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A Wellsford teenager was part of a two-girl duo that became overall grand champions for TeenAg 2017, beating all the boys’ and mixed teams by a record 50 points.
Cara Doggett, 17, of Wellsford, and Grace Moscrip, 15, of Kamo, travelled to Fielding for the competition to represent the northern region.
They were up against 13 other regional final winners from around the country in the grand final.
Both girls attend Whangarei Girls High School and dubbed their team “WGHS Farming Chicks.”
They were confronted with a battery of exercises to severely test their practical and theoretical farming skills.
These included construction of a fence, dealing with a simulated cow calving, controlling a combine harvester, building a planter box, making a scarecrow, soil testing, weed management, animal health and farm safety.
They also had to deliver a speech to judges on the topic “How to get young people involved in agriculture”.
Cara says the farm safety proved especially challenging with the girls having to quickly make the right safety decisions for riding a motorbike, using a chainsaw and handling chemicals.
She says her farming skills have benefitted enormously from being responsible for managing her own stud on her family’s farm in Wellsford.
Apart from that, she says being a good farmer requires passion, determination and perseverance.
Cara’s mum, Vanessa Corry, who is the business manager for Farmlands in Wellsford, says watching the girls managing a combine harvester was especially nerve wracking – it was a brand new $500,000 machine.
But the girls succeeded with flying colours, coming first in the practical modules, first in the speech competition and second in the theoretical exam.
The win earned them TeenAg 2017 trophies and $1000 in cash and gift vouchers.
The TeenAg competition is run by New Zealand Young Farmers in conjunction with the Young Farmer of the Year contest.
The annual competition started in 2011 and aims to promote a positive picture of agriculture and agricultural careers from an early age.
