Keeping 50 cows happy and comfortable so they give more milk is an important part of Andrew Campbell’s job on the Strathroy dairy farm where he lives with his parents and own young family.
Old MacDonald had a farm. But that straw-hatted hayseed is as scarce as hen’s teeth nowadays.
The modern MacDonald could be a woman, a twenty-something or an urban escapee. Just as likely to wield a smartphone as a pitchfork, modern farmers network with the folks they feed and serve as advocates for agriculture.
“Agvocates” even pose with their critters for calendars and photos of themselves (“felfies”). And picture this: Britain just held a contest to find its sexiest male and female farmer.
Different from their predecessors, yes, but Ontario’s reinvented farmers still share common ground with that old guy in overalls.
Andrew Campbell
Keeping 50 cows happy and telling the world beyond the barn about it is all in a day’s work for Andrew Campbell.
The dairy farmer tweets, blogs, makes videos and posts regular reports on a website he started called “dinner starts here.” “People are so much more interested in knowing about food and where it comes from,” he says. “And farmers are making more effort to say, ‘this is what I did today.’ ”
Contented cows give more milk, says Campbell, noting their output is helping support three generations of one family. The 28-year-old works and lives with his parents, wife, newborn son and 2-year-old daughter on the family farm in Strathroy, just west of London.
Three-quarters of his day is devoted to his four-legged charges; they eat off ceramic tiles and sleep on comfy beds in a clean, airy barn. The rest of the time he looks after the business side of the operation, which includes 162 hectares of feed and cash crops.
With a focus on the future, Campbell pays close attention to finances.
“You have to be in it to make money or you can’t be in it,” he says of farming. Currently in a partnership with his parents, he and wife Jessica will eventually take over.
Despite growing up on a farm, Campbell never aspired to a career there. He studied journalism for three years then worked as a radio broadcaster. But the call of the cows drew him back to the farm four years ago.
It’s a great place to raise a family, he says. “And it’s a pretty cool way of making a living, between being with the animals, working the land and being your own boss.”
Lorraine Schmid and Lori Aselstine
It was love at first scent for Lorraine Schmid.
“I went to help with the chores,” she recalls of a visit to a dairy farm years ago. “I started smelling the cows, then the hay and manure, and I just fell in love with it.”
But it was a long road to full-time farming for the Toronto landscaper who only four years ago took up permanent residence at Thyme Again Gardens, the weekend home she bought in 1997 in Prince Edward County, a two-hour drive away from Toronto.
The plan was to grow plants for her business, but those barnyard aromas inspired a new goal of creating a sustainable organic farm. So she got chickens, then sheep, beef cattle, Berkshire pigs and pets.
Five years in, she met partner Lori Aselstine, a civil servant who’s retiring this year to spend more time on fencing, maintenance and animal care.
With livestock, a large organic vegetable garden and 50 hectares of pasture and feed crops, they should have had their hands full. But they expanded their operation to include a bed and breakfast, wellness services, a community shared agriculture (CSA) program for Toronto residents and annual farm days for visitors.
“One year we had 25 people who organized themselves into crews and cleaned the winter manure out of the barn,” says Aselstine. “They thought it was great fun.”
In their mid-50s, neither partner has any background in farming but both love animals and feel drawn to the land.
“We’re reverting back to the very old farm of the past, where we’re not mechanized or industrialized farmers,” says Schmid. “I’m so happy I fell into this.”
Charles Stevens
There are times when Charles Stevens calls out the big guns to protect his produce. In fact, the 60-year-old grower credits his four-metre hail cannon, which fires sound waves 40,000 feet up so positive ions can prevent hailstones from forming, with saving a $400,000 apple crop.
Stevens relies on an arsenal of high-tech tools to grow the best and most fruit possible on his apple and blueberry farm in Newcastle, less than an hour east of Toronto.
There’s the GPS-piloted tractor that communicates with 17 satellites to mow grass and plant trees in a straight line; a sonar-equipped sprayer that targets specific branches; and a self-steering, adjustable platform on wheels for picking and pruning, a task Stevens does on a ladder in the winter. On a smaller scale, farm managers carry iPhones with apps to monitor the weather.
“Risk management is huge because we’re working with Mother Nature,” he says, noting that innovation along with regulation, global warming and globalization have dramatically changed the industry.
When he started Wilmot Orchards 37 years ago, he planted 630 apple trees per hectare. Today, thanks to smaller, more prolific trees and efforts to maximum the sun’s efficiency, it’s 2,267.
Stevens and his wife, Judi, grow wholesale apples on 34 hectares. Another nine hectares are planted with blueberries for a pick-your-own operation managed by their 25-year-old daughter. At peak season, the farm employs 30 people.
Both university graduates — Judi has a master’s degree in agricultural economics — the couple says they often dispel visitors’ “misconceptions and fears” about food production.
Growing fruit isn’t all high tech. They use nature to fight nature with biological pest controls, and a falconer whose hawks scare away berry-eating birds at picking time.
Source: The Toronto Star
