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Mendip Ploughing Society Match

The 136th annual Mendip Ploughing Society match took place at Priddy Hill Farm this year, the match was staged where country craftsmen gathered to show off their skills.

The event not only involved ploughmen demonstrating their skills in a whole range of classes from the modern to the vintage, but it was also an opportunity to see other traditional crafts such as hedging and walling in action.

It was a privilege watching the soil being turned into neat rows in preparation for sowing the next year's crop while at the field margins an overgrown jungle is turned into a neat, tidy and stock-proof hedge and a pile of random stones into a robust wall.

These skills were thought to have been dying out but with the encouragement of organisations like the Mendip Ploughing Society, who organise the event, and sponsors such as the Mendip Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), they are now thriving. Indeed the Mendip Hills AONB even hold courses to teach the art of hedging and walling to anyone interested, and in so doing have helped to keep these skills and events such as the ploughing match alive.

In fact the traditional hedgers and dry stone wallers are now much in demand with many farmers employing them to resurrect their boundaries under the countryside stewardship scheme.

Although this particular environmental scheme has now ceased, there is further encouragement, under the new single payment scheme, for farmers to maintain the countryside rather than produce food and so the traditional skills of hedger and waller look as though they will be around for some time to come.

The Mendip Ploughing Society hold their matches on a different site each year with the sequence being two years on the hills and one in the valley, which stems from the fact that the society was formed when the Blagdon Society, Nempnett and Butcombe Society and the Winford Society all joined together.

This year the match took place at Priddy Hill Farm, Priddy, by kind permission of Mary Mead, of Holt Farms, and without the support of such local landowners these events could not take place.

Some of the most fascinating ploughing at the match is performed by steam driven engines, and of course the horse still has a place in this traditional event.

Competitions do not stop at ploughing and there are classes for crops to be shown with the traditional mangolds and fodder beet, cabbages, pumpkins, kale and, for the non-agriculturalist, the tallest sunflower and the largest sunflower head together with bales of hay or samples of corn.

James King has been secretary of the society since 1967 and has a wealth of knowledge of how these traditional arts have progressed over the years. He has seen the event grow, with four times the number of ploughmen competing today compared to in his early days.

Mr King is proud to be associated with such an event, the purpose of which, in his own words, "is to nurture the agricultural arts of ploughing, hedging, walling and the growing of crops". Mr King has a willing and committed team of stewards together with a hard working committee, whose dedication have seen the society grow over recent times.

The competitions started at 10am on Wednesday, September 28, but it was some time later that the hard work of the competitors was seen and judged.

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