Well what a first couple of months we have had this winter! It’s been full on with moving on Gypsy Day (1st June in the farming calendar each year) and then getting the house and everything all set up post move as well. We haven’t had too many weekends away from the farm since moving (because, well, farm life!), but not long after moving we headed off to the Waikato for the biggest agriculture event in the Southern Hemisphere….Mystery Creek Fieldays (or “Fieldays” as most of us call it).
To give you a quick summary of Fieldays, it is an event showcasing everything agriculture which is run for four day every year in early to mid-June, and attracts up to 25,000 visitors per year – which for little old New Zealand is no mean feat considering our entire population size is around 4.5million.
We attended this year for the last two days (Friday and Saturday) and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves; catching up with lots of friends and doing a bit of shopping as well. The Fieldays are usually notorious for being freezing cold and pouring with rain (a side effect of being held in the dead of winter I suppose!), but we were super lucky this year in that the temperatures didn’t drop below 6 degrees! You can honestly find just about anything at Fieldays, from clothing to machinery, incredible food to clever innovations and everything in between. There really is something there for everyone. They even have a “Rural Catch” competition to see who is the most eligible bachelor/bachelorette in the rural sector, with a raft of amazing prizes to the lucky winner.
We left home on the Friday at a rather ridiculous hour of the morning (4.30am) to make the trek up to Mystery Creek, and after a quick breakfast break along the way we arrived at about 10am. Not so bad considering we expected to be in traffic for a while…in some years people have waited up to 2 hours just to get a park to get into the grounds!!
The view from the top carpark
Friday was spent getting our bearings as the Fieldays site spans across roughly 50 acres. With a little help from the Fieldays app, and *cough*conveniently getting lost in the shopping area, we managed to leave late afternoon with our wallets a little lighter than when we arrived. We had every intention to go out on the Friday night, as there is always a rather good Young Farmers party on in town, but after the long drive and early start we were absolutely knackered by about 8pm.
Saturday dawned bright and early with only a hint of the low cloud that the Waikato is famous for, and after a warm spot of porridge for breakfast off we trotted for round two. We covered a lot more ground on the second day and had a really good look at the Innovation Tent, which showcases up and coming Ag based companies that have designed equipment or items to help make life a little bit easier on farm. All of the designs were truly amazing and it is incredibly mind blowing how people can come up with some of these things! Kiwis are well known for being innovative and this truly shown through at Fieldays. The boys were rather obsessed with all the tractors, fencing equipment and other large machinery, so it was quite easy to leave them to it to go and explore the ‘Town and Country’ marquee and the ‘Fieldays Pantry’ where all the good food and homeware options are!
My fake peonies purchased at Fieldays
I was quite happy with the purchases I made over the weekend, with most of them being necessities…. or so I tell myself anyway! I was able to get my hands on a couple of winter rugs for Diva, because even though we are only a month into winter she has already destroyed at least one rug so far!! I was also in desperate need of a decent jacket for the farm, which I was able to find from Stoney Creek, but my favourite purchase by far for the entire weekend were these gorgeous fake flowers from the lovely “Flower Girl” and they honestly made my weekend. As we have no flowers in the garden yet (that’s my next mission) being able to have beautiful peonies in the house all year round is making me so happy. The flowers are fake, being made from silk, but the foliage is real and lasts anywhere from 1 year through to 8 years.
That’s all for now on the Fieldays, but I do hope that you have enjoyed reading about our time there. I already have next year’s dates in my diary so I will definitely be making the effort to go again! If you attended Fieldays this year I would love to know what was your favourite part, or if you aren’t from NZ if you have a similar event near you that you like to attend.
Talk soon,
L-Jx
