Kent
Count Show
report 31st July, 2006 Seeing our flag in the parade was, for me, the most rewarding part of this year's Kent County Show.
Just one year earlier, North Downs YFC only existed as pub banter. Two months previously, Astor of Hever school had shut their farm, and with it, their young farmers club. But former members perservered and, one year on, they once again took their place in the County Show Parade with clubs from around the County.
Despite all the challenges of raising funds to buy equipment, obtaining and training animals and dealing with paperwork, the club (led by Nia Atkinson, aged 20) managed to finish an impressive 11th place.
Amongst our successes were being awarded best presented club, and scoring highly with our 5-month old beef calves and butchers' pairs lambs. We also did well in the fancy dress class, winning third place for dressing a lamb up as a John Deere tractor!!
As well as filling in miles of paperwork, and working hard to prepare our animals (calves kindly loaned by Nick Leggat, County YFC president; lambs from Matt of Ash YFC; and porker pigs from Princess Christian's farm in Hildenborough) we also had to build an area for our animals to stay in including kickboards to keep muck together, and flags so that people realised who we were!
We had an absolutely brilliant time, despite one of our members having to travel to A&E late at night after receiving a nasty bite from a horsefly (Emma's fine now!)! We'd like to thank everyone involved with the Kent Show committee for all their help and for a fantastic event, and we look forward to learning from this year and coming back even better than ever in 2007!
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