Century Farms will again bring farming families and industry influencers from across the country to Lawrence this month, celebrating historic stories of land stewardship. Now into its third decade, the New Zealand Century Farm and Station Awards were founded in Lawrence to recognise families who have farmed the same land for 100 years or more, with additional honours for those reaching 150 years. The programme’s underlying purpose is to gather and preserve those histories through archived records at the Alexander Turnbull Library, while celebrating achievement. Founding committee member and local farmer Roger Cotton said the idea had both heritage and practical origins. "It was all about a reason to get people to come to Lawrence and spend a couple of nights," he said. "And that in turn created a way to formally record family histories that might otherwise be lost." Mr Cotton’s own family was an illustration of the narratives being shared and recorded for posterity.…