A 12 year old member of the Woodmore Combined 4-H club is heading to Toronto next month to participate in the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair. Abbey Chubaty, who swept the local, regional and provincial categories at the 2015 Canadian Young Speakers for Agriculture event and earned a spot at the Toronto fair, says she's really happy to be representing Manitoba.

Abbey's mom Sharon says that while she is excited and proud of her daughter's accomplishment, she is also a little shocked.

"She will be youngest in her category, it was all the provincial winners of last year that were given the opportunity to compete so she was going against the highest calibre in Manitoba."

Meantime, Abbey feels it was the topic of her speech titled 'Old MacDonald Had A Farm But What About Mrs. MacDonald?' that helped her snag the top prize.

"My speech was about how when Old MacDonald went away to war and Mrs. MacDonald and her female peers ran the farms in the World Wars."

Sharon thinks the part that discussed the Farmerettes is what appealed to the judges.

"Where they recruited university women to come and help, and these women organized themselves and protested their rates of pay and it was the start of sort of women's feminism."

The Royal Agricultural Winter Fair goes November 4-13, 2016.