It’s been a strange year to chair the club, through a pandemic and three lockdowns which has seen hugely decreasing numbers in young farmers clubs across the country, but I’m so proud to say that our little club has thrived! We’ve had a lot of interest from new members across the board of our age range and each one has supported the club through the last year. It’s wonderful to see our club on the rise again and I’m sure Wythall will come out on top as it often does.

We started off last year making the most of what we could before we went into another lockdown with bowling, a firm favourite as usual, an outdoor games night with hot chocolates, the ever-enjoyable pumpkin carving and building Guy Fawkes’ for our new members night which saw lots of new young faces coming on board. In amidst all this, in honour of Harvey’s 18th birthday, we planted a silver birch tree at county office, to symbolise regeneration, hope and appearing forever young - this has been growing well and we are hoping to place a plaque on it soon. Our last face-to-face meeting before the winter lockdown was a bonfire night which unfortunately resulted in half of us having to self-isolate.. it just had to catch up with us at least once! 

The next few months were tough - meetings had to be held virtually and for many of us that meant figuring how to use Zoom without staying on mute and only showing the ceiling - mentioning no names but he’s sat next to me! We tried to keep morale up and managed to host a quiz, house treasure hunt and catchphrase amongst other games. We also held charity talks from the Yellow Wellies Foundation and Oddballs to continue supporting these charities despite the lockdown.. I also attempted a virtual National YFC stock judging competition - it’s safe to say I didn’t quite have the luck I had last year and I won’t be rushing to judge pixelated videos of animals that clearly didn’t want to be filmed again.

Next came our first fundraiser and wow did we succeed in this. Many of us came together to walk, run, ride or cycle as many miles as we could in 24 hours on Valentines Day, in memory of Harvey and in aid of The British Heart Foundation. Between us, we managed a total of 165.38 miles and quadrupled our target by raising a huge £2,062! These are huge numbers for our little club and I’m so proud of everybody who took part and incredibly thankful to those that donated and supported. 

After this, along came spring, and despite some restrictions we were able to start meeting face-to-face. We hosted an easter egg hunt, some games nights, and a few lovely walks in the bluebells and sunshine - we were all just pleased to be out and socialising again! I was invited to compete in the Senior Member of the Year competition but, instead of on stage of course it was on Zoom, and amongst some tough competition I was pleased to have placed 6th. 

We later attended a rounders match and BBQ joint with Cutnall Green, held our own dodgeball match which had a huge 17 members attend - next time I will be buying more dodgeballs! And we rounded off that heatwave with a visit to Bizza’s rare breed flock, a county social, and a good old fashioned water fight, although the balloons were more like rocks than water balloons.

Sadly, we said goodbye to our lovely vice chair, Charlotte, who has moved up north to begin a new career and we wish her the very best of luck for her future. Then came the exciting part…. we could start socialising!

With three weeks to pull everything together, several of the Worcestershire clubs began panic-planning for our summer doos! We had a fantastic time at Inkberrow’s foam party which was a huge success for them, we hosted pub of the month and then it was time for Bash on The Borders - our biggest event of the year which certainly was the biggest event of the year! I don’t think the limit of my bar license even wants to think about how many people came through that door but the queue to enter grew and grew and grew, and then grew again with people from as far as Wiltshire up to Lincolnshire until we eventually shut the doors! I counted the bar ten deep at one point and drinks were flying out quicker than our many helpers could keep up with. It was an adrenaline-filled night but such an exciting one! A huge thank you once again to the Johnson family for being brave enough to host, to Lydia for coping with the thousands and thousands of pounds being thrown around, to all of our members and advisory who helped with the planning, set-up, running and clear-up, and a special thank you to Ryan, Emma, Neil, Hannah and Angus who went above and beyond what I expected of them. All-in-all it was a massive success, raising a whopping £9,000 for the club and a further £1,000 for The British Heart Foundation in memory of Harvey who I’m sure would have partied his way through the night.

After all that excitement we had a chilled summer with a couple of BBQ’s and pub nights, another summer doo and Hannah and I tripped across the border to see what the drinks tasted like in Hereford for their takeover night. We also pulled together the ploughing match, with competitors coming from far and wide and a further £242 being raised for The British Heart Foundation - a big thank you to my burger-flippers and raffle-ticketers who helped on the day. Finally, to round off the year, we hosted yet another success at our county social with a pub quiz ran by Rob Richardson which brought together 55 members from across the county. Another feather in the hat for Wythall, as Rob put it!

And that’s been our year - despite the difficulties we’ve been through, I feel that this has been one of Wythall’s most successful years yet in so many ways. I said in last year’s report that we will make up for the lack of fundraising and I think it’s safe to say we’ve achieved that! Our little club is back on the map and certainly back with a bang and that’s all thanks to our ever-supportive members and everybody else involved. I’d really like to take this chance to thank Sue and Cam, who have been my rocks really at county, always there with advice and always up for a good time too, and Hannah and Bizza, who have not only been wonderful committee members but also my best friends and have put up with many panics and flaps, ten messages sent back-to-back, and been there for me when I’ve had too much on my plate, I could not have done this without them. I’m really looking forward to seeing what this year has to come for Wythall, and to chair us through what I hope will be more of a “normal” year, with competitions, socials, and of course rally day! I’m sure our club will do us proud as it always does, so here’s to another great year for Wythall Young Farmers!

Molly Phillips - Chairlady 2020/21

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