Yesterday was our Young Farmers county rally. This is one of the biggest events in the young farmers calendar with competitions for everyone. This year our county theme was ‘Circus’ and the national theme was ‘Tomorrow’s World’ which made for some interesting competitions.
I was determined to take on a bit more this year as last year was my first year, and not knowing what to expect, I only signed myself up for the junior cookery. This year I turned up to our first rally meeting keen to sign up for lots of different things. I took part in the junior cookery again, the metalwork competition, the junior face painting, and the junior exhibit box. It’s very true that the more you put into Young Farmers, the more you get out. A piece of advice I was given was to do your best in all your competitions, put in 110% but when you’ve done all you can, walk away from it knowing no one will think any less of you, no matter what you achieve.
For my cookery, I made chocolate chip american style pancakes with caramelised banana and salted caramel sauce. It was delicious and I managed to come second which means I will be going on to compete at the Royal Three Counties show in June. It was reassuring to hear that the steward didn’t want to move on after tasting my dish and that the judge thought my style was professional and I worked effieiently and hygenically.
I had been working on my metal work for a couple of weeks before. The task was to produce a weathervane to the theme tomorrows world, using as many recycled materials as possible. I acquired an old bike and chopped it up to produce my space themed weathervane. I didn’t place with this competition but I scored 72/100 which I was pleased with.
I worked on the junior exhibit which was to the theme of ‚Fairground‘ with another junior member. I made a wooden carousel with painted papier mache horses, fairground cupcakes, bunting and a painted wooden peg doll and she made a fairground poster. It came together really well but there was some tough competition and we didn’t place.
As a small club, we did really well, we secured the trophy for most points per member at the end of the day and came home with a good number of coloured place cards for placing in the top 3. All of the hard work really pays off when you see the whole club come together and produce some great work, even if our club tops were missing an L in our club name…
Bring on rally 2017!