It has been four years between drinks but organising this year’s Southern Field Days near Gore has proven largely seamless.
The 2022 event was cancelled due to covid, making it four years since the Waimumu site west of Gore was inundated with machinery, tents and people.
Organising committee chair Steve Henderson says when planning started a year ago for this year’s event, from February 14-16, committee members turned on their auto-pilots and things quickly started to happen.
It helped that just three of the 22 committee members were new to the role.
“There is so much knowledge,” he said.
Southern Field Days alternates between Southland and Canterbury and the themes for this year’s event are getting back and track and making it bigger and better.
“The momentum was lost and our theme for these field days is to run a good event and get back to where we were.”
There will be 760 exhibitors on site, about 60 more than the last event in 2020, with Henderson saying numbers were aided by exhibitors committing to this year’s field days when the 2022 event was cancelled.
Features this year include a tractor pull, fencing competitions and speed shearing.
A new innovation is the launch of National Lamb Day on the Thursday by the AgProud Charity, which will provide a free barbeque.
Henderson said another innovation this year is the launch of an app so visitors can more easily find their way around the site.
By typing in key words for an exhibitor or service, the app will guide them to that site.
