Farmers don’t get enough recognition for their hard work, and a few people tried their hand at the life of a farmer at the fair competing in the Farmer Olympics Tuesday at the Steve Grandey Arena. Corn shucking, post driving, hay bale tossing and horseshoe tossing were all competitive events at the event.

The evening started with the horseshoe toss which saw participants trying to throw the shoes in a bucket. Steven Helton and Angela Bond ended up tying for second with two each and had to compete in a sudden-death tiebreaker where Helton had the last laugh.

Jeff Acre took home first place in the horseshoe toss scoring five out of his seven horseshoes in the bucket. “I’m undefeated three years in a row.” This event was followed by the post driving competition which required the farmers to put a fence post in the ground in the fastest time.

Dustin Stoetzel and Joseph Stewart put up a strong fight, driving the post in just over seven seconds, but it was Helton who drove the fastest. Helton won with an impressive time of 5.83 seconds. Though they may have found it easy to put the post in the ground, the participants had a harder time pulling the post out once they were done.

Stevie Glenn took first place in the corn shucking competition where each competitor had to shuck 10 ears of corn with their hands. Soon after Glenn finished, Bond found herself in second place with Russell Clayborne placing third.

The Olympics ended with the hay bale toss to see who could throw a hay bale the farthest distance. Stoetzel found himself in second place once again throwing the hay bale just under 27 feet. Erin Rigby just missed out on the leaderboard throwing 25.1 feet, landing right behind Stewart who placed third at 25.5 feet.

Clayborne ended up with the strongest throw tossing the hay bale a whopping 28.1 feet, making him the hay bale toss champ. The top three in each competition won a prize for their efforts, and it was very competitive with 14 participants across all four events.