North Canterbury News: March 11, 2021

RURAL LIFE
42 The North Canterbury News, March 11, 2021
Machinery demonstrations ahighlight
By DAVID HILL
Two North Canterbury brothers
have been nervously watching
the government’s daily Covid­
19 updates.
Andrew and Nathan Stewart,
of Waikuku, are organising the
demonstrations for the South
Island Agricultural Field Days,
to be held at Kirwee on March
24 to 26.
The event is subject to the
region remaining at alert level
1.
‘‘There’s afair bit of
discussion every time there’s a
press conference, but it’s just a
matter of holding on and hoping
we can do it,’’ Andrew says.
Some of the big machinery is
scheduled to start arriving this
week as the workload begins to
step up ahead of the main
event, while the brothers
continue to juggle their day
jobs.
Andrew runs the family’s
dairy farm at Waikuku with his
wife, Rachel, and works for
Landpower, while Nathan runs
an agricultural contracting
operation, Cresslands
Contracting.
‘‘It certainly does get pretty
hectic from now,’’ Andrew says.
‘‘We’ve been getting the crops
ready and the gear starts
arriving this week, and really
starts to get full­on the week
before.’’
One of the main attractions
this year is expected to be the
inter­plant weeder, designed
for maintaining vegetables
without the need for hand
weeding, Andrew says.
The demonstration area this
year includes about 10 hectares
of crops, including barley
stubble, oats, lucerne and grass,
where various companies can
demonstrate their gear.
‘‘There’s no fodder beet or
❛It’s the best place to
have alook at the
machines being used
and alot of companies
are realising thattoo.❜
—Andrew Stewart
maize this year. We’ve kept it
fairly simple because we
weren’t sure how people were
going to get on with their
machines,’’ Andrew says.
‘‘At the moment we’ve got just
over 20 different companies
demonstrating and more than
50 machines.
‘‘We have agood range of
cultivators, ploughs, grubbers
and drills.’’
Nathan has added to his
contracting fleet with
purchases from previous field
days, and the brothers will have
their eye on acouple of
machines this year.
‘‘That’s what alot of guys
have found. It’s the best place to
have alook at the machines
being used and alot of
companies are realising that
too.’’
Overall, there are more than
600 trade sites booked this year,
making the event asellout.
But Covid­19 has had an
impact as many of the large
agricultural machinery
companies have been unable to
get new gear into the country in
time to demonstrate the
machines.
‘‘There seems to have been a
bit of ahold on the boats, so
there will be alot of machines
on display which farmers have
already been using on farms,’’
he says.
Demonstrations ... Machinery is
put through its paces at the South
Island Agricultural Field Days in
2019. PHOTO: FILE
Brothers in arms ... Andrew and
Nathan Stewart keep an eye on the
demonstrations at aprevious
South Island Agricultural Field
Days.
PHOTO: FILE
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