A Pelly resident and his team of heavy horses, although fresh off a chain of victories at Agribition, is becoming almost as common a sight at district Christmas events as is Santa Claus.
Lloyd Smith and Tom and Jiggs, his team of black Percherons, were in the Santa Claus parade at Kamsack on November 25 and provided wagon rides around the community. They were at Norquay’s Santa Day on Saturday and at Canora on Monday, helping to spread Christmas cheer.
But during the Western Canadian Agribition in Regina November 21 to 26, Lloyd Smith was presented with three best “All Around” banners for top farm chore, feed and water race team.
“We did very well,” Smith said last week as he read the words on the banners he had been presented following the competitions.
Smith explained that on November 22, he with Tom and Jiggs won first prize in all three competitions: the water race, feed team race and farm chore events, and then the next day, they placed second in the farm chore and feed team events, and third in the water race.
But still, he and his team were named best all-around in all three categories.
The competition is getting better and better, Smith said. “It was down to seconds.”
Although at Agribition in 2014, he and the team placed first in all three events, last year he placed third as all-around competitor.
“It was just super,” he said of the audience response to the competition, explaining that there had been 12 teams competing in the events. “I get pretty excited.”
Smith explained that in the water race, the team must drag a stone boat carrying a barrel of water and make six starts and six stops while travelling in a circle. The winner is the team that loses the least amount of water in the fastest time.
In the feed team competition, Smith was joined by his grandson Wyatt Smith, and they had to pick up two bales of straw at three stops along a route, and then drop them off again, but the bales had to be loaded, piled and unloaded correctly. The win goes to the pair that does the job the fastest and the best.
In the farm chore event, the team had to move a 1937 Ford one-ton truck 14 feet and then hook onto a wagon and move the team through a course.
In addition to competing in Regina, Smith and his team won similar events at Roblin this year and at the Swan River rodeo.
Smith, who spends about two hours a day with Tom, 10, and his brother Jiggs, 9, who help him feed the cattle, says he thinks they enjoy the competitions.
“They listen very good,” he said.
Smith, who is a retired school bus driver, said he has been competing with his horses almost since the time he was old enough to drive a team.
“Growing up, I used to haul water half a mile for the chickens, the cats or to fill the cistern,” he said last year after having placed third at Agribition.
“These competitions are not money-making things,” he said. “We do it for the fun of it.”
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.
