but that's not all

that happens during Grand Final week with Young Farmers.

We have a heaps of dinners, a heap of dinners.

Starting with the

National Bank Grand Final Committee Dinner on Wednesday

then the dress up themed

Awards Dinner on Thursday,

the posh as Sponsors Dinner on Friday night

and then the Show and Ball including Dinner.

For the photos from the Thursday night Awards Dinner

have a look at Kate Taylor's flicker here

Grand Final modules

The most important volunteer on Practical Day

of the

National Bank Young Farmer Contest

is the time keeper.

This year it was Lucie.

Practical Day starts off with a series of modules.

The modules are based on farming tasks

that may or may not be common.


Brad Lewis (Tara/Man) is grading fleeces here.

This would be pretty hard for him cause he is a dairy farmer.

The Contestants, of which there are seven,

one each from each of the seven Young Farmer Rgions,

come from any and all sectors of the agricutlure industry

including off farm Young Farmers like
Micheal Lilley (Tasman) and Tony Dowman (East Coast)

This is Micheal getting a seeder ready to....

you guessed it seed a paddock.

The Contestants have to so all the modules to the best of their ability

in limited time.

In this module they would have had to figure out how much seed

to load the seeder up with and that involves quite a bit of maths.

Micheal is a vet so this is a liddddlle bit outside of his experience.

Then we have Rural Polytechnic Business Manager putting together

a milking plant.

Tony Dowman (East Coast) has managed a dairy farm before injuryinghis back
and starting work at Taratahi.
This module should be pretty straight forwad for him,
but some times the thing you think you know the best and
haven't bothered to study cause you know it so well
will be the module that will trip you up.
Not that Tony did badly on this module.

Because you have these guys following you around
and they want interviews all the way.
And there's photographers and your every move is documented.
Katherine Tucker was the only female,
in fact she is the third female to get to Grand Final in 44 years.

The point of this Contest is to find the best Young Farmer.
Not the best girl farmer or boy farmer,
just the best farmer.
On farm cuts you no slack if you are a chick,
neither does this Contest.
Either you can do it or you can't.
Katherine can do it
and she can do it better than the seven guys
she beat in her Northern Regional Final.

Sam Williams (Wai/BoP) is getting up close with fecal samples.
Nice work if you can get it.
This is Sam's second Grand Final.
In his last one in Gore two years ago he cut his hand.
A big slash across his palm.
He should have gone to hospital but
he may only had that one chance to win Grand Final
so he stayed and didn't win, but he could have.

Micheal's giving welding a go.
I totally can't remember what they had to do.

Farmer's in NZ seldom scan their own ewes
(It's like an ultrasound but the ewes don't worry about having a full bladder
or have cold gel on their belly.)
but this makes a great left field module for Tony Dowman.

The one module you can count on is the First Aid module.
All farmers need to know First Aid cause help is never near by.
If you are lucky enough to have cell phone coverage you can call for help
but you can't count on that,
nor can you count on the first responders to be able to find you.
Pete Gardyne (Otago/Southland) encounters a pretty realistic car accident.

So in this module the judge watches and listens very closely
to exactly what you say and do.
The trick to this module is slow and steady
rather than panic and fail.

Hoof health is always important for cows.
Yes that's a real hoof but it's not attached to a cow.
If you talk to your local vets early enough,
 they'll collect up things like hooves and dead calf fetuses
and store them up in the freezer
so you can test/teach farmers in how to deal with
what ever animal health issue faces them.
Michael may have an unfair advantage here.
being a dairy vet and all.

It's a long grueling day.
Preceded by a full day of mental challenges,
as if farm problem solving isn't hard enough.
Pete is a great sheep and mixed cropping farmer
who stood up to all the challenging modules,
logging,
dairy,
sheep,
cropping,
engineering,
animal health/science.
And then once you have done those,
there's two head to head race offs
and the AgriSports Final.

And that's not the end of it.

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.

The National Bank Young Farmer Grand Final

In all seriousness,

Grand Final week is like giving birth

in the sense that there is a certain amnesia

that takes over once the dust has settled and life is tracking along.

Then you arrive in the host city

and within ten minutes

the franticness of the five days looms ahead of you.

It's a good looming but even so it's daunting.

So here we are in Dunedin

the host city of the 2012

National Bank Young Farmer Grand Final

with seven Grand Finalists

This morning I flew down from Palmerston North

with our Chairman Spud.

We arrived, dropped off and then

I headed out to Invermay AgResearch

to help (watch) Moffdog, Dunky Monkey and Henry

set up the National Fencing Final.

It's all just a pile of sticks here

but tomorrow

I'll show you the National Final in action

as they fence their way up a pretty steep hill.

Really quite steep in fact.

Enough that as I walked back to my ute

I felt sea sick for the wonky horizon.

Though I do have a dose of the flu

so it may have been a fever spike.

More drugs I say.

 It's all on in Dunedin

over the next couple of days.

If you are around come down to the Forsyth Barr Stadium

on Friday and for free watch our seven Contestants

battle it out doing ag modules for four hours,

two 30 minute head to head task races

and then the gruelling AgriSports.

It's a killer.

In the meantime watch

Katherine Tucker

our third female Grand Finalist in 44 years

on Close Up here

fast forward to 18 minutes and she's all yours.

an eventfilled few days

You can tell when I'm overwhelmed,

cause blogging is the last thing on my mind.

Ok so the job interview (shhh!)

was fine.

It was weird to be interviewed by people you know

and Im pretty sure you don't normally go and

have a drink with one of the interviewers afterwards.

Plus my never ending 'flu

(confirmed by a doctor channelling Patch Adams yesterday)

reared it's stoopid head at about 1.17pm on Friday

so I drove with a foggy head,

meet Nig and Suzy with weepy eyes

and blocked ears

at the overrated Dunsandel Store

(I say that cause I always it to be so much better than it is

 and it just never is).

Then, as usual thought I had plenty of time

but didn't so ended up zipping along to my interview.

I struggled to finished my sentences or find thoughts. 

 I couldn't answer a question or two

but they would have been fibs* anyway.

What a space cadet I was.

I don't know why I applied for that job other than

the organisation seems like it would cool to work for,

the people you'd work with would be great,

the role is smaller than the one I have now

(more than one 'flu a winter gets you thinking)

and the pay is way better than what I'm on now.

Oh and a cooler car than what I've got now too.

Only thing is

I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT FARMING.

Actually I probably know more than I think I do,

that's what I told them cause it's true and Im honest*.

Then on Saturday,

the day the weather threw up on Canterbury,

I dragged my sick carcass to Supervalue to pick up

teenage boys to take them over to the Christchurch District Final.

That's Contest to you,

the first of the season.

Where I sat in a room with Dave and Victoria

interviewing young Contestants as part of the District Final.

22 ten minute interviews.

By the end I couldn't see properly

cause I had such a headache

but the sun had come out, it had warmed up a bit

and I was almost at the end,

my bed was calling....

when those flipping teeenagers wanted to go to the buzzer quiz round.

So I dropped them off,

went to the supermarket

and bought chocolate.

My diet has gone off the rails

but the weight stayed off cause

I have no appetite so one mouthful of chocolate does the trick

for an enture day's meals.

Man I was glad to get home

and crawl into my unmade bed

and sleep for a solid five hours before getting up

to watch not one but two rugby games.

I don't actually remember the games though.

Too tired I guess.

Christchurch District Finals 2011

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,

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,

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.

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!

Back from the melting North

I wasn't going to blog til tonight but work can wait five minites while I post my favourite thing from my week away - it was work and lots of joy.

The best portion....

Thanks to the Northern Regional Contest Committee et al for making my nephew's weekend.