Sunnyvale farmer Geoff Lamshed has had the Yorke Peninsula Field Days and its predecessor in his life since he was born.
He runs Fernbower with his wife Kathleen, as well as son Andrew and his wife Sharyn.
They grow wheat, barley, lentils, peas and beans on the 1500-hectare property.
Geoff’s great–grandfather Samuel and grandfather William bought the property his family resides on in 1904.
Geoff said they would have attended Northern Yorkes Peninsula Agricultural Bureau Field Trial and Show events – the forebear to YPFD – while the Lamsheds have attended the field days consistently since.
“The event offers an absolute wealth of knowledge to go to and see all the machinery and find out the features of different machines with things of rural farming of today,” he said.
“We will look at airseeders, tractors and harvesters. I have bought a stone roller , portable sheep yards and lots of tools and accessories at previous field days.
“All the farmers look at everything there that is concerned with farming, including items for the workshop, tools, new inventions and new models of everything.”
Geoff has great memories of the field days and trials.
“I can remember in 1957, Dad was driving a harvester at Paskeville,” he said.
“In 1959, I was a volunteer worker with the Paskeville Rural Youth. We had a cool drinks stand at a header trial. I would have been about 17.”
Geoff drove a tractor in a tillage section of the field trials at Clem Schilling’s property in 1973.
This year, Geoff is a field days delegate as part of his association with the Boors Plains Ag Bureau.
Geoff, Kathleen, Andrew and Sharyn have all worked in the canteens, helping fundraise for local sporting bodies.
Connection to blacksmith life
Kathleen Lamshed’s family, the Whittakers, built stump jump ploughs in the 19th century, about the same time the machine was patented by Richard Bowyer Smith.
The Whittakers made two and three-furrow ploughs in 1877 at the Whittaker Dowlingville blacksmith shop.
The Whittakers advertised stump jump ploughs for 24 pounds each and sold 20 ploughs at their first demonstration in 1880.
Geoff Lamshed, Kathleen’s husband, said local blacksmiths organised machine demonstrations between themselves.
An advert from the Yorke Peninsula Advertiser, dated September 21, 1880, called for entries into a public ploughing match for stump jump ploughs.
The plough judged best suitable for the task given won £20, while the runner up got £10 and third got £5.