94-year-old farmer competes at Glamorgan ploughing match

At 94, Basil George is almost certainly one of the UK’s oldest ploughmen, turning over the soil on Sunday (10 September) at the ploughing match he co-founded in South Wales.

Driving a Ferguson T20 with a Ferguson plough attached, Basil competed at the Vale of Glamorgan Ploughing and Hedging Society’s annual ploughing match at Boverton Place Farm near Llantwit Major.

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For him, it is about competing, not winning, but he admits to some disappointment at his performance in the Ferguson class on Sunday.

“I came fourth, and there were only four in the class,” he confides.

“My ploughing wasn’t good enough on the day but I really enjoyed the day.”

Basil started ploughing when he was just 14, joining his father to plough for the Berkshire War Agricultural Executive Committee, and he has been faithful to the Ferguson brand ever since then.

“I left school at 14 years and two months, and went straight to work with him,” he recalls.

“I got a special dispensation to drive on the road from one farm to another, and that is where it all started.”

At that time horses were still commonly used for ploughing, as he recalls.

“I did make a comment to my father once. I said, ‘A lot of the people around here obviously haven’t seen a tractor.’ ‘No’, he said. ‘They haven’t seen a kid driving one’.”

The tractor he drove on Sunday was an original Ferguson T20, made in 1946.

Basil, who now lives in Ogmore, was one of the co-founders of the Vale of Glamorgan Ploughing and Hedging Society in 2010 when he and seven others chipped in £50 to get it off the ground.

He hopes to be competing again next year.

“For the last two or three years I have said that it will be my last, but I have still got a Fergie tractor and a Fergie plough, so as long as I can jump on it and go up and down the field I will do it.

“The business of winning is one thing, but the business of taking part is the best thing because you meet such a lot of nice people and there is a lot of banter that goes on.

“The biggest problem with competing is the judges. If they are in a good mood on that day you are likely to get them looking favourably at you but otherwise you are up the creek without a paddle.”

• To hear more from Basil George, check out the latest Farmers Weekly Podcast.