Klaudijus Norvilas becomes Lithuania’s best young ploughman

At 20, Klaudijus Norvilas is this year’s best young ploughman in Lithuania, despite once sinking a tractor in a pond shortly after getting his tractor licence. LRT reported on the young farmer from Judrėnai in Klaipėda District.

Norvilas says his interest in farming began early. He now works fields even in wet autumn conditions, when tractors can get stuck. This year, he has become bogged down four or five times. Friends or his brother sometimes help pull the tractor out, and on one occasion both he and a friend got stuck in separate tractors, with no phone signal nearby.

He was working a soaked pasture during the LRT interview, preparing the ground for next year. He plans to sow phacelia, which will provide food for bees, and annual grass for livestock feed. But when fields are too wet, farmers cannot plough, sow or cut grass. Norvilas says he hopes next year will be drier.

Norvilas first sat on a tractor when he was six or seven, after his parents bought him one for his birthday. His father showed him what to press and how to steer, then had him practise driving to the end of a field, turning around and coming back. By the age of 10, Norvilas was driving on the road.

His enthusiasm for farm work sometimes kept him away from school. In his final years, he says, teachers were glad if he showed up at all. He would skip lessons to work on the farm, sometimes telling teachers he was ill before heading out to the fields.

“I enjoy it so much,” he said, explaining that while sitting through lessons he would watch the clock and wait for the school day to end so he could go to work.

Norvilas shared the story of sinking a tractor in a pond after barely getting his tractor licence, joking that he feared his father would be furious when he got home.