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Ecowrappin'
THE HEROS OF AGRICULTURE
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
I am always harkening back to when I was a boy, but then the fabulous fifties and sensational sixties had to be two of the greatest decades of the last century. This was some ten to twenty years into the conversion from horses to tractors. The family farm was well established in that era; it had been for some time. The majority of these farms were based on 100-acre units; indeed the 100-acre farm was pretty much a standard. Fences and fence rows were plentiful; crop fields and pastures were quite small compared to those of the present day, back then ranging from as little as five to as much as fifteen or twenty acres. Farm equipment was correspondingly small. The family farm was exactly that; each farm was owned and operated by one family unit---father, mother and their offspring. Sometimes the grandparents, often the farm founders, stayed on, contributing as they were able until they passed on.It was during the fifties and sixties that "clean" farming came into vogue, fencerows were torn out and fields got bigger. Likewise tractors and farm implements expanded in dimension as well. A considerable amount of wildlife habitat and interconnecting corridor vanished and soil erosion, through the actions of both wind and water, became much more commonplace. Water quantity and quality problems increased in both frequency and magnitude and Conservation Authorities were formed as one means of addressing these issues. The binder and the threshing machine were replaced with the swather and the combine. The mower, side rake and hay loader were replaced by the swather, or haybine, and the baler. The mixed farming operation, a combination of cattle, swine, chickens and their home-grown feeds where largely replaced by single commodity operations, be they livestock or cash crop.
In my youth one would find at least three or four family farm units on both sides of each mile of highway. Travel that same stretch now and you might find one family farm unit on each side of every mile, often less. The rural landscape of today exhibits much larger holdings by far fewer owners. The well kept houses and barns of the fifties are, with the exception of a very few, abandoned and falling down. Many are gone; torn down or burned.
Now you may be thinking, based on the title of this article, that the heroes of agriculture are those that owned and operated those smaller family units of yesteryear. There no doubt were, and are, some great men and women on those smaller farms, community leaders in all manner of farm, family and social activities. But I am really thinking about the agricultural hero of today---the cattleman!
Let us consider cattle versus cash crop. Livestock requires daily, often twice daily care, especially during the winter. Even when on the pasture or ranch, cattle require regular monitoring and tending to breeding, calving, pasture condition, water supply or health and safety issues.
A cash crop requires seedbed preparation; i.e., cultivation, planting, casual monitoring, perhaps growth period nutrient input and weed control, and finally, harvest. These activities are focused into brief periods involving long and arduous days, but not the day-to-day, year-round demands of a cattle operation.
The cattleman has historically been subject to wildly fluctuating prices for his product. There are no marketing boards, pre-set or pre-paid quotas or locked-in prices associated with beef farming. Granted, field operations; i.e., hay, grain or feed corn production are much less labour intensive that they used to be. Likewise, feed transfer and distribution at the barn or feedlot is usually much more mechanized than in the past. One necessity that has remains labour intensive is fencing, whether the erection of new or the maintenance of existing.
Some might ask why the cattleman has it any tougher than the swine or poultry producer. There are some parallels in operations, investments, expenses and risks. There is no doubt that dairy, swine or poultry farmers all have their share of setbacks and are regulated pretty much to a 24-7 lifestyle. But overall the cattleman is dealing with a much larger critter requiring a lot more space, especially when large pastures or ranch lands are utilized. The cattleman must handle greater feed volumes and have the acreage to provide this feed for year-round consumption.
Health issues between cattle, swine or poultry are probably somewhat equivalent though I would concede that swine and poultry are higher on the health issues scale. This probably has much to do with longer-term confinement in tight quarters. Pigs, chickens or turkeys have been largely unseen roaming freely on the rural landscape for many decades. Cattle confined to feedlots for virtually their entire lifespan is a more recent thing. Thus, cattle have maintained some of their natural immunity through more prolonged exposure to the elements of nature. This is probably why, to my taste at least, that beef has held some of the flavour that I remember from my youth while a lot of pork and fowl, raised with regular doses of antibiotics and growth hormones, have lost the flavour of olden days. A couple of asides on this:
Grandpa's Pea Fed Pork
My grandfather had one of those 100-acre family farm units, circa mid 1920s to early 1960s. My grandmother had a reputation as a phenomenal cook, and I heard mention of her roast pork from more than one of her visiting kinfolk. The real secret to this pork was my grandfather buying a couple bags of pea chop from the Co-op and mixing it with the barley and oat chop being fed to the pig he had selected for slaughter. This was the menu for some three or four weeks before the pig was butchered. The fact that this pig had also free-ranged for a good part of its life; if not in a farm field at least in a very large barnyard, was of no detriment to the flavour of the meat either.
Floyd's Old-Style Pork
Floyd Nixon lived several farms down the highway from my grandfather's place. During my twenties my father, brother and a close friend and I would buy three or four pigs throughout each year from Floyd, then in his eighties. His pigs were fed chop from home-grown grains and had some measure of a free-range lifestyle. We paid live market value and killed the hogs in his barnyard. We ferried them home on the trunk lid of my car or in the pickup truck of the friend and dressed them out at home, sometimes hanging from a tree in the orchard. Often, we used the old slaughterhouse once operated by the family of the friend.
Meat Roosters
Further to the husbandry of fine flavoured meat, I used to pick up 100 day-old chicks from the hatchery in St. Jacobs in early spring for several years running. I would stop at the Wiarton Co-op and buy a couple of bags of chick starter. This was my contribution to an ultimate 90 or more White Rock meat roosters that averaged 10 pounds in weight by late fall. My father, brother and the same close friend contributed to this venture and shared in the spoils. Once the young roosters were sufficiently feathered up, they ventured out from the brooder house on a daily basis into the barnyard, orchard and surrounding fields. The older and larger they became the farther they ranged, often as far as 200 yards from the brooder house where they roosted safely each night. I suppose they ate whatever they could catch and/or swallow, similar to a wild turkey. They were also grain fed. You cannot buy chicken in a store that even comes close to the flavour of these wandering birds.
I guess I have been remiss in not mentioning those other heroes of agriculture---the sheep or goat herder. Pretty much the same dedication to time and effort goes into these animals as goes into cattle. They are smaller, require less space and feed on a per animal basis and similar numbers can be raised on less acreage. Market prices are generally a little more stable than with cattle. The biggest nemesis of the sheep producer is the wily coyote. I know of more than one producer who was put out of business by coyote depredation. For several years I bought spring lambs in the late fall from these guys, killing and butchering the animals myself. I could turn a big lamb into 14 cuts. Oh, how I loved having a lamb, right off the farm, in my freezer. I miss that home-raised pork, and those meat roosters too!
I was born on the Bruce Peninsula on July 20, 1951 and raised on a farm just south of the village of Lionís Head, which is located about halfway up the peninsula on the Georgian Bay shoreline. I graduated from Georgian College of Applied Arts and Technology in Barrie in 1973 as a Resources Engineering Technologist. I was hired by Ducks Unlimited Canada (DUC) in April of 1975 as the first DUC employee in Ontario. Throughout almost 29 years I was involved with the implementation of more than 500 wetland projects and project complexes in southwestern and south central Ontario. Some of these habitat projects included important waterfowl and migratory bird habitat along the eastern shoreline of Lake St. Clair. Just three weeks short of completing 29 years with DUC, I accepted an early retirement opportunity effective March 31, 2004.
