Te Puke Fieldays to help celebrate major milestone

Jamie Mackay will be the MC at Saturday's Fieldays event in Te Puke.

Celebrations of Fieldays' 50th anniversary come to Te Puke this weekend.

An event will be held at Te Puke Sport and Recreation Club on Saturday, June 9 from noon to bring the Bay of Plenty community together to celebrate the milestone.

The event will feature a free sausage sizzle, family-friendly activities and games and the event will be MC-ed by radio host Jamie Mackay from The Country Show. Doug Avery, author of The Resilient Farmer will also be speaking at the event at 2pm.

This is the fourth in a series of events happening across the country in the build up to Fieldays on June 13.

Fieldays marketing manager Taryn Storey says the Te Puke event is a celebration for the whole community.

"Fieldays is a national event that means a lot to people all over New Zealand, and this is a chance for people to come and share their memories of Fieldays and share their stories about farming life," she says.

"It's also a chance for the rural community to get together, catch up with old friends and neighbours and have some fun."

Other events have been held in Winton (Southland), Feilding and Kerikeri, with a final community celebration in Hamilton the week before Fieldays.

For more information see www.fieldays.co.nz, or follow Fieldays on Facebook.

FIELDAYS FACTS
* Fieldays is based on a 114ha site at Mystery Creek, 10 minutes from Hamilton.
* It is largest agricultural event in the Southern Hemisphere.
* This year's theme is The Future of Farming.
* A record 133,588 people visited Fieldays in 2017 — its highest visitor number yet. There were 998 exhibitors showcased across 1473 sites