Farming sub-committee attends the Ballymoney Show
The farming team had our 1st Visit to the Agricultural Shows for 2019 in series of Farm Safety Promotion days at the Ballymoney Show on Friday 31st May & Saturday 1st June 2019.
For Ballymoney show we took a stand within the Trade Marquee. Thankfully we did as the rain on Friday afternoon was not conducive to a stand in the open. Jimmy & Wendy.B prepared the stand on Thursday evening with bales kindly loaned from a friend of Jimmy’s.
The stand was set up so we had a kids colouring competition, a farm safety DVD on loop on the stand, farm safety packs, the farm display so we could identify safety issues and the CPR/ Defibrillator demonstration.
Wendy Moore opened up the stand on Friday afternoon and “passing trade” was slow due to the weather. The crowd picked up on Friday evening from 7pm to 9pm as the weather improved considerably.
Saturday proved to be a busy day with large crowds attending the show and the weather was great. So great we were par boiled in the marquee. (Jimmy having to remove his wellie boots and wring out his sock, LOL)
We had great interest in the colouring competition for the kids and they really enjoyed the toy farm display we had in place on this occasion although we could have sold the tractors ten times over! The bales proved popular as the kids coloured it provided a well-earned rest for the adults and gave us the opportunity to have conversations regarding farm safety.
The defib demonstration proved popular too with compliments on how it was great to see how they operate and comments like “at least we know how they work”, “I often wondered what to do”, “very informative” etc. We completed demonstrations on request which then drew a crowd as well as promoting the set times we completed a demo also.
The information given out, the HSENI farm “SAFE” packs were well received and we were thanked for providing useful information.
We also heard many stories from those attending the stand of events which occurred on farms that could easily have been prevented and we received praise for sharing the safety message to the farming community.
We also have requests from many groups to provide some farm safety talks and Defib demonstrations. We provided packs to local Men Shed group, local Youth groups and to local school.
All things considered we had a great day at the show and look forward to judging the colouring competition and providing more information to local groups in the months ahead.
