After close to an hour of manhandling (or should that be “woman”-handling?) the levers on her sulky riding plow, while offering encouragement and instruction to her two-horse Clydesdale team of Patsy and Nancy, petite 20-year-old University of Toronto student Laura Dekroon reflects on the appeal of competitive plowing.
“It’s fun when you’re getting it right. And when you’re not (getting it right), it’s a challenge to try to keep it straight,” she said after finishing off her land at the annual Perth County Plowing Match, held Saturday, Aug. 28 at the farm of Doug and Dave Johnston near Britton, south of Listowel.
Growing up near Dublin, Dekroon learned to love both horses and plowing from her father, John. The elder Dekroon competed alongside his daughter in the sulky class, emerging with the top point total.
Under glorious sunny skies, over 50 plowmen and women felt similarly inspired to compete on Saturday in various horse-drawn and tractor-drawn classes.
Perth County Plowmen’s Association president Jack Bannerman said, “That number of competitors is really good.”
“The weather can make the show,” he added. “If it rains all day, there are times when you might not even be able to run the plowing.”
Bannerman was equally enthused about the number of young participants. There were 17 entrants in two separate classes for those under 18. Impressively, the youngest competitor, 10-year-old Clay Terpstra of Atwood, was also named both overall junior champion and overall grand champion. Terpstra, already a veteran of Perth County Plowing Matches (perhaps due to the influence of his multiple grand champion award-winner grandfather, Bryan Bertrand of St. Marys), topped his two-furrow class with a point total of 133.5.
Other class-by-class winners included Scott Thomas with the horse-drawn walking plow, Paul Dodds in the senior two-furrow, Bryan Bertrand in the senior three-furrow, Harold Walker in the antique tractor with trailing plow, Paul Hodgson in the antique tractor with mounted plow, and Tom Evans with the roll-over plow.
Bianca Slits, from Brunner, was named 2010 Perth County Queen of the Furrow. She will now represent the association at agricultural events throughout the year, as well as compete for Queen of the Furrow at the 2011 International Plowing Match (IPM) in Prescott-Russell County.
Aside from the plowing, the annual Perth County event also serves as a showcase event for Perth County agriculture, with farm machinery dealers and agricultural service providers setting up trade show booths, and 4-H members volunteering to staff the food booth. But it also serves as a lead-up to the much larger IPM, which is hosted by a different county Plowmen’s Association each year somewhere in Ontario. This year, it will be hosted by the Elgin County association near St. Thomas, from Sept. 21-25.
This lead-up role is particularly important for the Perth County association, since it was awarded the hosting role for the historical 100th anniversary IPM in 2013. It will be held near Mitchell. Bannerman, whose two-year term as Plowmen’s Association president draws to a close this year, says he’s looking forward to remaining involved with the group at least through 2013, so he can be one of the hundreds of volunteers lending a hand to ensure the anniversary event is a success.