On the Saturday of the Comice there are trials for the departmental ploughing championships and it is all very serious and the tractors and ploughs are HUGE. Frankly I don't understand that side of it. On the Sunday of the Comice it is a less serious side to ploughing, with competitions for horse and donkey drawn ploughs, rotavators, and the ancient tractors. Here you can see Boce and St Martin d'Arce head to head - all made more difficult by having to be done in fancy dress.
These older tractors and ploughs mean that it is often not a one person job - and this plough looks way too complicated to me!
While there are the odd Massey Fergueson tractors - the beloved Fergies of the Archers and similar - the ancient tractor of preference round here is the McCormack International Farmall. We spotted two sizes - the full grown version:
and the rather more skeletal Cub version:
which I think is rather cute. If only we had a nice big barn to keep one in and a few thousand Euros to buy one - these babies don't come cheap!!
There's a place in Jedburgh that sells John Deere tractors .... every time we go past I ask for one, but for some reason Malcolm says no!! (they do small ones for children - maybe I could get one of those?) I love the idea of ploughing wearing fancy dress!!
Posted by: Anne Donald | 13 October 2010 at 06:55 PM