But for a “tipped rail,” Tom and Jiggs, under the guidance of Lloyd Smith of Pelly, could have pulled off another first place finish in the farm chore event at Agribition.
As it was, Smith and his team of black Percherons placed second out of 12 teams competing in the event at the Western Canadian Agribition held in Regina during the last week of November.
This marked the second year that Agribition held the team horse events, and both years Smith entered his team. Last year he won first place in the farm chore competition and in the water race, while placing second in the feed team event.
This year, because of that tipped rail, he had to be contented with second place in the farm chore event and placed third in the feed team race, but again won the water race.
“I can win that hands down,” Smith said last week as he discussed his work with horses.
“Growing up, I used to haul water half a mile for the chickens, the cats or to fill the cistern,” he said, explaining that the skill in that event is being able to start a team and stop a team so gently that the water being hauled does not splash out of the container.
Everyone who took a ride on the horse-drawn wagon at Kamsack following the Santa Claus parade on November 27, or in Canora last week or Norquay on Saturday met Tom and Jiggs. They are brothers, aged eight and nine years, who were pulling the wagon.
They’re all timed events, Smith said of the Agribition competition. In the farm chore event, the teams are made to go through an obstacle course without touching any of the railings, pull an antique truck 14 feet, hook up to a wagon and make a figure eight around pylons, all in under five minutes.
In the feed team race, for which his granddaughter Morgan Wellington of Yorkton was his assistant, the team, dragging a stone boat, had to stop by each of six square bales which were loaded onto the boat, and then piled correctly, he said. In the water race, the team dragged the stone boat carrying a container filled with water. The team had to stop and start six times and then the amount of water at the end of the event was weighed. The team with the most water in the fastest time won.
In the same events at the Yorkton Harvest Showdown this year, Smith was named the winner and he’s also won the same events at the Swan River Exhibition for several years.
Asked about his prize money at these competitions, Smith turned his back to show off the logo on the winter coat he was wearing, saying that the coat had been his prize.
“These competitions are not money-making things,” he said. “We do it for the fun of it.”
Smith, who is a retired school bus driver, has been working with horses all of his life. He and his wife Alleen currently have seven horses, and he said he works with a team of horses every day.
“I feed 40 cows using them,” he said, explaining that as a school student he used to drive a team of horses to and from school.
Each year Smith uses his horses to demonstrate farming practices of days gone by. He sows and harvests a crop using a team of horses and antique farm machinery and has participated in many parades with his horses, including pulling a Red River cart owned by the Fort Pelly-Livingstone Museum at Pelly.
