Sunshine or 'live sex show' - you choose at Fieldays

Sydney Fraser-Jones has been involved in the Fieldays tractor pull for 36 years. Picture / Kenny Rodger

They say it's all about gumboots, tractors, business, money, and breeding.

But for a few it's all about being barefoot in the Pacific Islands, sipping on bubbles under the sun.

As the annual Fieldays opens at Mystery Creek, a Hamilton accountant has taken flight with his family to Rarotonga, while renting out his central city home for a lucrative return.

Other Waikato families are also understood to be renting out their homes for up to $500 a night, and scores more rent rooms for a lazy extra few hundred.

Renting out city homes is a new phenomenon, but it is expected to snowball when the V8 races begin in Hamilton from 2008.

Accommodation in the Waikato during the Fieldays is scarce, even in Te Kuiti, one hour's drive from Mystery Creek.

Hamilton Information Centre manager Tiffany Corbett said all motels and hotels were booked out in Hamilton, Cambridge and Te Awamutu. There was the odd B&B room available, however.

This year's Fieldays is expected to attract up to 120,000 visitors. Last year visitors spent $156.9 million on-site over the four days. Sales and orders after the event added another $291 million.

This year's theme is the business of breeding. A Hamilton genetics company is promising to unveil a new method of collecting bull-semen, using a "teaser" instead of the traditional artificial vagina.

Ambreed is marketing its demonstration of the new method by inviting farmers along to its "live sex shows".

Other events include the Ag Art Wear awards, the Possum Fur Fashion Design awards, the Rural Bachelor of the Year, an aerial demonstration by Wanganui Aero Works topdressing pilots, and tractor drag racing.

Tractor racing committee chairman Sydney Fraser-Jones, a Tahuna dairy farmer, has been involved in running the event for 36 years.

He certainly recalls the inaugural Fieldays, 38 years ago.

"They had the first few at the Te Rapa racecourse, but there was no tractor pull out there."

He had recently been made a life member of the Fieldays event, something he described as a great honour.

"I've been farming all my life and the machinery is my passion."

Some of his colleagues told the Herald that Sydney was a "legend" of the annual tractor pull.

The event handicaps each tractor according to its power.

The 60-odd tractors in this weekend's event will be assessed for their individual pulling power by three Lincoln University engineers.

The engineers will determine the weight each tractor has to pull over the 100m dash, with the most powerful having to pull five tonnes.

Mr Fraser-Jones said determining the weight was a fine art, and high-tech electronic equipment was used to identify the winning tractor.

The fastest time recorded had been around 18 seconds "in the wet", when the concrete sledges behind the tractor slid more easily across the mud.

The first prize, a trip for two to Australia for five nights, with $2000 spending money, was highly sought after. Almost as good as a family trip to Rarotonga.