Farm chores have always been a team sport.
How would everything get done if young and old didn’t pull together?
In a new event designed to showcase horsepower and traditional chores, Canadian Western Agribition held its first chore team competition last week.
And in traditional style, it drew competitors from 13 years old to 82.
Lloyd Smith, 74, from Pelly, Sask., won two of the three events to take the overall championship.
“Just for fun,” he said when asked why he brought his horses to Regina.
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“I’ve had horses all my life.”
He and several other competitors are members of the Saskatchewan Working Teamsters Association. They get together at an annual field day with their horses to plow, seed and keep up the old ways.
Monty Bertram and his twin brother, Marty, were the two youngest participants in the event.
“I mostly just do the seed scurry,” Monty said, referring to the feed team race that sees one team member drive the team and the other load and unload feed bales on a plywood square.
Another event is the water barrel race, in which the team pulls a sled holding a barrel of water. The team with the most water left in the barrel at the end of the course wins.
The third part is the actual chore team competition. The team pulls a load of 500 pounds — in Agribition’s case an antique truck — about three metres, then hooks to a wagon and manoeuvres through an obstacle course, backs up to a dock where the driver’s helper unloads and reloads feed, and then completes the course by unhooking from the wagon.
Each event was held twice over two days and overall winners rewarded with ribbons.
Smith won the chore team and water barrel race, while Ryan Ewen of Lumsden, Sask., won the feed race.
Bertram, who participated in the feed race with his father, Chris, said he enjoys learning how to move and handle the horses when his father lets him drive.
However, the best part was missing school to attend Agribition.
Smith, who competes with his 18-year-old granddaughter as an assistant, said the interest from young people is gratifying, as is the response from crowds who love to watch the horses work.
“It’s too easy to go out and turn a key,” he said.
