THIS weekend the NSW Ploughing Association will be hosting the NSW and National Ploughing Championships.
Competition will take place on May 12 and 13, having practised and setup in the preceding days.
The event will be held on Will Bennet’s property, “Raintree”, which is nine kilometres northwest of Cowra on the North Logan Road.
Competitors are expected from NSW, Tasmania and Victoria.
The event is held over two days with each competitor having to plough a plot 100 metres long by 20m wide.
Each competitor has a time limit of three hours to complete.
The scoring system used in competitive ploughing recognises the aspects of good ploughing-rewarding good, time-efficient work and penalising faults.
There will be three categories of competition this weekend: vintage, conventional and reversible.
The vintage category is only in its second year of competition and the ploughmen have a smaller plot to plough.
Winners in the conventional and reversible categories will go on to represent Australia in the World Ploughing Competition to be held in Germany next year.
The international contest is held each year by a different member country of the World Ploughing Organisation.
The NSW Ploughing Association Inc. through its affiliation with the National Ploughing Association of Australia Inc. is involved in this worldwide competition.
Every year Victoria, Tasmania and NSW conduct ploughing contests at which each states selects a team on seven ploughman.
The trade of an expert ploughman involves more than straight furrows. Good ploughing minimises the number of subsequent workings needed.