Nick Hunter was taught by his father that details matter and from the look of concentration on his face the lesson sunk in. Tinkess Photo

FINCH – It doesn’t matter if you have been involved in farming for your entire life, or if the closest you’ve ever come to farming is shopping at a farmers market on a summer weekend, you cannot help but be fascinated by all the activities that take place at a plowing match.

The Stormont County Plowing Match took place on Oct. 12, which was a bright, blustery Saturday. There were people of all ages, tractors which were like new, others that were vintage and plows of all descriptions. There were even a few examples of true horsepower (the four-legged variety.)

What was both interesting and encouraging was that while many of the participants were of the same vintage as their equipment, there were also a few that fit into the under 18 category, some quite a bit under.

Nicholas Hunter is a grade six student from Sydenham, north of Kingston. To say that he is new to plowing is an understatement.

“This is my second time ever,” said Nick. “The first time was last night when I tried with dad.”

When asked if his son was a good student, Mr. Hunter, his dad said he was very good.

“Each pass you can improve on the previous pass. “It’s like, even though we make mistakes, we try to improve it a little bit on each pass, and do our best job on each pass, and then we will improve. He was not quite straight enough today to start, but he will be straight by the time we’re done, because we will make improvements every pass.”

The teacher, as well, is very good, very patient, and took the time to explain each step in the process in such a way that Nick could understand what he was doing and why, and what was expected of him. He was obviously listening intently to every word and was intent on doing well.

“Nicholas is pretty controlled,” added Mr. Hunter. “He doesn’t drive fast. He understands the mechanisms and how they work, and he practices at home, like doing other things for us. We like him to be able to, you know, start the lawn mower and then move to the small tractor before we get to the big things, just to get confidence and steering and how it feels when we go over bumps and all those things. For us, it’s important to teach our kids to be accurate about everything they do.

“It’s a good lesson. Competition is always good, and this is one of those fun things amongst farmers that, you know, like, it’s, it’s totally against what society normally does, you know, like, everything is commercial. This has got some history to it, and it really teaches them some lessons, I think, too, trying to be accurate your first morning.”

From watching Nick, it seems like the lesson is being well learned.