Icebreaker - Pure Merino

In the name of science, we forced ourselves to have a quick sniff under the last four competitors’ armpits. This took some convincing as the shirts are now completely filthy, and look as if they should smell bad enough to kill small animals. However… as any Icebreaker fan will know… our tees smelled surprisingly good. There was in most cases a wee whiff of body odour, combined with a faint smell of Old Spice / Lady Speed Stick deodorant (depending on gender), but you really had to try hard to smell it. And considering that we’ve put these shirts through an incredibly sweaty, dirty field test for four days… well, our Icebreaker smells like a rose garden compared to the standard cotton tees everyone is used to wearing.

At the end of our four intense days of harvesting, our seven competitors logged over two hundred working hours in Icebreaker. The winner of this year’s challenge, with the most hours in his shirt (a whopping 51), is Jochim Farms patriarch Marc Jochim. Try as we might to beat him, Dad just got up earlier and worked later than everybody else- so he deserves every bit of the Harvest Challenge fame and fortune which is now his. We took him out to the Inverness Bar and Supper Club to give him his Icebreaker prize (an awesome Beast 150 weight Argon Crewe top), meal, and trophy (a tiny merino sitting in a frying pan, to keep with the ‘Sheep in Heat’ theme).

A big thanks to Icebreaker for sponsoring the 2010 Icebreaker “Sheep in Heat” Harvest Challenge, and for making such a fantastic product. Another thank you goes out to Icebreaker from my mom, who says “I had to wash a lot less laundry this year! It was great!”

Signing off now from the Icebreaker field office in Inverness, Montana, until next year…

- Allison Jochim, Icebreaker Graphic Designer

Another competitor bites the dust! Only four left in the Harvest Challenge! And speaking of dust . . . boy is there a lot of it. Wheat chaff is everywhere, floating in the air, sticking to hair and skin, coating the insides of our lungs and turning our Icebreaker shirts from white to brown. (Before and after picture of shirts included for comparison). And STILL the shirts aren’t smelling or itching! Well, mine doesn’t smell or itch, at least – we may have to have a smell test tomorrow to confirm across the board.

- Allison Jochim, Icebreaker Graphic Designer

Progress report: things are getting interesting out here on the farm. The shirts and the competitors were pushed to the max today when we ran into a few problems (or “opportunities to excel” if you prefer the phrase). First, one combine harvester ran into a wet patch of grain, which plugged up the machine’s internal mechanics. Unplugging the machine is not a fun job – let’s just say all involved got pretty sweaty. Next, another combine ran over a large rock which happened to lodge in the intake reel so tightly that it had to be removed with a sledgehammer. (Tempers were high by this stage – I had to snap a picture of the rock from inside the cab of my moving combine so as not to stir the pot.) Third, the air conditioning went out on one of the combines for the last half of the day. SWEAT CITY! The poor driver of that combine really should get some bonus points. And finally, one other thing went wrong which I have no energy left to describe. It was also a sweaty job to fix.Our beleaguered, sweat-soaked team is hanging in there, and marveling at how no one stinks yet.

And we’re down one more competitor – the youngest participant in the Harvest Challenge claimed that her Icebreaker was giving her a “farmer’s tan”, and opted to change into a swimsuit top for better tanning purposes. Normally Icebreaker merino’s UV protection is a plus – but apparently not for tan-conscious teens. The Harvest Challenge is really separating the wheat from the chaff, if you catch my drift.

Five hardy and determined competitors remain (pictured), and we’ve all logged a similar amount of hours. May the best harvester win.

- Allison Jochim, Icebreaker Graphic Designer