This year’s Farming Like Grandad was the most popular yet, with plenty of activities, stalls and competitions to keep the whole family entertained.

An organiser, Doug Bull, said the event, held at Te Teko’s Racecourse Park on Saturday, was extremely well supported.

“The team organising did a great job, it was well set-up to support a very, very large crowd. The best crowd we’ve ever had,” he said.

Almost 2000 people – 1260 adults and 692 children - passed through the gates with another 400 people on site providing services.

The Axe Men’s carnival was well appreciated with this year being the first time the Rotorua Axemen’s club had held a professional competition at Farming Like Grandad.

Eight events were held with woodsmen traveling from across the country to compete.

Buggy rides, Clydesdale horse rides and wagons, and wagons pulled by tractors had children queued waiting for rides. There was also an arena with a range of children’s games including a three-legged race, an egg and spoon race and a sack race.

“We think it’s important to cater for the children so they can understand how farming works today, and how it was 65 to 75 years ago,” Mr Bull said.

He thanked those who displayed their machinery, vehicles and implements throughout the weekend.

“That’s a couple of days for them to bring everything to the fair and take it back the next day. They were really good,” he said.

The Waterwheel Heritage Trust had a line-up of vintage machinery on show.

“It creates a huge interest; we have motors about 100 years old sitting there chugging along on the lawn. We had old tractors and hay bailers,” he said.

“We also had a lineup of brand-new great, big, modern machinery. You could watch an old hay bailer being manually filled by people, and then a modern one will do in 10 minutes what the old one would do in a day.”

The Pony Club also had an arena of their own and held a competition with 24 entries.

“It was marvellous, absolutely marvellous They’ve already said next year they want to do it bigger and better,” he said.

He said the former racecourse was an “absolutely superb” location for Farming Like Grandad.

“Hat’s off to the committee who have set this up as an event venue,” he said.