Dennis Hitchings is still going strong competition ploughing and has won more prizes than most

8:00am Sunday 14th March 2010

By Liz Watkins

HE was aged 64 when he took up competition ploughing and now, nearly 20 years later, Dennis Hitchings is still going strong.

He is one of the oldest ploughmen in the country, has won more prizes than most and at 84 is still looking to add to his tally.

Although currently fighting a troublesome cough, he is hoping to be back on the tractor and ploughing a straight furrow at Herefordshire Ploughing Association’s annual match at Llanwarne Court, Llanwarne, on Saturday.

Dennis, who still runs a business in Ross-on-Wye dealing in second hand JCBs, ploughs with a 1940 International W4 tractor and a Ranson two-furrow trailer plough.

When most men were retiring, Dennis took up competition ploughing and won several third prizes before clinching his first win in a West Midlands Vintage match at Massington in 1989.

Since then, he has won 62 firsts, 47 seconds, 44 thirds and seven fourths. In 2007, he was judged first at five different ploughing matches.

He has many happy memories of his successes, none more so than when he won first and the overall prize at a Llanwarne ploughing match at Baysham Farm, Sellack.

Just 64 years earlier, at the age of 15, he had ploughed in the same field for his employer Charles Rudge, using a caterpillar D2 crawler and four-furrow International trailer plough.

Last year, Dennis won seven first prizes and three overalls, a second and a fifth out of the nine matches he entered.

He was unable to enter two other matches, being at the World Ploughing Match in Slovenia.

He has ploughed in many parts of the country, placed fourth out of 18 at the British National Championships in Cumbria.

Five years ago, Dennis put a diesel engine into his W4 Tractor, an unusual act which led to a report in a national magazine.

He was contacted by an Australian reader, who also owned a W4 and was invited to visit if he was ever in Australia.

Earlier in his life, Dennis had farmed in Australia for seven years, still owning a property there. When he returned last year, he met the reader, John Ronan. Through him, he was introduced to the Australian ploughing champion Dave Smith, whose wife Rhonda represents Australia on the World Ploughing Committee.

She invited him to the world match in Slovenia, where he met ploughmen from such places as Kenya, Switzerland, Russia, Macedonia and New Zealand and he has been invited to go to the next world match in New Zealand.

Dennis has forged many friendships in many places through his ploughing prowess.

In 2008 Dennis, a widower, was married at the age of 82 to Ionwen Williams of Llanwarne Court, where Saturday’s ploughing match, postponed from two weeks ago because of the wet conditions, will take place.