pour the 'milk' into a drench sac and fill water or 'milk' balloons using the squirt gun
6. take the balloons and crawl under a camo net
7. knock a duck and ducklings off the stand with the balloons
8. bridle a horses head (a Godfather-ish I thought)
9. using a giant slingshot, catapult two toy sheep into a fadge
10. then put a puzzle together
11. then get in the fadge and sack race back to the beginning


please note the children inside the fadge (for those to lazy to click on the fadge link)

12. then they had to raise the National Bank flag the right way up
13. fill a pipe with water til the little yellow ball floated to the top
14. then take the ball and shoot it (doesn't matter where)
    
    and that was the end for some very wet kids. That fulla in the back is Tractor, husband of fab Michelle and dad of Brad in the foreground. Tractor's older son Andrew is the absolute spit of his dad and when they stand together it's like Tractor has a mini-me, maybe they should call Andrew Ride-on-mower. And what was Thomas doing all this while?

he had figured out that Scotty would give him bbq sauages and bread because that's the reward you get for showing up at an AgriKidsNZ event while it's still dark, they were really tasty sausages to be fair. I have never eaten so many sausages in my life than I have in the last two months since I started at NZYF!

This is the reward you get for being such an awesome kid all daySorry the close up photo kept going sideways.

I do have to say I love Young Farmers

(that is Club members, not individuals per say or young farmers in general).

Where else can kids run around all day on their own and be totally safe because you know the adults around will be watching out for them without being asked? and tell them off if they need it? and take them for digger rides? and feed them? and include them? all the while there is monster machinery and chainsaws and fire engines and motorbikes and working dogs all over the place.

hmmm that could be why the adults watch out for the kids.

Thanks for a great Saturday Northern Region!