Newspapers frequently recorded the results from local ploughing matches. They provide a good deal of information about where the match was held, who organised it, the different classes, the winners (names and farms where location), who attended the match, and general comments on the day such as the weather and the ploughing conditions.
There are a relatively small number of commentaries on the start of ploughing matches and their popularity. These reflective pieces, while providing personal views from an individual, can reveal much about views on the usefulness, or otherwise, of them. One such account was published in the Buchan observer and East Aberdeenshire advertiser of 29 April 1924. It is worth quoting at length for these observations – and also a century ago.
“Plooin’ matches. Popular as ever.
Ploughing matches appear to have lost none of their old-time popularity, for contests were never more numerous throughout the country than they have been this season. It was thought that during the wartime upheaval of farming work the fine art of the plough would rapidly pass into the limbo of forgotten things. Tractors and double and multi-furrow ploughs were fast displacing the old-fashioned two-horse team and swing plough; but a reaction has set in. The double furrow horse plough now mostly fills a slap in a fence, and the old plough with its single furrow speeds over the fields.
The slump in horse-flesh was a determining factor, and will be for a generation at least. For the general work of the farm horses are practically indispensable. The tractor is at best but a useful auxiliary. Under suitable weather conditions a tractor can overtake an extraordinary amount of useful tillage, but it is practically useless for the numerous minor kind of operations that constitute the routine work on the farm.
The tractor plough has done excellent work, and in more than one contest where it has been pitted against horse-drawn ploughs, it has come out on top. Nevertheless, the plough work of the tractor in general leaves much to be desired. Apart from the novelty of the thing, the same amount of human interest can never be concentrated so keenly on an exhibition of tractor ploughing as on the work of a well-handled horse team.
Thousands of spectators have visited some of the leading ploughing matches in the north this season, thus showing that interest in one of the fine arts of the farm is very widespread, for among the coat-clad crows were many visitors from town and city-men who having left farm work for other employment, still retain a deep interest in ploughing contests. Among the competitors, too, were several ex-ploughmen, doughty champions of a former day still keen on exhibiting their prowess, and in pitting their strength and skill against those of the younger sons of the plough.
Some farmers, it is true, take exception to prize ploughing, but all are agreed as to the educative advantages of competitions in hoeing and other branches of farm work. Of course, it is entirely out of the question to look for ploughing of an exhibition class to be accomplished every day on the arable fields; but the example set before the eye of the young ploughman at a match cannot fail to leave its impression on his receptive mind. He will strive to do something like it. Emulation is a grand thing. It brings out the best that is in a man. A champion ploughman requires to be something more than a good plougher. He must be able to adjust his plough irons to balance his team, to set out the work in a field to the best effect, and to put that inimitable touch of perfection into the work which only a past master of the art can accomplish.
To the untrained eye the work of cutting and turning the green sward into a series of diamond-edged furrows may seem an easy task. Look how easily and how happily the ploughboy goes whistling at the plough. But it really is not so easy as it looks. And in a hot ploughing contest, where scores of competitors are battling for supremacy, there are no merry whistlers and no light-hearted striplings at the plough-handles.
The mathematical precision with which each furrow is cut and set out must, however, strike even the most casual of spectators as a little short of marvellous. Many a farm hand spends the greater part of a lifetime at the plough without ever being considered a ploughman in the fullest of the word.
To be recognised among his competitors as a good hand is no small achievement. Every ploughman, good, bad, and indifferent, is a bit of a critic. Comment is to be heard on every hand, and where a little group of spectators collects at the end of a ridge, you may be interested to hear one or two of the more discerning and experienced among them expatiating on pleasing points, the “readableness” of furrows etc, or warmly debating with each other as to the respective merits of this plougher’s wok or that. Often controversy waxes hot and loud, and there is frequently not a little good-humoured chaff and banter to boot.
The work of organising a ploughing match is no light undertaking. Whether the match is merely a parish or inter-parish one, or even one of national scope and character, it is got up on pretty much the same lines, only there are big and handsome prizes (in money and trophies) at the larger meetings, while at the small district contests the awards, though quite suitable for the occasion, are on a relatively small scale. Honours count for much, and a competitor who receives a linen handkerchief, or a clay pipe, for the neatest ends, for the neatest ends, for instance, is just as proud of his award as is the champion who gets a dandy brush for best done up tails, says a writer in ‘Scottish Country Life”.
A committee is formulated to carry out the arrangements, select a field for the contest, appoint judges, and so forth. The judges must be men of great experience, past masters of the art of ploughing, and they must be known as men who will given their decision without fear or favour.”
