Otley’s scorching hot season opener proves a timely tonic for agriculture
AFTER A long, hard winter farmers are now starting to get their businesses back on track, and so the opening fixture of the Yorkshire show season came as a well-earned fillip.
The country’s oldest oneday agricultural show does not always enjoy sunny weather; however, the thousands of visitors to Otley Show revelled in summer-like conditions for the event’s 209th year.
Long queues formed at icecream kiosks and families soaked in the rays on the banks of the showground’s lake on Saturday; scenes which contrasted sharply with those of just a few months ago.
Show secretary Janet Raw said she was grateful for such strong entries from farmers, because many had struggled through a difficult spring, unable to let their animals outside due to poor grass growth.
Wintry weather lasted into March and led to livestock losses in severe snow drifts.
Sheep farmer Kevin Wilson, of Blubberhouses, said: “It makes showing harder because the condition of the sheep is harder to hold so I’m really impressed by how the stock has been presented today.” Mr Wilson and his son James’s homebred Blue Faced Leicester was named Otley’s supreme sheep champion, meanwhile Pateley Bridge’s Andrew Fisher was in reserve with a home-bred tup hog Teeswater. The commercial cattle champion, a Belgian Blue cross heifer shown by Matthew Bentley, 10, of Kepwick, won the supreme beef title, pipping a home-bred Limousin from James Cooper of Dacre.
Meanwhile, a Holstein shown by 24-year-old Suzy Lawson, of A Lawson and Son at Arthington, took the supreme dairy championship ahead of Dewsbury’s IRG Collins and Partners with a Shorthorn.
Main-ring entertainment included a first appearance by Joseph’s Amazing Racing Camels, as well as the ever-popular Ben Potter birds of prey display and a flyball demonstration by Wharfedale Woofs.