Chris ploughs on with his pleasing pastime

This June Long Weekend Blayney Local Chris Chapman will once again be looking to conquer the nation’s best horse-drawn ploughing competitors and bring home the prestigious ‘Golden Plough’.

Chris has been participating in competitive horse ploughing for well over 30 years and is a multi-Golden Plough title winner. The competition — considered Australia’s most prestigious horse ploughing championship — involves competitors skilfully guiding one or two draught horses, pulling a single furrow plough, to create a straight plot of eight runs (minimum) which are judged on linear accuracy, depth, sharpness of cut, total width and how the soil is turned. Points are also heavily weighted towards the relationship between horse and competitor.

While these techniques of bygone days are of little use on a farm today, Chris finds it a pleasurable pastime and enjoys the test of skill that the Golden Plough provides.

Unlike many other competitors, Chris fell into the hobby by pure accident when he was in his late 20s. 

“I went out to shoe a draft horse for a friend of mine, and I sat down with him and had a few beers, and I came home with a draft horse,” Chris said. 

Chris attended the Golden Plough for the first time as a spectator. The following year he entered in the novice category, which he won, and came third in the Golden Plough. 

“Once I saw this ploughing I just thought, this is for me, I’m going to try this,” he said.

“So I went on for many years with it, eventually winning (the Golden Plough) six times in a row. So it was quite a feat for me to be able to do that.”

Chris competed often in his early life, but then shift work forced him on hiatus for a number of years.

But now retired, he is back spending plenty of time behind his horses and looking forward to competing in yet another Golden Plough at Lyndhurst on June 8–9.

“I’ve only just got back into it, and I’m just training some horses up. It takes a fair while to get them going the way you want them to,” Chris said.

“You want them to be going nice and slow and steady, you’ve got to be able to train them up to do that. Because you can always make a horse go fast, but it’s very hard to make a horse go slow.”

Chris explained that the ploughs used in the competition range anywhere between two and three metres long, with a mouldboard that lays over the top.

Nice, neat, and straight rows that are four to five inches in depth are the key to a good plough, says Chris. 

“There’s a way that you need to plough with a horse, but in the early times without chemicals and that, they used to plough so that the grass would be facing down and the roots facing up to kill the weeds,” he said. “So you shouldn’t have any grass growing when you’re finished.” 

Now with his own small block, Chris not only competes in ploughing, but uses it for yard work. 

“I am retired now, but over the years I’ve had a team of up to eight (horses) that I used to plough with here,” he said. 

“I put a crop in, probably four or five acres of wheat. That was cut with the horses, brought in with the horses, and then cut up with a shaft-cutter and fed to the horses. Just like they used to do in the old days.

“It is a bit of fun, it’s a hobby of mine, and I just like being able to do it with the horses.”

The 2024 Golden Plough is being held at the Team Penning Grounds and the Lyndhurst Golf Club on Saturday and Sunday, June 8 and 9. Chris, who is also an organising committee member said he hopes to see a good crowd come along to spectate and enjoy the ancient craft. 

“People think you’re silly just watching this little bit of ground all over a ribbon, but it’s not silly, it just mesmerises you sometimes!”

Tickets for the Golden Plough are available at 123tix.