Hay Days showcase heyday
Taranaki Vintage Machinery Club held its Vintage Hay Days in the weekend.
It wasn’t hay making weather but it didn’t stop hundreds of people checking out how things were done in farming’s heyday.
The Taranaki Vintage Machinery Club held its Vintage Hay Days at the Honnor family farm, on Waitara Rd, on Saturday and Sunday.
The show boasted old style tractors, traction engines, hay stack making, maypole dancing, finding a needle in a hay stack competition, a petting zoo, silage making, rides and an array of vintage machinery.
Organiser Brenda Honnor said despite the grey skies the biennial event had attracted good crowds of both rural and city folk.
‘‘Probably a mix of both, but definitely more townies and they are just amazing and they’ve never held a chicken before or they’ve just never seen the tractors,’’ Honnor said.
‘‘It’s really cool listening to the comments.’’
The rides and displays were set up in a 10 acre paddock on the farm, which has been in the family for six generations, and there was something for everyone.
Two-year-old Sam Wyatt loved sitting on Sweetie the Palomino pony as his mother Jo watched on.
From New Plymouth Jo said it was nice to let Sam check out the rural lifestyle.
‘‘It’s good just to get a bit of a taste of the old style farming lifestyle,’’ she said. ‘‘Plus he’s tractor mad.’’ Honnor said the biggest attraction were the steam power engines.
Clive and Rob Lintern offered the crowd rides in a trailer attached to an 18 tonne Fowler steam traction engine named ‘‘Black Beauty’’.
Clive said the engine could use up to two tonnes of coal a day and was a crowd favourite.
‘‘Everybody loves them, there’s three in Taranaki.’’
A prelude to the vintage extravaganza was held on Friday when the historical hobbyists hosted about 200 students from Taranaki schools to check out the displays the day before it open to the general public.
Honnor said funds raised from the event would be donated to the Taranaki Rural Support Trust and Prostate Cancer Foundation of NZ.
Bell Block’s Tyrehse Ruwhiu, 10, thought the event was cool.