Farm Tours

At this point we are well into our course with FarmStart, which we attend Saturdays at a community hall in Etobicoke.  Part of the course, indeed an integral part, is a full day of farm tours, which involves visiting two established organic or ecological farms in Ontario, where we are introduced to what a small-scale  farm in Ontario can look like and how it tends to function.  The farmer him or herself would lead us through and answer questions, in hopes of making us more aware of the kinds of things we want and do not want on our own farms, should we wish to buy a farm, as well as making us more aware of the challenges...the many challenges that keep coming no matter how wonderful farming may be.

Saturday morning we got up and drove out to the country.  It was sunny, the skies were blue and the fields along the secondary highways we took were a pristine white, with snow-dusted trees.  It was a bedazzling sight and certainly an auspicious beginning to the trip, though I tried not to indulge too much in the idyllic scenery that whizzed by, knowing it looked different up close.

We pulled up to the first farm after exiting the quiet two lane highway for a rougher, downright silent road. We were greeted by a pack of big farm dogs that had endless energy and excitement.  We walked up to see a few cattle standing in a pen and a woman in her early thirties greeted us and began the tour by mentioning that the cows were a new addition, and she was still getting the hang of raising them. As the tour progressed and we saw her chickens, her greenhouse, her pigs, it became clearer that she was not a seasoned expert but a perpetual experimenter who had put together an impressive little farm, something I envied.

There were few hard and fast rules she could give us about what to do.  She had determined over a couple of seasons that the half dozen pigs she had were the right number she could keep without strain on her land and physical stamina; the chickens were a thriving brood, free to wander and scavenge their own food, a diet which she supplemented with feed. They matured, were brought to slaughter, sold but for the few that served her and her household.  A cooler in the barn housed vegetables and remained at a steady temperature. She'd spent $500 on that.  Her boyfriend would bring his tractor from down the road to bale and pile hay in the adjacent portion of the barn and the bales were tidy and abundant, like they are in cartoon depictions of country life.  There was an apiary that was slowly establishing itself.  The farmer remarked that sometimes one of the four hives wouldn't make it through the winter and she would have to retire the failed one for the rest of the season until there were enough in the other three to repopulate it.

Somehow, out in the boonies, this young farmer was putting her 50 workable acres to good use and not ending up with freezers full of beef and pork she couldn't sell.  It was a working business and she was not rushing into the nearest city for the bulk of the day to supplement a static farm business.  It clearly helped that she had a significant other who was an established farmer from an established farm family. I didn't really find out how she could afford the land and set up such a seemingly well-functioning operation at her young age and I didn't press her for the stories of sweat and blood on the learning curve.  I suspected that there were the requisite struggles and that she was just one of the resilient ones who had made it this far.














The film "To Make A Farm" showcases three small-scale "new" farmers/faming duos over a season, all of whom do quite well on their season ( at least by small-scale "new" famer standards).  What it reveals is the fact that in spite of the successes, each farmer/farming duo hits a few crises before the harvest, some of which push them to the brink of total failure.  The smiles and laughter at the farmers market stall, where beautiful produce is briskly sold, do not reveal the tough moments. 

We drove on to the next stop, even further from the busy world.  It was a dirt road that brought us to our instructor's farm.  We drove up and parked by a beautiful old farmhouse with a large sun room at the back. A Pyrenees greeted us and as we waited for the stragglers, we took sips of maple water from a canister on a tapped tree.  There were no pigs to be seen, but there were a couple of cows and a herd of sheep clustered on the snow covered field.

"How much was the electric fence?"  asked a classmate

"Well, it cost us about $5,000.  We got it because we didn't want to take any chances with the sheep."

"I guess it does the job?"

"Well, my dog has gotten through it.  You can imagine how I felt when I saw that,"  our instructor told us in a casual tone.

There were downsides to her farm:  the land was a bit low and the neighbouring farms sprayed their crops, leaving residue to wash into the vegetables she raised as ecologically as she could.  The climate was harsher than that in more southern parts of the province, and clientele was less abundant.  Sheep were prone to many contagious disease that could unexpectedly spread and wipe out a herd, and the kind of drought Ontario saw last summer could recur in coming years, perhaps becoming more common with weird weather trends.  She relied on steady business to pay her mortgage, on a piece of land that had not been dirt cheap.  While I've often assumed that farmland would cost little and be abundant for anyone willing to subject him or herself to the hardship of working the land, it is actually quite a challenge to access a decent sized farm and then pay it off.  But our instructor, like the first farm's owner, was running a business that worked and allowed her to live in the rugged oasis she loved.

I realized that all of these farmers were smart and exceptionally devoted to their work; they were constantly running into challenges and while they were doing well by most standards measuring small-farm success, they were not living lives of leisure and secluded bliss.  They were very much engaged in their surroundings; they were busy; and they were conscious of the almighty dollar, even if they were not slaves to it.  The piece of advice she most stressed was that farms with the latest, state-of-the-art equipment were often the least successful.  Farming required being resourceful and spending on things that made money and made the farm more sustainable, not things that made one look and feel like a pro.

When the sheep came trotting unexpectedly into the barn to be oohed and awed over, we got to pet a friendly ewe.  She had a big fat belly - maybe she was pregnant - and it was a pleasure seeing her goofy smile, hearing her goofy bleat as I scratched her woolly body.  Our instructor told us that working with animals was a very calming, healthy thing, but that was already evident to all of us.

We wrapped up back at her house, where, in the back yard, there was a door to a small cavern dug into the ground.  It was the swimming pool they had converted into a root cellar.  In the corner near the entrance, they had an apparatus for cleaning off the soil - a sort of big hampster wheel connected to a stationary bike. They would ride the bike, which would spin the root vegetables and remove the dirt which would then be collected in a bucket and reintroduced into the field.

Would I ever come up with something like that?  Maybe not.  But good farmers, I have to assume, don't come up with every smart technique themselves.  They take the vast wealth of knowledge and ingenuity that has emerged and continues to emerge in the realm of small-scale farming, and try things and see what works and what doesn't.  The tours reinforced the idea that every ecological, small-scale farm operates differently and no farmer has a formula that can be transplanted onto another farm.  That is has to be a creative process makes it challenging but more appealing than the formula-based alternatives.

Organic Faming Conference in Guelph

We drove out on a Saturday morning at the beginning of February to attend the annual conference in Guelph and, like any trade show, it made for a tiring day, but unlike many trade shows I've attended, this one had me talking to people at length and listening with interest.  There were booths set up by farmers looking for volunteers and interns; there were organizations supporting bans on GMOs; there were vermiculturalists, and apiarists, and pretty much every kind of farmer; there were networking rooms for farmers' markets, and there were recruiters from agriculture programs at Universities.  There were seeds for sale and people talking about  the benefits of a particular variety of this or that vegetable.

There were many people, and a broad range of levels of involvement in organic farming.  We were novices, or maybe novices to be.  After strolling through the exhibits, we decided to participate in an hour-long speed-dating style effort to match landowners with land seekers.

First we sat across from a couple in their late sixties, both in knitted sweaters.  They were from Lancaster area and the husband was a naturopath, who moonlighted as a farmer and the wife appeared to be an old-school helpmeet.  They were looking for someone who wanted to lease a portion of the land and live in the second, currently unused house that sat a few acres from their own house.  That was as far as we got because the whistle blew and we had to move on.  The next man lived in the Niagara area, where he farmed on 80 acres.  he was 88 and spoke in a hoarse, whistly voice.  I leaned in to try to understand what he was offering.

"So you are looking for someone to take over in the next few years," I ventured.

"Well, in the next twenty years or so," he said without irony.

That was as far as we got in that round.  Next we spoke with a man who worked for an organization that paired local farmers in the Muskoka region with local restaurants in order to promote local food.  I got as far as telling him that that was a great idea.  The whistle blew and we had reached a bottleneck, as more people were seeking land than offering it, so we sat out for a couple of rounds before jumping back in some distance ahead of where we'd exited.  There was a man producing native plant nurseries, a woman raising sheep on her plot of land, both looking to share the land they had, and another woman who was growing 2 acres of market garden, who wanted someone to take over for a while while she pursued other interests.  The last woman would remain in my mind - she looked tired and itching to get away from the loneliness of farming.

Our pitch had been, "we really just want a small piece of land - 5 acres tops, with a small garden and a few chickens and a pig.  We would produce vegetables for sale, keeping the rest, and see if we can't become as self-sufficient as is humanly possible."  But we gathered that the right fit hadn't presented itself. 
One question we ask ourselves is, do we really want to take this on all by ourselves?  Could we work with other people or would we grow impatient and restless in an arrangement of compromise?  When it comes to collaboring with people in the pursuit of farming, I expect it's a bit like trying to start a band and realizing that without chemistry and shared enthusiasm, it's more work than is worth one's while.  But, what I suspect, and what I've heard, is that if you do find the right people, it can be a lot more interesting to farm with others.  I have the sense that farming solo doesn't work for very many people.  Working in a pair could work quite well, but having a few more people around might be even better, or perhaps it's about making sure that there are people around in some way, whether or not they are farming partners, and I sensed an air of collaboration in the air among these people doing their own projects but also trying to keep connected to others who shared their still relatively outsider values.

As we took a break from wandering, before we left, and sat with our organic apples from the "Stop GMO apples" booth, and took a few pictures from a storey above the main atrium.  This was our first conference, our first look at what the province's local food-sustainable ag crowd looked like when crammed together in a tight space.  It was a vibe that made me think this was worth pursuing further.

Speculating

When I first proposed the idea to XB, he laughed at my naiveté.  "You know farming is work.  It's not just fun and relaxation."  Part of the work is planning how to access land and how to transition from working day jobs in the city to working on the farm.  In fact, many new farmers I've spoken with love the actual farm work, but struggle with planning, bookkeeping, adherence to regulations and the like.  In the spring of 2012 I discovered Farmstart, which offers courses to new prospective farmers from urban backgrounds.  We signed up for their introductory hands-on farming course, which would start in February 2013.  In the meantime we continued to read up on growing, marketing, assessing soils, controlling pests naturally and the myriad other issues that farmers need to understand.  We also began checking out land in southwestern Ontario, just out of curiosity.

We made our first farm visit in November, before winter set in.  It was a 10-acre property with a newly renovated 4-bedroom house about a half-hour drive north of Brampton.  The seller, a man in his late fifties, was asking $650,000.   He explained that he did contracting work on houses all over the GTA, which meant he spent a lot of his time on the road.  This was where he spent his evenings and weekends.  It was nice, quiet, and close enough to a small service town, just off the highway heading back to the city, but far enough away that you wouldn't hear the traffic as you sat on the deck after a long day.

We realized though that with our savings and the money we would make on the sale of our house, we would still have to take out a hefty new mortgage that we'd never pay off.  At this point, we were still thinking one of us would hang onto his job in the city, while the other might get started on developing the farm.  XB works in a northern suburb and could still drive in if need be.  he has colleagues who live as far out as Hamilton, who still managed to make the commute regularly.  But it seemed to defeat the purpose of moving out to the country if we were still spending the bulk of the day navigating urban sprawl and long hours in offices.  We decided to refine out search criteria.

The second visit happened in early January 2013, after we had realized that, with all of the small university cities in the area, we could find a patch of land and make a much easier commute into a smaller, friendlier city if we had to earn off-farm wages.  We drove out just north of Peterborough on a rainy Saturday morning to meet Gabrielle, who had her 50-acre farm up for sale, and had been trying to sell it since the previous spring.  Gabrielle had an abrupt manner, but was kind and keen to give us a thorough look at the property.

We started with a tour of the 19th century house, which had been upgraded over the years.  It had a substantial add-on and included four bedrooms upstairs, a root cellar and a general coziness.  We headed outside afterwards, walking across tall waterlogged grasses  and over to the second structure, a storage shed.  Then there was a massive barn for keeping hay, and finally a long building that looked like it could be a community hall - likely suited to keeping animals.  The land was beautiful, quiet, with a wooded wetland at the outer edge of the rolling expanse and a small, vibrant greenhouse behind the house warmed by solar energy.

We thanked her for the tour.  I was impressed, but we realized that all of the buildings would require continual repair or would have to eventually be demolished and hauled away, which would cost a small fortune.  fifty acres would also be a lot more than we would need, especially starting out mainly growing vegetables.  Then there was the hydro transformer sitting in the middle of the property, a foreboding point of focus. The asking price was about half of the first place we looked at, but we passed.

Before the end of January we managed to look at another couple of farms in Norfolk county, known as Ontario's Garden.  On a wildly windy Saturday we drove past Brantford and on through an indian reserve until we reached another old farm house on a 20-acre parcel.  The realtor greeted us and brought us inside the charming house with its high ceilings and walls adorned with Christian-themed cross-stitches.  Once again, four bedrooms, a nice deck and plenty of land.  The structure of the house, we were told, was okay. The owners had propped up sagging parts, and the insurance company was willing to insure it.  But we weren't convinced that it was truly solid and the last thing we wanted was to have to do substantial renovations or live in a sagging house.

The current owners had been raising horses and growing hay on much of the used land.  There was a barn, which was sturdy but for the east side, whose boards were starting to rot because of a leak in the roof.  The price was $400,000.  We were some distance out of Brantford, the nearest city, and though there were a couple of nice towns in the area, we knew it would be a struggle to find a community and a market and way to pay the mortgage.

On our way back we checked out a 1960s-style brick bungalow on about 13 acres. The property was listed for $330,000.  The house looked solid but untended.  There was a cluster of tall trees out back, a good expanse where crops could be grown, and access to roads that led to towns.  But the area had a sketchy feel to it - it was a bit run down, a patchwork of houses that all seemed to be slowly heading toward dilapidation.  The neighbours across the road had a couple of semi-trailers in their driveway and there was a loud roaring that persisted throughout our visit, probably from some kind of machinery they were working with.  It sounded like a jet engine.   The realtor wasn't able to meet us and so we didn't get to see inside the house, but from what we did see and hear, we were hesitant.

Noise was one thing;  contaminants, planned industrial developments, mega-quarries and the like were quite another.  It would be disappointing to find a great piece of land only to find out afterwards that the environment was toxic (literally or otherwise).  Maybe it was best to hold off for now, talk to people who know about this stuff.   Still, I had a sense we would eventually go with something knowing full well that a million things could go wrong.  More likely, though, we would have the task of looking at imperfect properties - imperfect in any combination of size, location, water access and house condition - and deciding which imperfections we could best live with.

Some Background

I present a blog whose name is derived from one of the most famous odes to the quiet life.  When on the range, so goes the ode, one can expect little in the way of discouraging talk and the skies can generally promise some sun over the course of any given day.

Of course, Home on the Range doesn't mention the fact that, once land is acquired in 21st century Ontario, a new farmer still will most likely visit the cities to sell produce and to buy some goods at a Costco or Sobeys, he or she will buy gas at a Petro-Can or an Esso, he or she will curse drivers who cut him off on the way back to the range, and then there will be moments when the farmer, who hails from a hands-off world, will not know how to fix a water heater and will have to shell out for service.

It's two of us thinking about what it might be like to make a go at a market garden with some chickens for ourselves and maybe a pig or a small herd of goats.  I grew up in a small Canadian city, unacquainted with country life but for the odd childhood visit to an aunt and uncle's farm, where most of his time was spent fleeing bumble bees and holding tightly to one of the older, more sluggish horse's reigns on a short walk around the corral.   My partner, XB, grew up in the Chinese countryside during the last leg of the Mao period, where he helped raise pigs and chickens and gathered firewood to heat his family's hearth.

We've both been through the rigours of university, of jobs that require collared shirts, we've shared the start of a suburban Toronto mortgage and we've travelled a bit, across Canada, through Europe and bits of Asia.

Toronto is a great place - it is bursting with life.  But I am curious to know what life would be like outside of an urban world, in places that are bursting with life at other paces and in other ways.

We are beholden to transit systems, to industrial food systems, to property management corporations, lenders, insurance companies and energy purveyors.  On the farm, we will be beholden to most of these things, but to a lesser extent.  We will be forced to learn about the soil, the trees and the needs of animals, since they will be more directly tied to our livelihood.

We've been advised that it's hard work, it does not guarantee a significant income, and it can be lonely. We've also received our share of bemused encouragement.  But what motivates me most is that it is more a pursuit driven by an interest in the things we are working towards than it is by a desire to merely get away from the grind.

The hope is to develop a simple livelihood rooted in self-sufficiency and community.  It may be a long ways off and it may not materialize, but it's an idea that more and more people my age are batting around.  In fact, I suspect most people see a sliver of appeal in rural life and would be curious to see how our journey develops.  Here goes nothing.