Ploughing means many things to many people. It's a technical, highly-skilled sport in which New Zealand has just had one of its most successful years. But, to Brent Edwards, it meant long days in dusty paddocks during school holidays and hearing that has never been the same since.
I was raised on a sheep and cropping farm in North Otago and ploughing was part of the routine.
Ploughing matches were part of the social fabric for farmers and I remember attending my first ploughing match, on a property north of Oamaru, in 1956 at the age of 6.
I don't actually recall a lot.
There were the marquees in which the farmers tucked into sandwiches and savouries and talked about the latest wool prices over a beer and/or whisky, there were the judges in their white coats and there were the immaculately ploughed fields.
I couldn't tell you who won but I do remember the public address system announcing that the Springboks had beaten Southland 23-12.
It's strange the things small boys remember.
It was the year of the famous Springbok tour and my young mind was absorbing as many details as it was capable of.
The next ploughing match I attended was the inaugural New Zealand championships on the Taieri in 1961.
It followed the same pattern but Otago was playing a provincial match at Carisbrook and I remember wishing the ploughing would finish early and we could go and watch my heroes.
Life on the farm followed a fairly established routine - lambing, shearing, dipping, tailing, mustering, ploughing, fencing, harvesting and so on.
I enjoyed mustering and attempting to master the art of working our three dogs.
Dipping and tailing were fun, too.
But shearing, to me, was probably the most fun.
I was always given time off school to act as a rousie and I loved the atmosphere of the shearing shed.
Even then, I marvelled at the skills and endurance of the shearers.
They arrived in time for breakfast, a cholesterol-filled feast before they started work at 7.30am and did the first two-hour run.
I quickly learnt how to throw a fleece, to bale, to keep the pens filled with ewes and the other multitude of little tasks but, 10 minutes before morning and afternoon tea, I went over to the house to help my mother carry the tea and sandwiches - enough to feed a small army - over to the shearing shed.
Lunch was sharp at noon and we would all walk over to the house for the inevitable steaming hot roast lamb and mint sauce with all the trimmings.
The shearers would then sharpen their gear and prepare for the afternoon runs.
They would knock off at 5.30pm after eight hours with the shears and sit down on a bale for a beer while my father went to the far paddocks to bring in the sheep for the next day. It was almost dark by the time he finished.
My mother would be busy preparing the meals for the next day.
I wondered then why my parents did not enjoy shearing as much as me.
Now I know.
It was damned hard work and my father always had an anxious eye on the weather.
There was not the same buzz about tractor work and ploughing.
There was just my father and me and dry, dusty paddocks.
We worked the fields with two tractors, a David Brown crawler and a Fordson wheel tractor.
I was usually allocated the crawler on the basis that I was slower and not as accurate.
Dad had limited patience. He was a good ploughman and he preferred to do most of it himself.
Ploughing was just part of it.
There was also hoeing, discing, harrowing and sowing as we prepared the ground for cropping and, after the crops had been harvested, we had to plough the stubble.
I remember one school holidays when I spent almost the entire two weeks on the tractor as we prepared the paddocks for a crop of barley.
The work was tedious and repetitive and the noise of the two tractors would have shocked OSH. There were no ear muffs in those days.
The highlight was washing away the dust with a cold beer at the end of the day.
Sometimes, I was even allowed to go to the Hampden Tavern where the barman turned a blind eye to my age.
That was the way things were in those days.
Company was always welcome after a solitary day and the din of the tractor.
Tractor-work left me with one, probably inevitable, legacy - less then perfect hearing - which later in life often proved a problem in a busy newsroom.
Farmers were, and are, naturally competitive.
Their bread-and-butter tasks became their sports - ploughing, shearing, fencing and dog trialling.
Some commentators have questioned whether they deserved to be classified as sports but, to the men who worked the land, there was never any question.
The Taieri Ploughing Match Association was formed in 1948 and has hosted New Zealand finals in 1961, 1970, 1979 and 1994.
The major annual event in New Zealand ploughing has been the New Zealand Silver Plough which this year was won by Scott Mckenzie (Clinton) ahead of David Brown (Temuka) - an appropriate name for a ploughman! - and Ian Woolley (Blenheim).
It was his second win in three years and he will represent New Zealand at the world ploughing finals next April, while Malcolm Taylor (Putaruru) will compete in the reversible.
There was triumph for New Zealand this year when Bruce Redmond, of Methven, won the world title on what was, literally, his home ground.
He headed off Andrew Mitchell (Scotland) and Samuel Gill (Northern Ireland).
It was the first world title for New Zealand for 29 years and the ultimate reward for Redmond after six previous attempts.
He had had five finishes in the top six, the best a third placing in Kenya in 1995.
''I was brought up and raised on the farm next door,'' Redmond recalled. ''I started driving tractors and ploughed my first paddock on that farm. It's pretty ironic that I became a world champion on that land.''
He ploughed in his first competition at the age of 13 after having been around ploughing matches with his father since he was old enough to remember.
''The more I ploughed the more I dreamed of the world championship title. Once I had ploughed at international level I thought about how good it would be to plough in a New Zealand final.
''After my first world championship I began to think it [the world title)]was something I could manage.''
The world championships this year were a coup for New Zealand.
As well as Redmond's success in the conventional ploughing, Paul Henson, of Palmerston North, came from 10th position in the reversible stubble to second in the reversible grasslands to place third overall behind Fabien Landre (France) and Thomas Cochrane (Northern Ireland).
Noel Sheat, of Palmerston, who has had a lifelong association with ploughing, was chairman of the New Zealand World Ploughing organising committee which attracted a crowd of 30,000 over the four days of competition.
Six years in the planning, and with a million-dollar budget, the competition was held over 160ha of Methven farmland.
There were 58 international competitors and about 600 overseas visitors, big business by any standards.
It was the fourth time New Zealand had held the world championships but the first time the event had received Government funding, recognition of its importance to the profile of New Zealand farming and sport.
And yet ploughing has a comparatively low profile partly, one suspects, because those who compete and administer it are doers rather than talkers.
Ask most New Zealanders who is the present world ploughing champion and few would be able to tell you that it is Bruce Redmond, of Methven.
Even fewer would be able to tell you the New Zealand silver plough champion is Scott McKenzie, of Clinton.
But that does not diminish their achievements.They are, quite literally, the best in their field, champions both.