Summary

The Ploughing Word on the Week 19th September 2026
This week the country hosted its annual open air Ploughing Championships. In fact, the event includes the showing (and selling) of all things associated with farming. It lived up to being the largest of such events in Europe.
The fields at Screggan were transformed into the semblance of a small town built with Marquees and arranged into ‘streets’. The surrounding fields were used for the ploughing competition or car parking. Over the three days 243,000 people attended!
The sheep shearing contest attracts competitors from the antipodes. There is always fierce competition from local people. The sheep are never neutral and look for an opportunity to escape from the shearers electric razor!
There must be no nicks to the sheep’s skin nor any tuft of wool left unshorn. The judges have eagle eyes and the shearers have to be good at subduing the sheep in a humane manner. The winner is the one who not only has the most perfect technique but the fastest time. The world record is set at 37.9 seconds.
The ploughing is carried out in strips of land, one strip allocated to each competitor. Their tractor pulls a two drill plough. The drills must be adjusted to suit the soil both in depth and width. It goes without saying that the furrow must be straight – not an easy task especially when it comes to the horse drawn plough. Points are awarded for the care of the soil. The loam should be as near unbroken as possible and of uniform depth with the grass covered as it breaks down to fertilise the soil. The soil is of prime importance.
Jesus was familiar with its importance. In his parable of the soils he lists four types; the compacted soil of the roadway, the arid stony ground with shallow soil, the thorny ground where the seed was choked by the weeds and the good soil which from one seed could produce heads of grain thirty, sixty or one hundred seeds in return. Clearly it paid to look after the soil!

Jesus explained the parable. The seed is the word. It is always good. It is the soil which is the problem. The first soil was a hardened roadway. The seed did not penetrate and the birds (Satan) snatched it away.
The second soil receives the seed with joy – immediate growth. But the stony ground doesn’t produce root growth and it cannot survive the storms of life.
The third soil already has thorns growing on it. The seed roots but cannot compete with these emblems of sin. Jesus names two sins, the cares of the world and secondly the deceitfulness of riches rob the farmer of a harvest.
The fourth soil has been prepared to receive the seed. It takes root and yields a harvest corresponding to each seeds potential (Matthew 13 verses 3/23).
We are the soil. The fourth soil is different. The difference is it understands what is happening when the word is proclaimed. This understanding equates to a conversion so out of one seed comes many as the word of God takes root in prepared hearts. Which soil are you?