After the huge success of the Country Fair in April the members of Suffolk Young Farmers moved on to what can only be classed as “show season”, writes Tory Lugsden.

A huge crowd of young farmers made the long journey to Blackpool for the National Federation of Young Farmers Annual Convention. 45 members from Suffolk made the trip and seemed to have a brilliant weekend, aided by lovely weather and some excellent events put on by the National team.

Suffolk were delighted to take third place in the Prince of Wales Charity Challenge Cup for raising funds for other charities throughout the country. A great achievement from our clubs.

The office has been busy preparing for the shows throughout the month and we started with a fantastic day at the South Suffolk Show. The members of Bury St Edmunds YFC put together a brilliant stand which was busy with members old and new and lots of potential new young farmers.

Hadleigh Show was another great day for the clubs with Brett Valley Juniors and Hadleigh running the show stand which, again, looked brilliant. We also managed to provide Hadleigh with two ring events including the ever-popular lawnmower “display” between Hadleigh, Stowmarket and Gipping Valley. For the first time in many years the Young Farmers came back into the ring at the show with the Tug of War competition. It was brilliant to see the members of Gipping Valley and Brett Valley battling it out in the Junior competition and Stowmarket and Hadleigh YFC’s ladies and men’s teams taking up the challenge in the seniors.

The Suffolk Show was upon us quickly and once again the Tug of War teams were in action. This was the first time in 10 years that the Young Farmers have been in the President’s Ring at the show. The teams remained the same as at Hadleigh Show and this time some of the clubs had decided to take it a little more seriously and give the teams from Hadleigh YFC a little more competition. And what a competition it was. In the Junior section Gipping Valley were out for revenge following a surprise defeat by Brett at the Hadleigh Show round.

A win in two pulls was the result for Gipping Valley much to their delight and the competition between these two clubs is going to be strong in the future events.

The Hadleigh Ladies and Stowmarket Ladies gave a fantastic display of girls on the pull and Stowmarket came out the winners in the ladies round following a very impressive set of pulls. The big competition of the day was between the Hadleigh Men and Stowmarket Men. The Hadleigh team have been training since January and take their tug of war extremely seriously and have been practising at events across the county, and further afield. The Stowmarket boys are not quite so competitive and, at the Hadleigh Show, surprised us with their Superhero costumes for the pull.

There were no costumes to be seen and the Stowmarket boys were taking the tug of war seriously this time. They’d even been up until 11pm sorting out proper boots. Despite all of the preparation the Hadleigh boys once again showed the Stowmarket boys their muscles. It was a great display of YFC at it’s best.

The Hadleigh boys and Stowmarket girls will be representing us in the Eastern Area competition in June and hopefully the Suffolk team will not have to strip down to their boxers just to meet the weigh in target!

Coming up in June we have our annual rally day with competitions including snail racing, lawnmower display, Miss Suffolk YFC, Morris Dancing and much more.

We also have the great pleasure of an office move into fabulous new offices away from our chilly/melting portable cabin at Otley College to the Stanaway Farm just up the road. Another busy month awaits us, it would be nice to have a sunny month to report on soon!