Village Squire, 1978-09, Page 4"You're going to what? You're going to a plowing match?
What's that? You mean people actually go watch farmers
plowing their fields? You've got to be kidding. Sounds about as
exciting as watching a snail race."
That might be the ordinary urbanite's view of a plowing match
until you've seen the Inte,rnational Plowing Match, the biggest
event of its kind anywhere. Every year in a matter of weeks a
huge city grows in a field somewhere in Ontario to briefly host a
population the size of London, then in an equally short time, it
disappears until it springs up again somewhere else in the
province the next September.
Like the Canadian National Exhibition, the I.P.M. has grown a
long way since the first one was held in 1913. Today few of the
quarter million or so people go there to watch farmers from
around the world test their skills at plowing. Instead they go to
walk the "streets" and browse in the tents where consumer
goods of every kind are sold and advertised. You can see gigantic
tractors and combines, or the latest gadget all being hawked, in
one way or another.
This year that tented city will be bigger than ever and will be
situated just off Highway 86. just east of Wingham. Jim and
Carol Armstrong are the host farmers for the 1978 I.P.M. They
will provide about 196 acres of the 1200 acres needed to provide
space for all the activities at the match. Surrounding farmers will
provide the rest.
The tented city will take up 130 acres of the total. It is arranged
in streets and this year for the first time a seventh street will be
required to find enough space for the more than 500 exhibitors
who want to take part. There will be 60 caterers on the site to
help look after the huge crowds that are expected to flock to the
site between Sept. 26 and 30. If all goes well a record total of
250.000 people could attend the match, eclipsing the old record
set two years ago when the I.P.M. was held near Walkerton, just
a few miles away.
The match is a huge undertaking and requires a huge amount
of planning. Match sites are picked four years in advance to give
the local committees a chance to prepare. The planning began
for Huron county in 1974 when the local Huron County
Plowmen's Association, supported by Huron County Council was
awarded the match. Huron had made four presentations to the
Ontario Plowmen's Association which sanctions the match,
before it was awarded the event.
Next advertisements had been placed in local newspapers
asking for farmers interested in giving their land for hosting the
event. A farmer has to give a lot of thought to the decision to
offer to host an International Plowing Match. It can effect his
farming operation for several years. The farmer must change his
crop rotation so that he can still grow the crops he needs but in
such a way that this won't interfere with the match site. Then
there's the fact that heavy equipment and huge crowds have
been known to damage the soil, perhaps effecting the yields of
crops grown on the land after the tented city has moved on to a
new location. The biggest danger, however, is what wet weather
and the resulting muddy conditions can do to the land.
These dangers, real or imagined, are not offset by any
particular financial gain by the host farmer. Land for the tented
city is rented at a rate of only $70 per acre and plowing sites are
rented at $25 per acre and parking lots for $22 per acre.
On top of that a farmer has to think about making sure his farm
is in top shape and expenses like painting the barn are
necessary. Then the farmer has to be willing to devote endless
hours to meetings, giving speeches and talking to reporters in
the years leading up to the event. In short, being "major" of the
tented city is a huge responsibility, not taken on lightly.
Four Huron county farmers thought over the consequences
and decided to take the chance. One of them was Jim Armstrong.
Jim and Carol Armstrong had come to the county only six years
earlier after their "almost century farm" outside of Bramalea
had been sold. Two years later, Jim joined the local Plowmen's
Association and was there when the initial idea of hosting the
match was talked about.
Inspectors from the Ontario Plowmen's Association were sent
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VILLAGE SQUIRE/SEPTEMBER 1978. PG. 3.