I’ll begin this feature in an unlikely spot by thanking HuronBruce MP Ben Lobb. As the longtime MP handed out King Charles Coronation Medals to 20 worthy people from Huron and Bruce Counties earlier this month he succinctly set out the goal for this article without even knowing it.
As Lobb presented long-time 4-H and Huron County Plowmen’s Association volunteer Don Dodds with his medal - just the most recent volunteerism honour bestowed on the great Dodds - Lobb ran down Dodds’ statistics, but put it this way, to paraphrase: “If you’re a farmer in Huron County, you know who this guy is.”
Thanks Ben - I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Indeed, Dodds is somewhat of an institution in the world of agriculture in Huron County - both in the traditional tending-to-thefields, doing-the-chores kind of way and in the ways of agricultural and rural life as part of the very fabric of plowing matches and 4-H clubs, activities that, if there were a Mount Rushmore for agriculture in Huron County, both warrant a spot.
And he has spent generations volunteering with both, not just as a participant for himself, but as someone who has shepherded the next generation (and the one after that and the one after that and the one after that) along into a world in which they then become leaders, pillars of society and card-carrying members of the agricultural economy in Huron County and beyond.
It is perhaps fitting that Dodds has been honoured so thoroughly this year - first with a Huron County Citizen of the Year Award from this very organization and then by Lobb with the aforementioned King Charles medal - as 2025 represents somewhat of a full-circle moment for him. He has spent his whole life, until his somewhat recent move to Goderich Place, on the same Roxboro Line farm and now, later this year and for the very first time, the farm, now under the watchful eye of his son Paul, will play host to the Huron County Plowing Match.
As we covered in our Christmas issue late last year, Dodds grew up
on the farm that came to be known as “Dodds Hills” for their tremendous tobogganing potential.
The Dodds farm, Dodds said in a lengthy sit-down interview at Goderich Place, was where the community gathered when the snow flew and sledding was in the cards.
That farm came into the family in 1851 when it was purchased from the Canada Company by Dodds’ great-grandfather and it still, to this day, remains in the family.
The mixed operation was successful for many years, as Dodds’ grandfather took it over from his great-grandfather and eventually his father took over while his grandfather still lived in the house, but was unable to work on the farm any longer.
Then, Dodds’ mother died of tuberculosis when he was just a child and, at the age of 11, he had to step up and be a major part
of the team working the farm.
He was no stranger to the farm operation. Dodds says that his parents used to bring him out to the barn and set him in a box while they did their chores and, once he was old enough, he began chipping in, bottle-feeding lambs, before taking on a full role in the operation following his mother’s untimely death.
Then, as if things couldn’t get more challenging for the Dodds family, Dodds’ father hurt his back severely when Dodds was about 13. Dodds assisted with the threshing, along with other members of the community, and when a load of sheaves was upset leaving the farm, his father was injured.
In those days, he said, the community pulled together to do the necessary threshing. Community members left their
The Citizen
Don Dodds, seen among his many awards, honours and accolades, is a man whose name is ubiquitous with Huron County farming. (Shawn Loughlin photo)
H.C. Plowing Match, 4-H are in Dodds’ DNA
Continued from page A2 homes around 8 a.m. on the day in question, sometimes earlier, and pitch in with the shared threshing machine. They were fed lunch and dinner and then head back home after dark, only to get up the next day and do it all over again.
In those early years, Dodds says there was a tremendous sense of community, whether it was threshing, a barn raising or coming together when one family was left in need, be it due to a lost family member, a fire or any other tragedy that might befall a farm family in those days. While Dodds appreciates the community spirit that remains in Huron County, he feels that is something that’s largely been lost as generations have passed. That can even be felt, he says, when it comes to volunteerism.
Speaking of which, Dodds started his time with Huron County 4-H when he was young, just as a humble member of the local swine club. That year, in the early 1950s, Dodds’ club leader suggested that he take part in the 4-H association’s annual judging competition the following spring. He won the Junior Section of that competition, earning a handsome plaque that hangs on his wall in his Goderich Place bedroom even today, alongside a number of other accolades he’s received over the years.
He continued as a 4-H member for years until he left the community to study at the University of Guelph for two years. At that time, partly out of necessity, he took a step back from the organization.
He graduated in Guelph in 1957 and waited until his soon-to-bewife Maja graduated from nursing school. Only then, Don said, would she have the green light to accept his hand in marriage. She did, they did and the rest is history. The couple was married for 63 years when Maja passed away in December of 2023. Don still credits his wife for much of his volunteer work and, of course, the beautiful family they built over the years. Maja was known to describe herself as a “4-H widow”, Don said, but the work she did by his side with both 4-H and the Huron County Plowmen’s Association would not have been possible without her working just as hard, if not harder, than he had. He returned to 4-H as a leader, answering the call of the neighbour who served as the swine club leader when Don first got involved. He asked if Don wouldn’t mind leading for a year or two and that time period has yet to end, as Don is still actively involved with the organization.
Back in those days, Don said, the 4-H organization was run by the local branch of the provincial Ministry of Agriculture, which meant it was flush with resources. The books were kept by the province and the meetings were organized by the government.
He also noted
the increased participation in those days. When he first became a leader, it was the first time the organization put together a county club. It had 78 members, which was staggering even at the time.
Now, the clubs are on their own in regards to organization, fundraising and more. So, it’s different, but the group of volunteers that has made it a priority to keep the program vital and healthy, Don said, has done an excellent job.
He says, even now, that he likes working with the young people and has enjoyed being involved for so many years; seeing members grow up and then seeing their children or
even grandchildren enrol as 4-H members. That kind of continuum, he said, is quite rare. As for Don’s decades of work with the Huron County Plowmen’s Association, like 4-H, it began when he was just a young man and he went to his first Huron County Plowing Match. Gordon McGavin worked with students to find participants at local high schools, like Seaforth District High School, donating a tractor to the program to help keep interest top-of-mind for local students.
He participated in the match for a number of years and found some success, but it wasn’t until he took on coaching and judging that he
really found his place in the local plowing match culture.
Don attended his first few local plowing matches and then his first International Plowing Match (IPM) in the early 1950s. He punched his ticket to the match through high school and being one of the two top finishers in the school’s plowing class/competition. Don and a scrappy upstart of the plowing match circuit, Neil McGavin, then travelled to Breslau for the match.
Things began to lock into place when Don took the customary judging course ahead of the IPM one year. Four locals attended and Don was pulled aside after the fact
Continued on page A5
Don Dodds receives his golden clipboard in 2017 from his daughter
Lynne Godkin
Dodds’ work impossible without Maja, he says
Work, life and volunteerism
Don and Maja Dodds are known as two of the most prolific volunteers Huron County has ever seen. In recent months, Don has been honoured in many ways for his work, which comes after Maja’s 2023 death, though he is always the first to herald Maja’s hard work and dedication, saying that none of the things he has accomplished would have been possible without her hard work, support and steady hand. (Photo submitted)
Continued from page A4 telling him that he had the class’ top marks and that he should consider being a plowing match
judge in the future and that “future” is, to an extent, ongoing.
His career as a plowing match judge began locally. The first time
he held the clipboard was in Perth County and he was accompanied by another judgestandard operating procedure
while a young judge learns the ropes.
He said things have changed in the world of plowing match judging as well over the years. In the old days, a lot more was covered for judges in those days, he said, and there was a lot more camaraderie among the judges. After a day of competition, for example, they would all get together that night and discuss what they’d seen in the field and compare notes, a practice that has since fallen by the wayside; another loss of the sense of community.
He has, however, continued to judge well into his advanced age, plying his trade as recently as the last few years at the Perth County Plowing Match. This came after he officially retired from judging at IPMs in 2017 - a moment that was truly a highlight of the 2017 IPM, which was held in Walton, just a stone’s throw from his home farm.
Over the years, Don had heard grumblings from the competitors about this or that judge as they would age, saying that they weren’t seeing the fields or making judgments as they had in past years due to understandable, age-related factors, such as vision and mobility challenges. He never wanted to be one of those judges and 2017, a match that was a homecoming of sorts for long-time Walton-area plowing match enthusiasts, marked 25 years of his judging at IPMs and he thought that the time was right to hang up his clipboard.
Those behind the match, however, had other ideas - not about Don’s retirement, but clipboard-
related ideas - and, at the end-ofmatch awards gala, where the winning plowers were celebrated and the Queen of the Furrow was crowned, organizers honoured Don for all he has meant to plowing matches, not just in Huron County, but throughout Ontario. Lynne Godkin, Don and Maja’s daughter and a former Ontario Queen of the Furrow herself, presented Don with a golden clipboard, signed by many of his colleagues and friends from over the years. This irreplaceable keepsake is another that hangs on his bedroom wall at Goderich Place as a testament to his years of expertise and dedication.
And while this year’s Huron County Plowing Match will mark a celebration of sorts for the Dodds family, the culmination of decades of hard work, volunteerism and the passing of irreplaceable knowledge from generation to generation, as our conversation draws to a close, Don can’t help but discuss his beloved Maja, who was there with him every step of the way. All of the accolades he’s earned, he says, are hers as much as they are his.
He says that while Maja may have joked about being a “4-H widow”, she came to enjoy getting involved in the work on the home farm and volunteering with 4-H and the Huron County Plowmen’s Association and did a lot of good work with them.
As the match draws nearer and the Dodds family prepares to play host to this year’s Huron County Plowing Match, we can expect, fittingly, to hear Maja’s name mentioned often.
South Huron Sheep Club hosts best and brightest
On the big stage
The South Huron 4-H Sheep Club made quite a splash late last year at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto and that team, chock full of locals, has only grown in recent years, showing that the work being done there is on the ride. (Courtesy photo)
By Scott Stephenson The Citizen
On a cold day in early December, The Citizen followed a hot tip to the Gross family farm in Auburn. The word on the street was that Holly Gross and her Southdown lamb, Marlee, had just won Grand Champion Lamb in the Junior Sheep Show at Toronto’s Royal Agricultural Winter Fair. That tip turned out to be correct and, after a long trip down a snow-obscured laneway, The Citizen was rewarded with an exclusive interview with the reclusive young champion.
Although Holly, and her sister, Loralei, turned out to be notoriously tight-lipped when it comes to sharing any of their sheepshowing secrets, they couldn’t say enough nice things about the 4-H Club that got them where they are today - specifically, the South Huron Sheep Club (SHSC).
The Citizen may have gotten the scoop on Holly and Marlee, but it was clear that there was still much more to this story. There are a number of successful livestock clubs in South Huron’s 4-H program - the swine and beef clubs are both pretty popular right now. But, at the moment, there’s no hotter ticket in all of 4-H than the SHSC. Last year, when this team of 11 young ladies rolled up at the Royal Winter Fair (RWF) to represent Huron County, more than a few people took note of their unified front. Their sheep travelled in one trailer, penned together, and made one heck of a good showing.
So, to hear the whole story of the SHSC, The Citizen headed back to the Gross family farm on a slightly less frigid but still very snowy day at the beginning of March. This time around, there were also a couple of Huron County 4-H’s
notable figures seated at the kitchen table - SHSC alumni Evy Verschaeve and Rachel Gras.
Verschaeve, a dairy farmer from Blyth, joined 4-H when she was nine years old, and is something of a legend in the Huron County sheep-showing scene - she’s been there since before it was cool. “It used to just be me and like, my mom,” she explained. “I was that weird kid that would tell people ‘I’m showing sheep!’ and nobody cared.” Three years ago, only two girls went to the RWF, then there were eight in 2023, and, in 2024, the team totalled 11. “It’s neat to see it taking off, and for it to finally culminate in my last year, with someone from our club actually winning, it was like, ‘finally! we got something accomplished for the county,’” she declared.
When she graduated from the 4-H program recently, Verschaeve received a plaque for completing over 25 clubs. “I did sheep the whole way through,” she told The Citizen. “And then I’ve done dairy, beef, swine, goat. I did a breadventure, and some sort of plant one, and I did square-dancing with Rachel. Those are the ones that stand out.”
Rachel, of course, is 2023-2024
Huron County Queen of the Furrow Rachel Gras - she’s kind of a big deal when it comes to agricultural advocacy, and she freely admits that hearing about Holly’s historic win made her cry. “Tears were shed,” she told The Citizen. Gras joined 4H eight years ago, when she was 12 years old, and she’s discovered that entering the RWF every year can lead to some unique networking opportunities. “You can get out there, and you can see the different people who have no idea what’s going on in agriculture, and you can kind of give a good face for it… I
think it’s also a good way to get your name out there - when you go to the Royal, there’s people who are going to be there with the best of the best of each breed and everything… I came home from the Royal with a ram, which I wasn’t expecting to do, but you get to make these connections. The people I got the ram from are in Ottawa - I never would have ever met him without the RWF,” she explained. Of course, creating such super sheep showers like Holly and Loralei starts at home. Their mother, Mary Ellen, registered them both in pre-4-H. They’ve only been showing sheep for three years, but they’ve been showing dairy calves since they were three and four years old. “I grew up on a dairy farm, and so I showed calves,” Mary Ellen explained. “So I was like, ‘oh, this could be fun! Let’s go do it, kids!’ And so they started showing little calves, and then it’s grown into 4-H, and so they’re still competing with calves and now they’re showing sheep as well… it’s just a great way for youth to get
involved in agriculture!”
Their father, Bryan, was also active in 4-H when he was growing up, but he didn’t show livestock. “I was in the Vet Club, the Small Engine Club, and the Farm Safety Club,” he recalled. He thinks that one of the most valuable things about the 4-H program is the way it gives young people the opportunity to experience different aspects of the various agricultural vocations available in the area. “You don’t know until you try a job if you’ll like it or not like it,” he pointed out. Verschaeve highly recommends joining 4-H. “It gave me a lot of confidence. I learned a lot of public speaking and made lots of connections and friends which I wouldn’t have had otherwise. Otherwise, I kind of stay on the farm and do my own thing - it’s a good reason to get out and meet people,” Verschaeve explained. “Just from being part of 4-H, now I’m part of the Huron County Holstein Club… 4-H people that kind of know me invite me into all
Continued on page A7
Huron County contingent triumphs at
Flock stars
On a snowy day in early March, members of the South Huron Sheep Club (SHSC) gathered at the Gross family farm near Auburn for a conversation about their growing success in sheep showing. Seated, from left, are Loralei Gross and Evy Verschaeve, with, standing from left, Mary Ellen Gross, Gavin Gross, Holly Gross and Rachel Gras. (Scott Stephenson photo)
Continued from page A6 these other kinds of groups, because they know that I know how stuff works, a little bit.”
When The Citizen first stopped by the Gross family farm in December, Holly was kind enough to offer an overview of how sheep showing works. Basically, it comes down to Showmanship and Conformation.
Conformation refers to how a lamb is structurally built - does it conform to the standards of the breed? Does it look as though it’s set to have a successful future?
Showmanship is all about how well both lamb and human handle the act of showing together. “You have to guide them with one hand,” Holly explained. “And your other
hand is kind of just there in case.” Judges are looking to see if the handler is both highlighting the lamb’s best features and correcting its faults. Did both lamb and human do a good job going around the ring.
The Gross sisters both prefer the diminutive Southdown sheep, as they find the breed to be very
docile, which makes them easier to train. They normally take possession of their lambs early in the summer, and spend the next few months getting them used to being handled and led around. Apparently, the little lambs can get pretty wild when they start the training process. Holly likes to spend a little extra time with her woolly ward every day. “They say to spend 10 minutes, but I want to work with them for at least 15 minutes of training a day… you always have to spend time with them, and be around them.”
Verschaeve does things a little bit differently. “They’re all breeding ewe people here,” she explained. But I show market lambs - they’re born in the spring, and they get sold at the Thanksgiving sale in Brussels.” She also always preferred to pick her sheep from her family’s flock. If she was still in the sheep-showing game, she would already be sizing up this year’s lambs in search of a contender. “I would usually be starting to see the start of the lambs, and kind of picking out which ones you think would be nice, to maybe have potential for show lambs.” Her family favours the meaty Charollais sheep over the short-legged Southdown. “We think they grow really well - they make a really nice market lamb, compared to the Southdown, which is more of a breeding ewe type breed… I also have my own little flock of North Country Cheviots. They don’t do much, but I love their ears, and they’re just hilarious. Which is not really good for making money or being productive, but you got to
have fun with it, too.”
The Verschaeve family flock has grown considerably since she first started showing sheep. “At first, we just bought a couple of lambs and said ‘oh, I guess we’ll take that one - the friendliest one or whatever. And then you start to kind of figure out what the judge likes, and we've been improving our flock based off of that… Basically breeding for a better market sheep, looking for a fast-growing lamb that has a lot of length to it.”
While Gras has a deep appreciation for Verschaeve’s homegrown approach, she knows firsthand that there’s more than one way to select a sheep for showing. “We always buy-in our show lambs,” she explained. “If you’re buying in, there’s so many options: Do you want breeding ewes? Do you want market lambs? What breed do you want? Do you want to get one from a known breeder, or do you want to try and find something that someone doesn’t have?”
While it’s always fun to compete against their friends and neighbours, the SHSC knows that the RWF is the big one to show up for. “At the end of the day, when you compete in the same fairs, you’re going against the same 30 lambs, every single show,” Gras explained. “It’s cool to actually see how you compete against 150 lambs instead.”
It’s easy to see why sheepshowing is gaining popularity amongst the youth of Huron-Bruce - sheep are a great starter animal for newcomers to the craft. “They’re more manageable - you’re not
Strong 4-H leadership helps secure big win
Continued from page A7 going to get trampled,” Gras pointed out.
One of the reasons Verschaeve likes showing sheep best is the laidback vibe. “With a sheep, you pick one out and you give it a namebecause it’s just a sheep,” she explained. “But with cows, there’s so much more money in the industry, it’s a lot more of an advanced type of thing. When they’re born, they’re registered, so that you can identify them, so they would have all been named and everything.”
Gras advises not being overly cocky when choosing the name for a show sheep. “I named one of mine Rockstar,” she explained. “and I said, ‘this is my year. I’ve got a good name, I’m going in with good energy.’ And she was the worst shower of my whole entire life.” Rockstar didn’t even make it to the RWF - Gras had to swap sheep midway through the showing season. Don’t worry - everything worked out for Rockstar in the end. “She’s a happy, healthy mom,” Gras promised.
Gras also pointed out that being a senior member of 4-H comes with responsibilities beyond the animals in their care - it’s also up to them to lead by example and assist the club’s younger members with their projects. “We have such a big club, and our leaders can only do so much. When there’s 40 or 30 little kids, and only two leaders, I think just having the older 4-H members gives an extra helping hand.”
Verschaeve concurred with her compatriot. “There’s so many people in the club, it’s kind of hard to keep track of everyone,” she said. “It’s fun to see the little kids that are trying their hardest - the ones that are going to stay at it for the long run. You just have to give them any type of motivation that you can. You kind of think back at the ways that people helped me when I was just starting out - the people that kind of stood back and said ‘oh, this is what you did.’ Because I was the first one from my family to start with sheep 4-H too. Just giving little tips for the younger people, to motivate them to keep coming back…. We started from the bottom, too. It can be kind of discouraging when you go to a show, and you always get dead last.”
This year, when the SHSC heads to the RWF, they’ll be showing up to the competition a sheep shy, as Holly is barred from competition this year, in order to give another young person the chance to win. Holly is currently assessing what
her next move in the world of livestock-showing will be. “Last year, somebody told me you’re supposed to save winning until you’re in your last year of 4-H,” she told The Citizen, “because I had this all planned, right?”
Sheep show stoppers
Last November, the South Huron Sheep Club (SHSC) sent 11 representatives to the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto. The team savoured a triumphant victory when team member Holly Gross’ entry - a sheep named Marlee - was named Grand Champion Lamb in the Junior Sheep Show. (Courtesy photo)
Expanding minds, markets ethnoculturally
Outstanding in their fields
Laura Ferrier, Aramide Taiwo and Shiying Lu, above, were among those who spoke at a recent day on ethnocultural foods and agricultural finance in Elora, discussing bringing new crops to Ontario as demand for them increases. (Photo courtesy of Aramide Taiwo)
By Mel Luymes The Rural Voice
It was a small group, buzzing with big ideas. The County of Wellington partnered with the Boundless Accelerator to bring in rural entrepreneurs and keen funders to Elora’s Grandway Events Centre for Crops and Capital: Ethnocultural Foods and Agricultural Finance.
The day kicked off with a panel, moderated by Justine Dainard, Smart Cities Manager within the County’s Economic Development department. She set the stage by noting that, as the cultural demographics of our cities and even rural towns are changing, so too are there shifting demands for different types of foods. Even Canadians of European ancestry are getting more adventurous with their tastebuds and experiencing other cultures through their food, therefore increasing demand and creating new opportunities for producers.
“Ethnic foods were once a niche, but are now a growing, viable market,” says Justine.
Much of these foods are imported to serve the growing market, but could these foods be grown or processed here in Ontario? The panelists answered a definite yes!
Ponmo and African vegetables
Aramide Taiwo is originally from Nigeria and was a communications specialist. She now lives in Kitchener and is a farmer and local food entrepreneur, starting Tileyi Brands Inc. in 2018. She comes from a culture that uses nearly every part of a beef cow for food, and she believes that she can create a winwin solution in Ontario to reduce the amount of wasted carcass and serve a growing market of consumers. Specifically, she has been working with Canadian regulators and local processing facilities to try to make ponmo here.
Ponmo is cleaned, dehaired and tenderized cow hide. Similar to jerky and pork rinds, this comfort food staple is a well-loved treat across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. It is a keto-friendly snack that is high-fat and low-carb. Currently, it is being imported or made in small batches, in potentially dangerous conditions, but Aramide believes that there
community on a quarter-acre of land in the city under the name True North Tropical, and she simply couldn’t keep up with the demand from customers of largely Afro, Caribbean and Middle Eastern heritage. She grew dent corn, callaloo (amaranth), tete (spinach) and ewedu (jute leaves), among many others found online at truenorthtropical.square.site. Her major barrier with the vegetables is long-term access to good land, as there were issues with flooding and compaction at the previous site.
Aramide hopes to find land in the Waterloo-Wellington area and, if anyone has any leads, please reach out to her through the website.
Asian vegetables near Mono
Shiying Lu farms near Mono, running Brilliant Meadows and selling both meats and Asian vegetables. Raised in the city by her Chinese immigrant parents, she did a farm internship in 2016 and fell in love with farming, working on farms and renting land to run her own farm business, but not finding a farm she could buy. As she went back to work in Toronto, she thought she would have to give up on her dream of having a farm but, by chance, she and her partner, Jason, saw a “For Sale” sign out front of their dream property on a weekend trip.
They bought the farm, and balanced their full-time jobs and livestock farming by sharing the land with farm tenants who did the
barn chores in exchange for access to land for vegetable production.
For the next few years, she developed a market for her pastured duck, chicken and pork, selling cuts that were not readily available, like pig trotters or chicken feet. The biggest issues she had was accessing an abattoir and finding a butcher that would even do those cuts of meat.
“They don’t value the cuts as much as my customers do,” said Shiying, yet she didn’t want to complain about a poor job cleaning or cutting, because she was just grateful to find someone willing to do it.
She found some support along the way with the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario (EFAO)
would be a huge market for local, well-made ponmo.
Aramide found support through an incubator program called LiftOff by the Caribbean Canadian Association of Waterloo Region. The first issue she had was with provincial food regulations that claimed hide was leather, and not a food product. The CFIA however recognizes its use as food across the world, next she needs access to food-grade beef hide and a commercially-approved processing facility where her products will be made.
But perhaps the real hurdle is the cultural divide. “I have to start every business interaction by saying, ‘This is not a joke,’” says Aramide, “and I have to remind people that, only a few decades ago, tripe wasn’t even available here. Markets change as the demand changes, but people have to pay attention to the changes going on around them and where there might be opportunities, even if they look strange at first.”
Aramide also started growing African vegetables for her
this year’s inventory of potted trees and larger trees in wire baskets.
A fresh start
Shiying Lu is seen above, in 2022, with her crop of amaranth as her work and production continued to expand with the help of the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario. (Photo courtesy of the EFAO)
Continued from page A9
BIPOC network (refers to Black, Indigenous, and people of colour) and farmer meet-ups, as well as the county’s Experiment Acres program that helped her try some innovative farming techniques.
In 2024, Shiying made the big move to farming full-time, and she grew Asian vegetables for her existing customer base with an online ordering system in both English or Chinese and delivery to weekly pick-up points. She also sold to a few local restaurants.
“Basically, I offered a fresh version of something you can find a sad version of in the grocery store,” she jokes. But, it worked. She couldn’t keep up to demand, selling out of bitter melon, waxy corn, dou miao (pea sprouts) qing cai (greens), daikon radish, sweet potato leaves, and so much more when they were in season. As well, faba beans were a “sleeper hit” for 2024, making her wish she had planted more.
Her biggest issues were sourcing seeds and finding information about growing the vegetables, especially in Ontario’s shorter growing season.
As more luck would have it, she connected with backyard gardeners in her Asian community that have many years of growing these vegetables here. As well, she has saved seeds to begin regionally adapting them to Ontario. See more at brilliantmeadows.com
Lentils in Ontario
Lentils are small, lens-shaped legumes that are rich in protein and fibre; they are a staple in vegetarian diets and are also popular in South Asian, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisines. Canada is a global
leader in lentil production, but not from Ontario.
Laura Ferrier and her husband grew 30 acres of lentils in 2016, which was the International Year of the Lentil. Located near Elora, they were the only farm in Ontario to grow lentils that year, and the plan was to deliver the crop to Saskatchewan and do a back haul of fertilizer.
But when the market fell drastically that year due to India raising a tariff, the Ferriers were left with a perfectly good crop of lentils and nowhere to sell it. They pivoted and started reaching out to grocery stores to sell directly, building their brand as Lau-tea-da Lentils, packaging in small cone bags, or selling to restaurants in 50-pound bags.
Laura is an agronomist and knows that there are plenty of good reasons to grow lentils here, to fix nitrogen in the soil, break up pest and disease cycles, and just to increase income diversity. Still, it is hard for Ontario to compete with the Prairie climate when it comes to lentils because the crop likes relatively cool and dry growing conditions. As well, Ontario isn’t equipped with many options to clean the lentils. Laura struggled to get their crop clean enough for direct sales.
Laura had to hustle to get the lentils sold, delivering across the area with small children in tow, which was difficult, especially with last-minute orders that she couldn’t plan into her busy schedule. But she did sell the crop eventually and even went on to grow another crop.
Another hurdle Laura had to face is that many people in this area don’t
know what to do with lentils, so she created a recipe card to help people learn more about them and how to cook them. She shared more recipes on the farm’s Facebook page and promoted the restaurants that were serving their lentils.
She still believes that farms should be diversified, but has no plans to keep growing lentils. Instead, she grows pumpkins and sells them at a roadside stand: Ferrier’s Farm Stand.
Next steps for ethnocultural foods
A few key barriers to Ontario’s ethnocultural food market emerged from the panel discussion. The barriers were not in the local demand, but in the value chain, both up- and down-stream: finding regionally-adapted seeds and the know-how, having regulations that support new products, finding secure access to land and capital, as well as having skilled butchers and processing facilities adapted for new products.
The event concluded with presentations from Ag. Credit Corp, Fair Finance Fund and Farm Credit Canada, as well as introductions from exhibitors that funded grants for farmers, including Saugeen Economic Development Corporation with their AgriBusiness and Business Startup Loans, Harvest Impact, Wellington County’s Community Improve Funding Program and OMAFRA’s
Business Investment and Development Unit.
When we think about what Ontario’s agricultural landscape will look like in the future, we remember that wheat and soybeans aren’t any more native to Ontario than ewedu,
bitter melon, or lentils are. We are in an ever-evolving relationship between people and the land, everresponding to the changes that are going on around us. And who knows what “cropportunity” will be next?
Lucknow Ag. Society prepares for Fall Fair
By Scott Stephenson The Citizen
For over 160 years, the village of Lucknow has been celebrating its local farming community by holding a fall fair. Over that time, a lot has changed in the world of agriculture, and the fall fair has changed right alongside it. What began as an annual excuse to show up your neighbour’s cabbage with a much better cabbage has slowly developed into a sort of community catch-all of entertainment - the homecrafts competition has grown to include hundreds of categories, from the obvious to the esoteric. Eventually, games were added, and then rides. These days, inflatables seem to be all the rage.
But these community celebrations aren’t just something conjured out of thin air by the Fair Fairy - behind every great fair, there’s a hardworking Agricultural Society that spends the whole year planning and organizing the event. The Lucknow Agricultural Society (LAS) is one such group - a dedicated collective that chooses to use what little free time they have putting on the best fair they can, every year.
Freshly-elected LAS President Emily Morrison attributes the longevity of Lucknow’s fall fair to all the longtime society members who keep the fair going. “You need that core group of people,” she pointed out. “The people who hold it all together, who make it so the fair happens, every year. The people who pull all the other people in…. It’s the willingness to work together, and connect with your community to support your community. All of us are different sitting around the table, but the essence of us is the same - we all love agriculture. When it comes down to it, we’re very lucky to have a fall fair, and we’re very lucky to have an alive and thriving Agricultural Society.”
Then there are all the volunteers who come out to donate their time on the weekend of the fair. “There’s so many people that help,”
Morrison pointed out. “At a minimum, it’s at least 14 gate shifts, and there’s at least 12 to 14 Homecraft volunteers, solely. And there’s another 12 for the Family Fun Zone. Then there’s the 4-H people, who host an event at the fair… it’s a lot!”
Of course, the LAS could use a few more volunteers willing to donate their time and talents to the fair. “We’re always open. Always, every year, all the time,” Morrison explained to The Citizen . “One thing that’s different with us - I feel like there’s a lot of young people around the table. And I think we’re
trying to stay innovative, we’re trying to be on the edge… and you don’t need to show up to every meeting!”
One such innovation happened in 2020, when, for reasons that resonated around the globe, there was no physical fall fair in Lucknow. The LAS, still wanting to provide the community with some agri-tainment, decided to pivot. “We ended up making a bingo card, and we put it in the newspaper, and we put it online,” Morrison remembered. There was a card for animals, a card for homecrafts, and one for field crops. Each square on
the cards contained something related to Lucknow’s agricultural community. “So people had to go out and take selfies with cornfields, sunflower fields, wheat fields,” she explained. “If they submitted their completed BINGO card, they got a prize. And that’s how we tried to create a virtual fair. And then, we rocked it in 2021! It was an outdoor, one-day fair.”
Morrison remembers how much she looked forward to the fair growing up, and she wants to keep giving the youth of today the chance to feel the same way. “It was the opportunity to show off your prized vegetables and corn stalks. I remember entering for the giant pumpkin - we used to grow pumpkins, and we used to grow giant pumpkins, specifically for the fall fair,” she recalled. Entering and
attending the fair every year also gave Morrison a serious case of hometown pride when she was a child. “In my mind, I felt like you couldn’t really go to any other fall fair, because it was for your town.”
The LAS also sponsors different community events at the Lucknow and District Sports Complex throughout the year, including free skating and swimming. They also sponsor Art in the Park - a community-led program designed to spark youth creativity.
“Essentially, kids can just come to the park and do art,” Morrison explained. “And some of them are themed to match the theme of the fair, and then they have something to enter in the fair!”
An exciting development for the 2025 fair is the elimination of the
Continued from page A11 gate fee on Friday night, which means free admission for all who attend. Planning is currently underway for some Friday night programming that will hopefully attract visitors of all ages.
This year, Morrison is also excited for the Sunday church service, which signifies the official end of the fair. “To be honest, I hope my legacy is with the church service,” she said. “It has an agricultural topic, and it’s nondenominational - it’s about community, and actually promoting agriculture!”
Morrison has a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration and a Master’s Degree in Sustainability Studies, and she’s worked as the Marketing Director for events like the 2017 International Plowing Match in Walton. She’s hoping that she can harness all those experiences to raise the profile of the Lucknow Fall Fair. She already knows that the fair is an awesome event that everybody should come to - now she just needs to make sure the rest of the world knows it too.
Greg Sherwood: from the fields to the canvas
The art of the land
Greg
By Shawn Loughlin
The Citizen
Huron County has a rich artistic history and many of its talented and visionary artists - from the landscapes of Jack McLaren and the portraits of Reuben Sallows to the contemporary art of Ron and Bev Walker, William Creighton, Michele Miller and Elizabeth Van den Broeck to the new generation of Kelly Stevenson, Abi Bos and Autumn Ducharme - have often turned to the land outside their door for inspiration.
However, when one thinks of the art of the Huron County landscape these days, it’s Greg Sherwood who comes to mind. His landscape art has defined the region for over 20 years and, while his clouded skies often dominate the conversation around Sherwood’s art, those skies are almost always suspended above an agricultural setting, most often a farmer’s field, telling the stories of Huron County through the seasons and the planting, growth and harvest cycles to which many have come to set their watches.
Sherwood doesn’t get cute when
naming his works of art, often opting instead for direct, to-thepoint titles that tell viewers what season he’s depicting through his oil paint and talent.
Currently on his website, Sherwood has a painting featured entitled, “Gravel Road Early Spring” that includes a blue/grey clouded sky above fields with a healthy mix of early growth yellow and green with the rich brown earth of an early agricultural season.
Alongside it, almost as a complementary piece, is “Gravel Road Mid Summer” which appears to depict a different gravel road than the first, but is complete with a clearer, blue sky above bright green foliage and brilliant golden fields just starting to grow.
His work then moves into darker, richer tones as the seasons shift to fall, his favourite, and winter, which he doesn’t often paint, though he’s hoping to change that. This brings in the burnt oranges, purples and dark greens we know to look for when the weather begins to cool.
And while Sherwood has painted scenes from vacations he’s taken over the years to, say, Europe, Newfoundland and Arizona, the vast majority of his work depicts scenes from just outside of his door. Now, that means the London area, but, for more than 30 years, until just recently, that meant Huron County.
Born in Vancouver, Sherwood and his family moved relatively frequently in his younger years, as his father was an R.C.M.P. officer whose station would change from time to time. After stops in Toronto and Newfoundland, the family eventually settled in the Ottawa area, in the small town of Russell, to be exact, which has a current population of just under 4,500 people, about a half-hour southeast of Ottawa.
He made his way west as a young man with his eye on an education from the University of Western Ontario in London, which is where he met his wife, Viv. There, Sherwood earned two degrees, first
Sherwood’s three decades in Huron were formative
In the studio
While well-known artist Greg Sherwood now calls London home, he spent nearly 30 years in Huron County and, during much of that time, he documented Huron County life through his oil paintings, which can be found in buildings, galleries, theatres and homes throughout the community. He paints with the seasons and captures farmers’ fields in various stages of growth and harvest, making his work unique in regards to landscape work in other parts of the province. (Shawn Loughlin photo)
Continued from page A13 in Science and then in Art.
His artistic journey, however, began earlier. He was always drawing and painting as a child and then took art classes in high school, which is where he really began to learn his trade. At that point, under the instruction of this teacher or at the direction of that class, he experimented with all types of art and many different mediums before really honing in on the more traditional form of oil painting.
Sherwood eventually made his way to teachers’ college, hoping to shape the next generations of young artists and, when Viv landed a job
in Wingham, the pair made their way to Huron County for the first time, and as Sherwood took a job teaching at Seaforth District High
School, which has since closed. He taught there for six years, teaching art part-time, before taking a job at F.E. Madill Secondary School in Wingham, where he would stay for the next 22 years until he retired in June of 2015. As he said that, he realized that, later this year, he’ll be marking his 10th anniversary of retirement, remarking that the time has simply flown by.
In an effort to downsize as they entered retirement, the Sherwoods moved out of Huron County for the first time in nearly 30 years when they bought a home in Byron, a small community just southwest of London. However, that spot was never quite right for them, so they moved to their current location, which is a lovely home in the very northeast corner of London which, Sherwood jokes, makes off-the-cuff trips back to Huron County just that much more convenient.
Sherwood began exhibiting and selling his paintings when he was
still a university student. Now, most of his work can be found at Marten Arts Gallery in Bayfield. However, those with an interest in Huron County art have no doubt seen his work before. It greets patrons of the Blyth Festival in the form of a mural in Memorial Hall, has hung above the dining room in Cowbell Brewing Co. and his work hangs in the North Huron Township office and in locations throughout the county. He has also been the subject of two solo shows at the Blyth Festival Art Gallery (“A Trick of the Light” in 2015 and “Above my Head and Below my Feet” in 2024) and part of a three-artist show“The Selective Eye” - in the gallery in 2002.
He says he was just recently reminiscing about the artistic style for which local art lovers have come to know him and he says it can be traced back to a drive to Bayfield. He was heading west to the community and he crested a hill
Continued from page A14 and saw the fields, the sky and the horizon of Lake Huron laid out before him and something just locked into place for him, telling him that this is what he should be painting. That was many years ago, he said, when he was just beginning his teaching career and heading to Bayfield for a new teacher social event and it told him everything he needed to know about the next 30 years of his art career.
As for where Sherwood’s art and the world of agriculture intersect, he says that, until very recently, he had always lived in small towns and was surrounded by the agricultural fields many in Huron County know and love. However, he really sees it more as an aspect of him documenting his life through art, but also the life that exists all around him in the places where he’s lived.
Sherwood, over the years, has worked with notebooks and sketch pads, sometimes even doing some painting out in the very fields he’s painting. However, as technology has advanced, he has taken advantage, first taking pictures with DSLR cameras and now with his phone. He’ll bring those images back to the studio in his London home and, depending on the scene, work from pictures or even project scenes onto the canvas to get a start. He always blocks out the landscape and the clouds with a dark red paint - this is known as imprimatura, which is Italian for “first paint layer” - and continues to work from there, using four varieties of brushes and a number of colours as the painting calls for them. He is known for creating vibrant small pieces, on canvases or boards
that are one foot squared, in addition to bigger pieces that can reach three and four feet wide. And, while he doesn’t have an agricultural background himself, he sees the capturing of the fields and the work being done on them by the farmers, as telling the story of the community, especially when he thinks back to his time in Huron County.
For example, as we flipped through smaller versions of his paintings, often done on paper and used to create his larger works on canvas, he will remember where the fields are and why they captured his imagination. Be it an abandoned farmhouse on B Line north of Wingham, a down-sloping view on the road to Mildmay or the gravel roads of North Huron, he remembers being inspired and what compelled him to paint these scenes.
“It’s what the people who live there do,” he said, and it’s important to document that as part of the storytelling of a snapshot in time of a community as it makes it from year to year.
He says that he’s always fascinated when painting a farmer’s field in the juxtaposition between the untouched nature of the scene and the man-altered nature, meaning the sky and the trees combined with the fields being actively worked by farmers, sitting in a state of being planted, grown or harvested, all coming with their own dramatic and beautiful scenes and changing all the time with the seasons.
More information on Sherwood can be found at gregsherwood.ca and his work can be perused at Marten Arts Gallery in Bayfield.
‘The Rural Voice’ turns the page in 50th year
By Shawn Loughlin The Citizen
In last year’s Salute to Agriculture, The Citizen ’s Scott Stephenson celebrated The Rural Voice for its decades of telling the region’s agricultural stories and tales of the rural way of life.
He didn’t know it at the time, but he was doing that story just as the beloved magazine - which is part of the North Huron Publishing Inc. collection of publications alongside The Citizen and Stops Along the Way - was about to turn a corner.
Long-time Editor Lisa Boonstoppel-Pot, shortly after that story was published, decided to step back from the magazine into a form of semi-retirement to pursue other interests and now, as the storied publication marks its 50th anniversary this year, esteemed agricultural voice Mel Luymes has taken the reins and will guide The Rural Voice through its semicentennial and beyond.
The Citizen sat down with Luymes to talk about her background, her work in the agricultural field and her vision for the future of The Rural Voice
Growing up, Luymes said she was always aware of The Rural Voice. Her family received it and she read it regularly, so it was omnipresent in her life before she even knew exactly how omnipresent it would become years later.
She went on to reference the publication in her university studies as she focused on agricultural media and its role in the world.
However, even as a young reader, what attracted her to the publication, she said, was its lack of a slant or an angle. The Rural Voice just told the stories of the people and the businesses of rural Ontario and other publications, even some of the biggest ones, always seemed to have a slant, she said.
Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean a political slant, she says, like so many media outlets now have. It could represent more of a sole focus - only large-scale farms, only smallscale farms, only corporate farming, only environmental concerns... the list goes on. The Rural Voice told all of those stories, she said, in equal measure and she said she felt like she learned the most about the rural way
of living from The Rural Voice
The history and her connection with the magazine’s celebrated way of telling stories has directly influenced what she hopes to accomplish with the magazine as it continues to publish southwestern Ontario’s rural stories in the year 2025. She wants to tell the stories of this community, warts and all, and focus on all voices, not just those that have been historically celebrated in Canada’s world of agriculture.
While Boonstoppel-Pot ushered in an era of telling women’s stories more frequently in The Rural Voice - though Luymes points out that it was around the time that Boonstoppel-Pot took over, that those voices were beginning to be heard across Canadian agricultural media in a more fulsome wayLuymes hopes to continue that tradition and to feature all of the people who make up the rural Ontario landscape. That includes large- and small-scale farming alike, new Canadians who are carving out their own markets and parts of the agricultural landscape,
environmentally-conscious and organic farmers, as well as traditional, large-scale farming operations that mean so much to the local economy. Basically, if it happens in rural Ontario, Luymes says she wants to write a story about it.
That includes uncomfortable topics that are crucial and on the tips of everyone’s tongues in rural Ontario, but may be unpleasant to discuss, like the rise in homelessness, human trafficking and other issues the magazine has tackled recently or hopes to cover in the future.
Two of her early priorities, however, are as traditional as they come in regards to rural life and farming in this area. First, she is working to connect with the local federations of agriculture, which have meant and continue to mean so much to the publication. Those relationships, she said, are paramount to the foundation of The Rural Voice, and ensuring that the members of those associations see themselves reflected in the pages of
(Shawn Loughlin photo)
‘Rural Voice’ ushered in a new era of writing
The founder Keith Roulston founded The Rural Voice when he determined there was, to somewhat quote a somewhat famous Blyth Festival play, there was nothing in the paper, so he sought to create his own and write the stories he wanted to read and he had a feeling that others wanted to read too. Fifty years later, he’s been proven right. (File photo)
Continued from page A16 of the magazine is among the most important tasks that Luymes feels is on her to-do list.
The second priority is perhaps the most obvious: the opportunity and the responsibility of shepherding the magazine through its 50th anniversary year; a milestone for any publication, any way you slice it.
She says, of course, there’s pressure with such a history to take on, but she also sees it as a celebration and that’s why she’s been taking the opportunity to look back at some of the magazine’s most memorable stories and reflect back on them all these years later. This is a feature that began with the March issue of the magazine. That piece can be read at the end of this story.
Looking back in a year like this can be just as important as looking forward, so she’s doing her best to do both.
Luymes is a busy bee these days. She’s not just spending her time with The Rural Voice, but she’s likely known to many in the world of agriculture thanks to her work over the years with organizations like the Maitland Valley Conservation Authority, the Huron Soil and Crop Improvement Association and the Ontario Professional Agri-Contractors Association, among others. In fact, it was a relationship at the Maitland Valley Conservation Authority that first connected her with Keith Roulston and The Rural Voice , beyond simply as a reader, about 15 years ago.
Phil Beard, the long-time general manager and secretary/treasurer of the Maitland Valley Conservation Authority, was working with Luymes and he encouraged her to reach out to the publication. That initial connection eventually led to some freelance assignments and being brought into the fold at the magazine, being assigned the odd
piece here and there and being able to pitch stories to Roulston and then Boonstoppel-Pot after him. From there, her relationship with the magazine and its community of readers and contributors only deepened to the point that, when Boonstoppel-Pot felt the pull to other endeavours, Luymes was the clear successor and the person to usher The Rural Voice into its next 50 years of telling the stories of rural Ontario.
Speaking of that history, now seems as good a time as any to revisit it, courtesy of Scott Stephenson and his feature last year. Here, thanks to Scott, is the abridged story of The Rural Voice from last year’s Salute to Agriculture special issue of The Citizen
By Scott Stephenson The Citizen
While The Citizen ’s annual “Salute to Agriculture” may come but once a year, its sister publication, The Rural Voice, has
been doing nothing but saluting agriculture, once a month, for almost 50 years. The magazine’s founder, Keith Roulston, may have retired from his position as editor of the farm-focused periodical over a decade ago, but he can still be convinced to stop by the offices of North Huron Publishing to share a little bit of history about how Huron County’s record of all things rural came to be. As with so many successful creative endeavours, The Rural Voice began when Roulston realized he could do better than the farming periodicals that were already on the newsstand. “In those days, Western Ontario Farmer Today was a big farm paper, and they were just making a small fortune, and I didn’t think they were doing the job they should be. They were mostly just running press releases, and so on and so forth. We needed a different farm paper, one that was doing more serious work about farmers, so I started The Rural Voice.” It was a natural move for a young rural journalist with a
passion for agriculture. “I grew up on a farm - my life was about farming, and it’s the basis of our community here,” he said. When he started The Rural Voice, Roulston was already well-versed in the newspaper game, so the early issues were printed in the standard newspaper style of the day. “We were doing much shorter articles at first,” he explained. At that time, the Huron County Federation of Agriculture was sending out its own newsletter via mail. “They were getting funding from the Ontario Federation of Agriculture. So we said we’ll publish your newsletter, and put it in The Rural Voice. In the beginning, it was a challenge - there hadn’t been a farm newsletter in our area before. Most of the newspapers just covered whatever stories came to them.”
That first newsletter was soon joined by the Perth County Federation of Agriculture’s newsletter. Then Bruce County’s, and finally Grey’s. As those basic newsletter articles gradually began to evolve into longer stories of agricultural interest, the
publication’s format switched to magazine style.
In 1975, Roulston discovered a new passion: founding a rural theatre. Over time, he divested himself of much of his publishing empire, including The Rural Voice, which changed hands several times before it came back to Blyth for good in 1991. And it didn’t come alone. “When we bought it back again, it came with all these contributors; freelancers that it collected along the way.”
Those new contributors and Roulston’s renewed stewardship brought The Rural Voice into a new era of rural journalism. “We just wanted healthy rural communities, and to serve those communities by telling the stories that are available to us,” he said. “As we went along, we found so many interesting people [whose stories we needed to tell]. I think that because of the coverage that The Rural Voice did over the years in telling stories about people doing things like conservation tillage, and so on - I think it helped change the way
Documenting rural life, one month at a time
A strong era
When Rural Voice Founder Keith Roulston decided that it was time to step back, he turned to Lisa BoonstoppelPot to be the editor. After a meaningful and awardwinning run, she too has stepped back, making way of new Editor Mel Luymes in a very special year. (File photo)
Continued from page A17 conservation tillage, and so on - I think it helped change the way people farmed. Writing about those leaders and those innovators made it possible for more people to know about them.”
In his opinion, there are only a few rules for what makes a good Rural Voice story. “It has to be interesting, and be something that people can apply to their own lives. They can say ‘oh, gee, it’s interesting what that person is doing. Could we do some of that on our farm?’”
Roulston eventually turned stewardship of The Rural Voice over to Lisa Boonstoppel-Pot, as its new editor. And, whether she was writing about worms or featuring a
local farmer, Boonstoppel-Pot clearly loved what she did with the magazine for over a decade. “I was a co-op student here when I was 16 years old,” she explained. “So I have been involved with this company for a very long time. Keith was always so generous in letting me write stories for both the paper and the magazine, since I was a farm girl. And that’s how I got started.”
Despite stepping away from the editor’s role, Roulston hasn’t quite finished with the world of rural publishing. “He’s still a very treasured and valuable columnist. When he retired, I was really worried that he was going to stop writing his column,” said Boonstoppel-Pot. “But he was keen
to go, and every month, he absolutely delivers. It’s unbelievable.”
When compared to its inaugural issue, The Rural Voice has clearly changed since she first started. “The magazine is a lot more colourful now,” she pointed out. “Visually, that’s definitely the biggest difference. All the photography used to be in black and white. And we were developing our own photos back then; technology has made everything more colourful. And easier. There’s also been some design changes, so it looks a little different. Also, none of our original freelancers are still here, although we do still have a few left from Keith’s era.”
From a content perspective, The Rural Voice has never stopped evolving right along with the agricultural community. “I think, with the advent of social media, the focus has changed a little bit. I don’t think it’s a magazine that you go to for current news... I think we are in changing times. We see it all over the place - in agriculture, and in print media specifically, as
everyone turns to social media for their information and their news. But I think it’s really important to realize that journalists like you and me are the ones who go to the farms, we sit down at the kitchen tables, we talk to the real people, and we get the real story. This is not one paragraph that tells you nothing - you get a whole picture of what’s really happening. Don’t give up on print media - it has something to say!”
One thing that hasn’t changed is the sheer volume of stories that are worth telling. “Huron County is a noted agricultural county. We are top of the heap in terms of our production and farm numbers, along with the other counties we cover. Our identity is rural and agricultural. Our roots are just steeped in it, and we need to honour and celebrate that, and tell those stories, and teach and encourage one another with the stories we record in The Rural Voice.”
Boonstoppel-Pot also thinks that The Rural Voice is a worthwhile read for all people, not just those in the agricultural sector.
“Even for people that are not actively farming, it’s about understanding how farming has changed. The Rural Voice has been recording those changes now for 50 years, and as people get more and more removed from the actual farm, it plays a huge role in showing and telling them what farming is like nowadays.”
Boonstoppel-Pot’s favourite type of Rural Voice stories are the ones that shine a light on local lives. “In every issue, I like to have at least one story, or more than one story, that’s simply about a farmer. A story about a farmer that’s doing something new, who wants to share what they’re doing, to talk about the why, what, where in a way that celebrates agriculture, and encourages other people to perhaps investigate what they’re doing on their farms, or perhaps even a new farmer might say ‘hey, I’d like to try that too!’ I think people’s stories are the best stories. You can learn so much as people share their accomplishments, and their difficulties, and their struggles.”
340 Bruce Road 86 R.R. #1 Lucknow, ON N0G 2H0
o: 519-357-1532 t: 1-877-357-1532
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barry.elliott@hubcapital.ca www.hubcapital.ca
For 50th anniversary, ‘The Rural Voice’ looks back
Editor Mel Luymes has begun a series in The Rural Voice, looking
(Mel Luymes photo)
By Mel Luymes
The
Rural Voice
To celebrate The Rural Voice magazine’s 50th anniversary, let’s take a walk back in time and see how far Ontario agriculture has come! This month, we’re looking back only 10 years to the March 2015 issue and reflect on the major stories inside.
Cover story: On the cover, we had Terry Hoover standing outside in a plaid jacket in front of his shed. An article about Hoover’s Maple Syrup outlines his operation and what made it organic maple syrup. Terry and Diane Hoover are still going strong with maple syrup production on their farm (and 50 acres sugar bush) near Atwood.
In case you didn’t know or didn’t see the article, most maple trees would be considered organic because they don’t receive any fertilizers or crop protection products; however, it is in the cleaning of the lines and processing equipment that determines Hoover’s organic status. Ten years ago, when Lisa wrote the article, Terry used an age-old organic strategy to clean. He
left the last sap of the season in a pan to ferment for a month or so, and it turned into a acidic gel that was a powerful cleaning agent.
“But it smelled so bad,” Terry admits. Since the last article, Terry has switched to cleaning the evaporator by boiling permeate from the reverse osmosis process and, as for the sap lines, he vacuums them and then uses isopropyl alcohol per tap, which was approved for use by the organic standards in Canada.
Back then he was “knocking on the door of 2,000 taps” and “looking long-term at reaching his woodlot’s 3,000 tap potential.” Ten years later, has 3,127 taps. He knows exactly how many because taps are 50 cents a piece and come in bags of 100. Terry can reuse the taps because he uses a new insert over them, which protects the tree (which is only 20 cents a piece and he sends off for plastic recycling).
He has 15 kilometres of line for sap to flow through and, in the last decade, he has switched from a pump that pulls to the sap shack, to an electric pump in the sugar bush that can push
600 gallons per hour up to the shack at the front of the property for processing.
Over the years, the sap output has went up and down, but mainly up. Ten years ago, Terry and Diane would count on an average of one litre of syrup from each tap, but now, that is a one-and-a-half-litre average. While last year averaged 1.3 litres, the year before that was 1.74 litres.
The “Rule of 86” in maple syrup production is that if you divide 86 by the sugar content of your sap, that is how to estimate how many litres of sap you would need to make a litre of syrup. Over the years, the average sugar content (measured in Brix level) has nearly doubled, which accounts for the rise in production. Terry and Diane credit the rise of the sugar levels to all the work they have done in the bush to thin it and remove the dead ash.
“Managing the bush is all part of our long-term sustainability plan,” says Diane.
After the story came out, Terry went on to become the president of the Ontario Maple Syrup Producers Association (OMSPA) for two years. He hosted the association’s summer tour that same year and had 300 people over to the farm. During his time as president, the major issue he dealt with was adding traceability for all maple syrup producers into Ontario Regulation 119/11.
Better than Groundhog Day, the first tap of a sugar bush captures the promise of spring and the flowing of sap. But when will farmers begin to tap? That has changed over the years and depends on the winter. Maple syrup producers go by the weather and the forecast. Ideally, it is a stretch of sunny days, just around1°C; any colder and the tree’s bark might split. It takes Terry and his crew three to four days to tap his entire sugar bush. Last year, he started February second because we didn’t have much of a winter; but 2025 has been a different story. The ceremonial tap was cancelled due to a snowstorm, but Terry expects to begin tapping once the weather turns.
“As much as I’m checking the weather, I’m also figuring out when other producers are tapping and don’t want to be too much after Brad Martin,” laughs Terry.
In the last few years, Terry and Diane have also led the local 4-H maple syrup club, and, with both of them now retired, they have no plans of slowing down with the maple syrup.
Organic dairy: The March 2015 issue featured a panel on organic production at the Dairy Xpo that featured both Tom Boon and Paul DeJong, among others. In the last 10 years, Tom has made a host of
changes at Boondale Farms near Woodstock, starting with a new free stall barn built in 2015 and the installation of the EASYFIX aeration system on his below-barn manure pit. Since the story, he has nearly doubled his herd size, now milking 94 cows; he has started a succession plan with his son and daughter-in-law, while his two other sons have started their own dairy farms nearby through the DFO Organic New Entrant Program. He no longer has the mastitis challenges he had described at the expo and remains enthusiastic about organic farming, striving to improve management on all fronts: in the soil, the crops and the cows.
As for Paul DeJong of Ventry Hill Farm near Dundalk, you may be wondering where he went.
According to the Beef Farmers of Ontario’s Beef North media campaign, Paul made a big move up to Northern Ontario in the fall of 2017 with his partner Kim Inglis. He moved to a 960-acre farm near Englehard and has transitioned to beef production.
Precision Agriculture: Ten years ago, there was a panel at Grey Bruce
Farmers’ Week about precision agriculture, featuring Paul Raymer, Mark Ribey and Craig Trelford, moderated by Blair Scott of Sprucedale Agromart. We caught up with them to see how precision agriculture has changed in the last 10 years, how many more farmers are using it and what might be on the horizon for the next decade.
We caught up with Paul Raymer, the co-founder and President of SoilOptix. Ten years ago, SoilOptix® was in its early days, just getting off the ground. Since then, it has grown to 27 countries around the world. Outside of North America, it has contract service providers making SoilOptix® mapping in the E.U. and U.K., in Chile and Argentina and this month, he’ll be on a trade mission to Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines to see how the technology can help farmers there.
“There is still a strong appetite for soil maps,” says Paul. “Farmers want to understand their field and improve efficiency with their inputs, and that hasn’t changed.”
SoilOptix® field maps are created
MacDonald brings crown to Ripley for the first time
Walking the walk
And yet, while he understands the responsibility that comes with it, she also seeks to embrace al the fun. (Courtesy photo)
By Scott Stephenson The Citizen
Last year, when Ripley’s Hannah MacDonald travelled to Toronto to represent her community at the Canadian National Exhibition’s (CNE) Ambassador Competition, she brought with her a suitcase packed with an appreciation for agriculture, hometown pride and a true passion for parades. Even though she came well-prepared, MacDonald was pleasantly surprised when her name was called as one of the competition’s finalists. “I had a perspective going into the weekend that I was kind of there for the networking opportunity, I wasn’t necessarily ‘in it to win it’. I knew it was such a big competition, and I never really saw why I would be chosen,” she explained when she stopped by The Citizen office last week.
MacDonald really wasn’t expecting to win the whole competition, but that’s just what happened. “lt was shocking!” she exclaimed. “Shocking for me, for my family, and for my community, for sure. And not in a bad way or anything - everyone was super excited. Just no one from Ripley has ever won.”
She had everything the judges were looking for: compassion, confidence, and candor. The one thing MacDonald didn’t have was something to wear! “I had clothes for three days!” she confided. Winning was so far from the young advocate’s mind that she hadn’t brought anything extra. Right after her name was called, MacDonald’s father dashed back to Ripley to pack a second suitcase - one filled with outfits suitable to wear on a two-week whirlwind tour, during which his daughter would be
coloured parmesan cheese. “It was definitely cool, and it looked good in photos,” she said. But if she had to choose, MacDonald would forgo all the fancy toppings for some plain old corn-on-the-cob. “It just tastes good, looks good. It’s cool to drive by a field and see - ‘oh, that corn is nice and tall, it’s growing good, healthy and strong.’”
As Ambassador of the Fairs, one of the most meaningful moments of that first fortnight was being invited to help welcome newcomers at a Canadian citizenship ceremony.
“When I was there, 72 people became Canadian,” she recalled. “That was really heartwarming… stuff like that doesn’t happen here, so it was super cool for me to see!”
One of the factors that really made her stand out at the CNE Ambassador Competition was her unparalleled enthusiasm for every aspect of agricultural fall fairs. “I’m
meeting dignitaries and greeting fans as the newly-crowned ambassador of ambassadors. “My dad knew that he had a big responsibility,” she joked. Before her father even made it back to the Big Smoke from HuronKinloss, MacDonald was thrown right into the role of Ambassador of the Fairs. “It was just craziness!… I met everyone from the CNE foundation, and probably 30 past CNE ambassadors.” Taking things in stride, she simply borrowed a pair of clean socks from one of her fellow competitors, and rolled with it. “The two and a half weeks in Toronto were a lot! I do the Royal Winter Fair, so I go for five days with beef cattle - it’s a totally different atmosphere! By the time I came home, I was ready for a week to myself… but I wouldn’t change the two weeks for the world.”
By becoming the Ambassador of the Fairs, MacDonald has assumed the same mantle of responsibility that the CNE carries - underneath all its bright lights and scandalous snacks - to nurture an awareness and appreciation of agriculture to all the people of Ontario, not just farmers. “I think that it is huge to see everything that goes on behind the scenes - people who have never been on a farm in their life can see ‘oh, this is what actually goes on, not the stories I hear on the internet’. I think it’s a good way to broadcast what behind-the-scenes farming looks like… to know where your food comes from.” Every child who walks away from the CNE no longer thinking that chocolate milk comes from brown cows was a victory for MacDonald.
It wouldn’t be a trip to the Ex without eating something a little bit out there, and MacDonald decided to try corn with queso and rainbow-
big into 4-H, so being able to go and show my 4-H project was definitely a huge highlight,” MacDonald told The Citizen. “And the parade! The parade’s always been a big one for me…. I’m for parades, for sure. Favourite thing. I love seeing crazy floats. I was always big into hockey as a kid, and the hockey team was always putting in a float.”
The 2024 parade was one that MacDonald will never forget. “The Ripley Fall Fair is the third weekend in September, so it’d just been, like, a month since I won. I hadn’t seen everyone, with me being at school, so when everyone saw me, they just screamed, or waved, or yelled and said ‘congrats!’ So that was pretty cool for me… you’re there, everyone’s watching you and waving at you, so you get to see everyone’s face light up. Definitely, being in the parade
as CNE ambassador felt like a huge accomplishment for me!” MacDonald comes by her love of fall fairs honestly - she comes from a family with deep ties to Ripley’s annual autumn celebration of agriculture. Her grandmother has always been a member of the Ripley Agricultural Society, and her great aunt and cousins were involved with organizing the Homecrafts competition. “I always helped set up for the fair, hanging all the kids’ stuff on the walls and everything like that.”
She also remembers how exciting it was to look through the fall fair book with her aunt every year.
“We’d go to her house, we’d look at the fair book, and we would make every craft possible with the stuff we had,” MacDonald recalled.
“Crafts were where I could be creative. I remember, always, we all
Hannah MacDonald is the first-ever Ripley Fall Fair Ambassador to win the provincial crown and that is not a responsibility she takes lightly.
MacDonald’s confidence boosted since win
nothing to lose. My confidence has really boosted since I’ve won, in any work I’m doing, whether it’s working with kids, doing my school work, talking about cows - I’m passionate and I’m confident when I do it! If I’m working in a group project now, I’m not scared to take the step up and be the leader. I think that being the
ambassador has taught me all those skills.”
MacDonald is now entering the midway part of her year as the CNE Ambassador of the Fairs - soon, all the fields, from Bruce County and far beyond, will begin to show verdant signs of spring. Shoots and sprouts will grow tall and strong, becoming the food and fodder for
Continued from page A20 made spoons. And I could kind of do what I want with the wooden spoon. Other stuff, where you kind of had to be more particular in what you were doing, with more rules, I didn’t like; I like to be myself when I do arts and crafts!”
MacDonald may be the first Ambassador from Ripley to take home top prize at the CNE, but she’s not the first person in her family to compete there. Her mother, aunt, and older sister all won the local Ambassadorship and represented Ripley at the CNE. Even though entering the competition was a bit of a foregone conclusion for MacDonald, she was more than happy to face the challenge. “I think it was an important role for me to take on,” she explained.
One of the things MacDonald values most about competing at the CNE was the way being exposed to the perspectives of other ambassadors broadened her own understanding of agriculture across Ontario. “When you’re the Ripley ambassador, you do a lot of stuff in the community - like helping out, and volunteer work,” she pointed out. “When you get to the bigger fall fair, you see that an ambassador is there to advocate for agriculture, because a lot of communities don’t have that… I think it’s a great program for young leaders to kind of step up, and take that role.”
After the CNE and the Ripley Fall Fair, MacDonald was pretty much free to advocate for agriculture in whatever way she found fit. “They leave it kind of up to me,” she explained. There’s some things I have to do, some places I have to be, but other than that I'm kind of there. I get to do what I want to do.”
One place that MacDonald went to was the Ontario Association of Agricultural Societies’ (OAAS) annual convention and general meeting. “I want to go every year,” she declared. “It’s kind of the one weekend where everyone gets to get together and to celebrate what Ontario agriculture does… it’s so motivating! I got a totally different perspective than the first year that I went, because the first year I was there, I was still learning, still meeting everyone. This year, I kind of got to be the role model for people. So that was huge, that people were looking up to me, and I got to help people out!” One of her favourite parts of this year’s OAAS convention was a keynote speech from motivational speaker Ian Tyson, who talked about the future of agriculture. “I sat there in disbelief at everything he was saying,” she recalled. When she’s not out there representing agriculture, MacDonald attends the University
of Guelph, where she is in her second year of Child Studies, working towards a Bachelor’s Degree in Applied Science. “I’m not a big city girl, so Guelph was kind of the school for me. I don’t feel like I’m in the city… I’m minoring in Linguistics. Working with kids has always been something I’ve been passionate about. I want to be a speech pathologist when I’m older, so that’s my main path,” she explained. “And then if that doesn’t work out, I’m always open to teachers’ college, behaviour therapist, anything that kind of helps kids.”
Something that makes MacDonald’s passion for farming extra inspiring is the fact that she didn’t even grow up on a farm at all - rather, her childhood interest was sparked by simply spending time around farms and farmers. “I grew up around farms in Ripley,” she explained, “so, very rural. I started 4-H when I was nine, with family friends, and from there on, I took on all the roles and responsibilities of a kid that would live on a farm. I started chores, I started rock picking, I started washing equipment. I got to learn everything from them… it’s not my farm, but I look at it as my farm.”
MacDonald feels that being an agriculturally-adjacent individual is one of her core strengths as an ambassador. “One of the huge things I advocated for was - you don’t have to live on a farm, you don’t have to grow up on a farm. You don’t even need to know someone on a farm to want to advocate for agriculture, and to show an interest in agriculture.”
She believes that successfully advocating for our farmers is all about keeping it real. “One thing I learned: be yourself always. Nobody wants to listen to a robot on the stage, nobody wants to listen to somebody who is trying to talk about something they’re not interested in. Fully be yourself, do something, talk about something you’re passionate about, don’t try to hide who you are from people you’re talking to… it’s always important to advocate! Everyone has their own opinions, but I think advocating and educating doesn’t have any harm to it.”
MacDonald can’t recommend the ambassador program enough - she thinks it’s a worthwhile endeavour for any and all young people out there who feel they have something to contribute to the promotion of agriculture.
“I would say do it 110 per cent! If you’re comfortable in that position, if you know you can get up on stage, and talk, and go shake people’s hands all day long and smile, I would say do it! There’s
our families and our livestock. As summer comes to an end and harvest-time approaches, MacDonald will return to the CNE, where she will hand over the title to the next worthy young person. And as for all the skills she’s learned and memories she’s made while in this adventure, those things she’ll carry with her always.
Hubbard family keeps Blyth’s rutabaga legacy alive
G.L. Hubbard Ltd. has been growing, harvesting and shipping rutabagas in Blyth for decades. From planting to processing, every step is done with care to bring fresh, locally grown rutabagas to tables across North America. (Scott Stephenson photos)
By Scott Stephenson
These days, more and more folks are looking to keep it local while grocery shopping, and for the people of Blyth, it’s harder to go any more local than the produce from G.L. Hubbard Ltd, located right on Dinsley Street. At Hubbard’s, they grow, store, clean, wax and ship rutabagas - one of the most underrated roots of the modern age. Rutabagas have it alla versatile vegetable that’s low in calories, high in fibre, rich in nutrients and chock full of antioxidants.
Blyth is lucky to be the county seat when it comes to the cultivation of this cruciferous crop, so The Citizen struck out down the street to see what it could see, and was greeted by Susan Hubbard, who is very accommodating towards those who stop by unannounced and ask for a guided tour of the family facility.
Susan turned out to be a great choice of tour guide - Hubbard’s is a place she knows, inside and out.
“I’ve been here since I was 18, so 42 years this year,” she explained.
“Everything is still the same - we harvest pretty much the same, just [with] better equipment, and an upgraded system, but everything is pretty much done the same way as when I started…. A few things have changed, like our wax used to be in little small boxes - now they come on skids, of course. Besides that, the line is pretty much still the same, and waxing is still the same.”
The Hubbard family’s patriarch, George, bought the plant in 1962, from Russ Dougherty - a local farmer and inventor with a reputation for being something of a rutabaga rebel. In 1951, Dougherty built the first precision seeder in North America, which was a real game-changer in the realm of root vegetables. He was also the one who ensured that the rutabaga became a permanent part of Blyth’s cultural identity with promotional celebrations like Rutabaga Day.
George brought his own ingenuity and innovation to the art of rutabaga farming, this time on the harvesting side of production.
“Way back then, we had just a onerow puller… our dad actually went up to Smyth Welding and created the harvester. As soon as it was done, they, in turn, went and put it
into the Lucknow Fair that year, which was pretty cool.” That old one-row puller still has its uses.
“We do still use it for our roadways - to open up the field, so we can get that big harvester in there.”
The first step to growing rutabagas is knowing how to correctly identify a rutabaga. This effortlessly inelegant behemoth of the brassica family has accumulated many different monikers over the last few centuries. At various points throughout history, the rutabaga has been known as baggy root, tumshie, ramroot, erfinen, cabbage root, napin, napper, moot, baigie, gwen, neep, yellow turnip, Swedish turnip, Swede, and, of course, just plain turnip. In the United States, they’re often referred to as Canadian turnips.
Being in the rutabaga supply business means that Susan sometimes has to play both sides.
“When I say rutabaga, everyone’s like, ‘what the heck is that’? So I say turnip. But I know what a turnip is, and a turnip and a rutabaga are different… and it’s actually a rutabaga,” she said.
“A turnip, in my opinion, tastes kind of like a woody radish… a rutabaga is much bigger, purple on
top, green in color at the bottom, and it’s sweeter. But everybody just calls it turnip! And I get it - turnip is easier to say than rutabaga any day.”
There are a lot of different ideas about the initial emergence of this enigmatic edible root. Common wisdom has long been that the rutabaga is the offspring of a
The Citizen
Farmer describes rutabagas
A cut above
Philip Hubbard and the dedicated team at G.L. Hubbard Ltd. work together to process fresh rutabagas, ensuring each one is cleaned, waxed and ready for shipment.
Continued from page A22 cabbage and a turnip that was popping up wild in farmers’ fields long before it was intentionally cultivated by Swiss botanist Gaspard Bauhin in the 17th century.
A recent study from the University of Missouri points to the likelihood that the rutabaga is the root morphotype of Russian kale.
Though the ancient origin story of the Swede is shrouded in mystery, the variety grown at Hubbard’s, the Laurentian rutabaga, is a well-documented Canadian creation, developed at McGill University in 1912. The Laurentian was favoured for its creamy yellow flesh and sweet flavour, quickly gaining popularity across North America.
Once you’ve got all that sorted out, it’s time to start growing your gwens! “April is when we start planting,” Susan explained. “We plant 10 or 12 acres. Then, two or three weeks later, we’ll plant another 10 or 12 acres. We'll do this a couple times, three times, maybe, depending on what the season looks like… the rest are all planted in June. We house approximately 100,000 bushel here between our two storages. If we have a lot left, then we don’t plant nearly as many early crop - we plant them so that we can take them off as we need them.” Those storages are temperature-controlled, to keep the rutabagas looking and tasting their best. The root room at Hubbard’s is full of swedes, as far as the eye can see.
Philip Hubbard has been around rutabagas since before he can remember. “My thoughts on them? It’s a way of life, I guess… it's all I’ve done.” From his perspective, sticking to one root for his entire career has been anything but monotonous. “There’s variety,” he told The Citizen. “It’s never the same thing over and over - every year is different… you plant them, and you don’t know what you’re going to get out of them. You’re
Getting their rutabagas ready to ship is a bit more complicated than just plucking them from the earth and tossing them into the back of the proverbial turnip truck. Quality control is critical to the longevity of each rutabaga. “For the last 25 years, all I’ve wanted to do is make a short film on the whole process,” Susan confessed. “Nobody knows
hoping you get good stuff, and when you do, you do. And you’ve just got to work with the rest.”
It takes about 90 days for a rutabaga to reach maturity, and then it’s time to harvest those tumshies!
“We usually start in August, taking off the roots as we need them.”
Whether roasted or mashed, the rutabaga has long been a favourite side dish at festive feasts all over North America, which means Hubbard’s needs to get ready for the rush, each and every year. “We take them all up, as soon as our Thanksgiving rush is over… so we do our harvest, and fill the storages up from floor to ceiling - we’re usually done around Halloween. We clean up from that, and then we’re into American Thanksgiving. And then as soon as that’s over, we get a little bit of a lull, and then we’re into Christmas!”
Supporting the community in simple ways is also a big part of the Hubbard way of doing business. They donate a portion of their vitamin-laden harvest to various North Huron groups each year, like the Legion, the Ladies Auxiliary and all the local churches. “We donate for their suppers, because we know how hard it is for everybody. When we do have big ones, those are the ones we usually donate. This year, we don’t have a lot of big ones - but we still make it work, and we still donate.”
Susan also recalls the times when she would take home all the irregular rutabagas at the end of the day - the ones that were oversized, or damaged just enough to make them unfit for sale, but perfectly edible. “I would take them home, and I would cut them up and cook them, and I’d mash them, and freeze them for the older people so they wouldn’t have to,” she explained. “I’d put it in containers, and they would just heat it up and add whatever they wanted to. So I did that for the older generation at one point, just friends of ours and whatnot.”
how it works - what the process is. Every rutabaga is still trimmed by hand, so every rutabaga is touched at least once by somebody…if you want 500 bushels, it’s not going to just happen.” Once the neeps have been harvested and stored, they wait until it’s time for them to be processed. Every single one is
washed, and then washed again. “You have to make sure they’re dry before you wax them,” she explained. “Then it’s a wee bit of a dip in wax.” Once the wax is dry, the roots are stickered, at which point they are either shipped out or packed up and stored until needed. Hubbard’s ships rutabagas all
Continued on page A24
(Scott Stephenson photo)
Local operation embraces use of traditional methods
Waxing nostalgic
At G.L. Hubbard Ltd in Blyth, the operation has remained remarkably consistent over the years. While the equipment has been upgraded for efficiency, much of the process remains unchanged since George Hubbard first took over the business. (Scott Stephenson photo)
Continued from page A23 over North America, and all their dispatching is handled by StovelSiemon Ltd, just outside of Mitchell. “They’re the ones that get all our orders,” Susan said. “They do all the legwork, and they are so wonderful to do that, because that’s a lot of work! They get us all our trucks, and we’ve been with them since before I was born. Things have changed hands down there as well, going from generation to generation…. They call and say ‘hey, listen - we need this many skids, it goes on this truck, and this is when it’ll be in. You have it, and then we put it on the truck.”
Normally, transporting rutabagas is fairly simple - they have one of the longest shelf-lives of any perishable food out there, and, unlike other storage crops, the flavour of a rutabaga tends to remain unchanged after a few months on the shelf. However, the tumult caused by tariffs may put a damper on the rutabaga export business, at least temporarily.
Domestic consumption of the rutabaga has slumped in recent years, but it’s looking like this
slept-on specialty item is poised to make a major comeback with Canadian consumers - especially the younger generations. As the cost of living spirals out of control and the words “Buy Canadian!” are on everybody’s lips, there’s never been a better time to reconnect with this homegrown superfood. It’s cheap, healthy and locally-grownall things on which people are beginning to place more value.
“It’s kind of a unique vegetable,” Susan pointed out. “The thing is, not everybody likes rutabaga, right?” While it’s true that some rutabagas are more naturally bittertasting than others, the flavour one gets out of a rutabaga is often equal to the ability of the person preparing it. You don’t need to be a master chef to handle it, but rutabaga can get a bad rap if handled incorrectly. Frying it on high heat can exacerbate bitterness, while roasting rutabaga or slowly simmering it in a fragrant sauce brings out all its best qualities.
Even though they’ve spent their whole lives elbow-deep in neeps, everybody at Hubbard’s has yet to tire of this wonderful vegetable.
“There’s so many things you can do with the rutabaga, so many,” Susan declared. “We eat it raw! I make a mean rutabaga coleslaw. And then we just cook it normally, like you would cook potatoes - mash it and put a little bit of salt, pepper, and butter with it.” Philip’s favourite way to enjoy the Swede? Nice and simple, on the barbeque.
So there you have it, readers: a turnip’s-eye view of G.L. Hubbard Ltd, Blyth’s historic rutabaga farm and processing facility. And the next time you’re at the grocery store or the farmers’ market, pause a moment in the produce aisle, and consider adding the noble rutabaga to your shopping cart. Whether pickled, mashed, minced, smoked or steamed, chances are you won’t regret the decision.
Continued from page A19 using a sensor mounted on a collection vehicle that drives up and down the field, and the sensor measures gamma radiation to map soil texture. That technology hasn’t changed, but it used to take hours to synthesize all that information into zones and now it can be done in seconds. Paul credits an incredible team of young staff who are on the cutting edge of using AI. (These days, AI means artificial intelligence, but 10 years ago it likely still meant artificial insemination!)
The soil zone map determines where a soil sample should be taken that would be representative of that zone. So, there is still a bottleneck with the soil collection and analysis. But there are a few technologies that may help over the next decade. Precision Planting’s Radicle Labs is an autonomous soil lab that could be run out of a farm shop and have soil analysis done in a matter of hours. It works with cans of soil that are automatically RFID tagged from the field with the exact location they were taken from, so it cuts down any manual data entry. As well, there is Laser Ag, using lasers to do soil analysis and a few other technologies out there trying to get to real-time soil analysis.
Once real-time technology is here, and some are optimistic it will be in the next 10-20 years, the industry would start to see on-the-go variable rate fertilizer, variable rate seeding, variable rate everything!
Ten years ago, Mark Ribey was already using variable rate technology, but it was, and still is, based on recommendations from a real-life agronomist. Mark is a partner with Biermans Farms HM Ltd and farms about 6,000 acres near Dobbinton. The farm has always been on the cutting edge of technology adoption, purchasing a yield monitor back in 1996 with the John Deere 9500 combine harvester, and GPS guidance installed in a sprayer and planting tractor in 2003.
Mark had a read through the article and laughed, “I hardly remember what we were doing back then but yeah, we had Apex on a CD drive.” Apex was the data management software he used and remembers taking variable rate prescription maps on USB sticks. Now they have switched to John Deere’s Operation Centre, which is entirely cloud-based.
Mark has fields mapped with SWAT MAPS, a SoilOptix® competitor, and works with the SMS system to make fertilizer and seeding maps with variable rates. Using yield data, he is also able to make profit maps at the end of the season. Profit maps help a farmer understand which parts of the field are making or losing them money, but it doesn’t tell you exactly why or what to do about it. Mark is starting to look at his field mapping on a crop nutrient removal basis, as a soil fertility bank, but still relies on agronomist Deb Campbell. From Blair Scott’s article, you’ll see that this is another bottleneck area that may be solved in the next 10 years, with AI and machine learning technologies (the “brain box” as Blair calls it) being able to make agronomy recommendations.
The 2015 article mentioned GreenSeeker’s NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) technology, which may be the closest we have come to real-time variable rate nitrogen application. It measures the “green-ness” of a corn plant to determine how much nitrogen it should get for optimal
growth. Mark doesn’t use the GreenSeeker anymore but is still focused on optimizing nitrogen and has been doing split application on corn and wheat for years, to time nitrogen applications when the plant needs it most. For the last two years, he was able to get an OFCAF (OnFarm Climate Action Fund) grant to use inhibitors that slow the release of nitrogen, which has an environmental benefit as well.
For Mark, the last 10 years have meant chasing the details on the planter as well, investing in electric seed metering, hydraulic down pressure and SmartFirmer sensors that adjust seed depth in real-time, based on moisture in the soil.
Looking forward, Mark’s next sprayer is going to have See & Spray™ technology, which means that it will only put out an herbicide where there is a weed. See more on this in Blair’s column. He hopes this will help cut some costs for their (IP) identity-preserved soybeans.
Biermans Farms HM Ltd is also a trial farm for Upside Robots and, last year, they trialed a small robot that was able to drive up and down corn rows to put down small amounts of nitrogen every 10 days.
“We talk about spoon-feeding nitrogen to a corn crop, and now there is a technology that can actually do it,” says Mark, who saw incredible results on nitrogen efficiency in 2024, and is excited for another trial this coming year.
International Year of Soils: The United Nations declared 2015 the International Year of Soils and there was a lot of fanfare about soil in the media globally, and in our associations locally, as noted in Kate Procter’s column in the March issue.
(If you are wondering, 2025 is the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, as well as the International Year of Cooperatives and the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation)
Farm safety: The issue included a story of Jason McKee and the farm accident that cost him a good part of his leg in September 2012. While we didn’t reach out to Jason, we thought we’d follow up with statistics on farm injuries and fatalities since then. A recent report suggests that farm fatalities are going down in Canada, but came with a warning that the number of farms and farmers is also decreasing, so that may be the reason for the decline. According to the Canadian Agriculture Injury Reporting (CAIR) report Agriculture-related Fatalities in Canada 1990-2020, the most fatalities are from equipment rollovers and runovers and the highest fatalities are in men and those over the age of 60.
Wildlife damage: Ten years ago, there was an article on coyote control. As of last year, coyotes continue to account for the majority of claims (over $800,000) through the Ontario Wildlife Damage fund and kill six times more livestock than the weasel, which is in second place.
Woodlots: In this issue, Steve Bowers was still writing the monthly column on woodlots. We caught up with him and are happy to report that he is still enjoying long walks in the woods with his wife, and now with four grandchildren. He lives on a treed property and just had a successful thinning/harvest over the winter. Steve wrote for The Rural Voice for 16 years and says he didn’t consider himself a writer when he started. He admits there were some late nights getting the column in at the last minute before a deadline, but that it was rewarding; he enjoyed
writing as a way of connecting to the community.
Vertical farms: In his column “Urbanites have lettuce-in-the-sky dreams,” Keith Roulston wrote about two of the “hot trends” in Canadian Business magazine that year and discussed both cricket farms and vertical farming. He was amused with cricket farming and, as we know, cricket farming is still a
real thing, with one of the world’s largest farms in London. Keith was more skeptical, however, about vertical farming in the city. Turns out, he was right! They had been hailed as an important breakthrough for food production and garnered billions and billions of dollars in investment funding, but the hype has waned. Turns out it is extremely expensive to take city real
estate and then pay for both sunlight and water to grow food, when both come for free in the great outdoors. Still, there are some examples of businesses making a go of it for leafy greens (ie. GoodLeaf Farms in Guelph) and you can still find them on grocery store shelves, but it will be interesting to see if and how vertical farms evolve in the next 10 years.
Buy-local movement seeing bump amid uncertainty
Eat Local Huron now has an established Goderich storefront for its buy local-inspired business model. Direct-to-customer producers and distributers, such as Eat Local Huron and others, have seen increased interest in recent months. (Courtesy photo)
By Shawn Loughlin
As the “Buy Canadian” movement has caught fire amidst trade war tensions, the imposition of tariffs and a general souring of the relationship between Canada and its neighbours to the south, many can count themselves lucky to be residents of Ontario’s most agriculturally-productive county and one of the most bountiful regions in all of Canada. If buying local food cannot be done in Huron County, it can’t be done anywhere.
Here, it is not uncommon to drive down a provincial highway, county road or seldom-driven gravel road and see a small farmgate stand or a hand-scrawled sign enticing you to pull over for some fresh eggs, a dozen cobs of corn, flowers or a small variety of produce from some of the more elaborate stands that provide the much-needed variety necessary before dinner needs to be prepared.
Beyond roadside stands and established relationships between local farmers and producers and their neighbours and passers-by, some have come together to bring the bounty of Huron County under one roof. Businesses such as Eat Local Huron, Maitland Market and Supply, Maitside Orchards and more have built their foundation and reputation on that very tenettaking the one-stop shop approach and applying it to local produce, food and products.
They are no strangers to the eatlocal movement, and yet, while others have done their best, they are now waking up to it, perhaps a bit too late if you ask some, and looking not abroad, but in their own backyard for what grows, what there is to eat and how to support their neighbours and the agricultural landscape of this great province.
So, when U.S. President Donald Trump began slapping tariffs on everything coming from Bonavista to Vancouver Island, from the Arctic Circle to the Great Lake waters, with all thanks to The Travellers, many Canadians have opted to fight back with their wallets, mobilizing their spending power to support their Canadian friends and neighbours wherever possible. As a result, some in Huron
County have seen a spike in sales, others have remained steady and others yet think it’s a shame that it took the threats of the leader of another country for consumers to wake up to the importance of buying local.
Chris Spaleta of Eat Local Huron, a revolutionary online service that aggregates locally-made products from Huron County and some of its neighbouring community, says not only has the business seen a marked uptick since the so-called trade war began, but the company has been hearing from customers that turning to Eat Local Huron has come as a direct result of the political tumult between the two nations.
Dozens of local producers have partnered with Eat Local Huron to bring their products to a wider audience. Producers include Trick’s Creek Farm, Robinson’s Maple, Firmly Rooted, Burdan’s Red Cat Bakery, Out of the Blue Seafood Market, Bayfield Berry Farm, The Secret Garden and more. Customers are able to visit the Eat Local Huron website and shop just as they would on any online marketplace, then, on slated delivery days, their chosen bounty will arrive at their doorstep.
No
muss, no fuss, as they say.
In fact, Eat Local Huron has recently expanded, building back after a fire at its North Huron headquarters shortly after its launch, to also feature a Goderich storefront, which serves as a showcase for all the products featured and an introduction to the ethos of the business.
Spaleta, in an interview with The Citizen, said that the business was created with the buy-local mantra in mind, so it has been rewarding to see more and more people come around to the idea that the Eat Local Huron team has been championing for some time.
For some direct-to-customer producers, the balance to strike is a bit more nuanced and partnerships with their American colleagues cannot be dismissed out of hand because of political decisions being made in opulent offices from historic, ornate desks.
Katrina McQuail from the Lucknow-area Meeting Place Organic Farm thinks it’s a shame that farmers are being swept up in politics, but acknowledges the importance of supporting the
Agriculture Financial Services That Help Farms and
Thrive
The Citizen
Buying local shouldn’t have taken tariff threats
Continued from page A26 country right now. As the president of the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario and an organic farmer herself, she says that both the association and her farm have had a symbiotic relationship with like-minded farmers south of the border for decades and that should not be jeopardized on account of some political strife. The issue is also further complicated within the McQuail family itself. Her father and Meeting Place cofounder Tony was born in rural Pennsylvania and made his way to Canada decades ago. Katrina’s husband is a Texas native. So, within the McQuail family, there are plenty of friendly faces and meaningful relationships on both sides of the border.
As far as the farm’s production is concerned, McQuail’s Meeting
Place is on the forefront of directto-consumer sales in Huron County, hosting her own website, taking her own orders and making her own deliveries. She says it has been hard to say whether new consumers have sought her out or not, due to timing and the specific nature of the business.
The Meeting Place online shop was down for several months as McQuail worked on other aspects of the farm throughout the winter. She’ll just be ramping up towards the season now, so she will have to wait and see how the current climate will affect sales. She said it was, in a way, too early to know too much.
Walton’s Jeff Linton of Linton Pasture Pork says he has been keeping his head down and stayed busy with the day-to-day work of his unique farm, but that, while he
had seen a bump in orders recently, he didn’t do the math and connect the two issues. So, while he can’t be sure that people are finding him now amidst all of this uncertainty, he can’t rule it out, either.
As very much a one-man operation, Linton says he can barely keep up with orders and e-mails, so, while that’s good, it can be a struggle too. He, like many others, has been preaching about the virtues of eating healthy, local, uncomplicated meat for years now, so he says it’s nice to see others take him up on that offer.
Davin Lichty of Maitside Orchards in Brussels says that he has seen an increase in sales recently, but admitted that he likely could have been doing more to get out there and spread the word about the local delights his storied business offers. However, like the
others, he’s happy to see more people seek out local, independent producers in what can only signal a bright future for local producers.
Erika Schilthuis of Maitland Market and Supply says that while her business has not necessarily seen a distinct increase in sales as a result of the cross-border uncertainty, it is seeing the support it always sees from people who value locally-grown food and supporting Huron County farmers.
The very bedrock of Maitland Market and Supply relies on the importance of fresh, local food, Schilthuis says, but there’s so much more to that concept in regards to being a guardian of the agriculturally-rich land with which the province is blessed and wanting to support local farmers and protect the food supply, knowing that, by investing in them, you’re securing the local food supply and the health of the region for not only ourselves, but our children and grandchildren.
As for people opting to buy local and to support that foundational promise on which Maitland Market and Supply so prides itself,
Schilthuis says it’s actually a bit disappointing that it’s taken threats and intervention from another country for Canadians to wake up to such a notion. To support that continuum by voting with their wallets, Canadians are helping to shape the world in which they want to live in and the world they want to leave behind for their children and grandchildren.
Maitland Market and Supply, Schilthuis said, was created with the idea of lifting up Huron County farmers, so they did all that they could to stock the shelves with Huron County products. And, if they had to go beyond the county to a neighbour, then so be it, but the focus was always as hyper-local as possible. Through that approach, Schilthuis said she hopes the market has done what it can to support local farmers, foster relationships with them and bring high-quality, healthy, local food to the people of Huron County. Those are principles that the whole Schilthuis family, including Erika and Dennis’ children, have imparted and they are happy to see them picked up by others.
Organic farmer opts to go green, turns to politics
Green acres
Huron-Bruce Green Party candidate Matthew Van Ankum, an organic farmer based in Howick, speaks with The Citizen about his political journey and pasturebased farming philosophy. (Scott Stephenson photo)
By Scott Stephenson The Citizen
At an agriculturally-oriented Huron-Bruce all-candidates meeting (ACM) in Teeswater last month, Green Party candidate and organic farmer Matthew Van Ankum made more than a few interesting points about the politics of farming throughout the spirited question period. So much so, in fact, that after the electoral dust had settled, The Citizen sought out Van Ankum for a frank conversation about how he got into into politics, which evolved into a wide-ranging conversation/pastoral walkabout with his family’s herd of hounds during a brief but welcome break in the winter weather.
Van Ankum estimates that his parents first came to Huron County in the late 1960s, early 1970s.
“They bought 300 or 400 acres of land - this was when farms were much more reasonable,” he explained. “My parents’ farm was about five minutes down the road from where we are here… they told me once that they picked Howick because they felt that the outbuildings were in better shape in Howick than in other areas of the province, leaning towards the fact that there might be a tiny bit of extra money in those farms.”
Before heading out into the snowy woods, tea was served, alongside a bit of family history. His parents started out raising pigs, and then beef, and, finally, purebred Simmental breeding bulls. His father was involved in different organizations in the beef industry, like Beef Farmers of Ontario (BFO), and Bio-Beef Improvement Ontario, and he could often be found at one of the many bull testing stations scattered across the province, thinking about how to bring out the best qualities in each breed. “They’d be doing weights and average daily gain, and then cross-breed comparisons - he played a large role in that…. a Simmental goes into the same pen as similar bulls in the Simmental breed, and there would also be Angus, and Charlais. And you’d get a cross-breed comparison of these different genetics,” Van Ankum recalled. “Dad was always very good at choosing the bestlooking, and the best performing animal.”
Every year, they would hold a big
free at the sale the next day. You got a free pop and a free sandwich - it was just a thing that we did.”
The last production sale was in 2002. “Dad got out of the beef business, and we did cash cropping. We did hay. And I went to the University of Guelph, and I came back with this big idea - I was going to sell small square bales of hay down to Florida.” It was a sound business plan - in Florida, the climate is less than ideal for hay storage - the humidity tends to make everything get really moldy, really quickly. Therefore, Floridians could be expected to require a steady supply of reliable northern hay. “That’s what we did growing up, all summer long - we’d do small squares of hay, we’d do small squares of straw. The straw is much lighter than the hay, so it’s easier.
On a load of small square bales, you probably get about 110 bales, and it takes you about 15, 20 minutes to unload that hay, right? So that was a big part of growing up. We would probably do about 12,000 or 14,000 bales of hay and another 6,000 or 8,000 bales of straw. It made my arms as long as they are.”
The only problem with his plan: Van Ankum didn’t like dealing with the small, square bales of hay, at all. The business lasted about 10 years, and by the time it came to an end, one of those hay-bale buyers, Danielle Van-Sant, had been upgraded to wife status. “I was selling Danielle a small square bale of hay, and then she figured it was a better deal if she just bought the farmer,” he joked. The pair bought their current farm together in 2004. “Pretty much the whole way, we
were leaning towards just doing grass-based stuff, forage-based, pasturing,” he explained.
His first brush with rotational farming came while he was working on a dairy farm in New Zealand. “I think it was an 80hectare farm… and they had 36 paddocks. They would split each paddock, so the cows go in the morning on one half of one paddock, and then they get the second half after the second milking in the afternoon, so they would always get fresh grass. It was all done with electric fencing, and it was a very efficient use of New Zealand’s ability to grow quality hay for almost 10 months of the year.”
The farmers he worked for in
sale, and this was before the proliferation of the internet. “We would have this sale at Carson’s in Listowel,” he explained. There would be a catalogue of all the animals in the sale - the big job with that was putting together those catalogues. There’d be about 60 or 70 or 80 lots in that sale. And so every animal would have a picture, and their pedigree would be in there - it was kind of like a showcase… that was a big deal - the printer would print out all these catalogues, and we'd have a mailing list, so you’d have to hand-write the addresses from this mailing list for about 600 different catalogues. It was going out across Canada, and down to the States. Anybody interested in Simmental purebreds would get one.”
The second-most laborious part of the annual sale? Making lunch for all the customers! “The night before, we’d do buns for this sale. We had to do like, 300 buns! The choice was summer sausage, cheese, mustard and margarine, or ham, cheese, mayo and margarine,” he recollected. “We’d get all these fresh big buns from Zehr’s, and we’d spend the night before, slicing and stacking all these sandwiches. And then we’d give them away for
On the trail, candidate advocates for conservation
Continued from page A28 Zealand didn’t own the land they were farming. “That was the way that it was set up - it allowed someone to enter the dairy industry in New Zealand. There’s no quota, and you can enter the dairy system in New Zealand by buying some cattle, starting on a small farm, working your way up, putting your capital back into the farm, and
building yourself up so you might be able to buy your own farm after a certain point in time. In Ontario, it’s more difficult for us to begin as a beginner farmer, unless you have the capital and the family that’s going to help you get to that point.”
Van Ankum feels that his preferred farming style can sometimes be perceived as being a lot more work, but that’s not how he
sees it at all. “I’ve just always thought that the approach to a pasture-based system was more efficient, because you weren’t constantly feeding your animals. The way of rotational grazing is that you provide the backgroundthe fencing, and the water, and then all you’ve got to do is move the cattle around the field. For six months a year, you’re allowing the cattle and the sheep to feed themselves instead of constantly harvesting, hauling, storing, feeding, cleaning out the manure, hauling manure out… you’re simplifying your system. There’s no way that can’t be more efficient.”
While he’s happy to be out of the baling business, Van Ankum hasn’t fully escaped the small square lifestyle. There are plans to someday rid the farm of the square baler in favour of a unit that produces big, round bales, but that day has not yet come. In fact, his brother, Johnny, has just loaded some of those small square bales into his truck.
Right now, the Van Ankum family farm is home to 70 or 80 head of cattle, about 200 yows, a mix of pigs, a handful of chickens, and at least one peacock. During the lengthy process of loading all the dogs into the van for the drive to the woods, one of the farm’s Giant Brahma chickens stands watchfully by the door, weighing the pros and cons of attempting to enter the mudroom. “I think they’re the biggest breed of chicken you can buy,” he mused. Van-Sant confirmed the validity of that fact, and, in the end, the feather-footed fowl thought better of making a break for it.
The drive to the dogs’ favourite walking spot takes you past a few of the fields where his cattle go to nosh. “With rotational grazing, you’re maxing out your rest period as you rotate around your field,” he explained. “You’re allowing a 30-
day rest period from when they leave field one to when it’s back to field one. They go through 13 or 14 different fields - you’re maximizing your yield per acre on that little package of land there.”
The dogs pile out of the van and head straight into the woods, stopping at various points to eat snow and drink from the river. The entry to the trail is marked by a sign memorializing Hilbert Van Ankum, Matthew’s father. On the other side of the trail entrance is a pile of snowshoes, which, until recently, were an essential element of the daily dog walking routine. “The snowshoes have been a life saver,” Van-Sant declared.
At the heart of Matthew’s decision to enter politics is the sense of connection he feels with his surroundings. “I like the Green Party, and I plant trees, you know.
So I just kind of felt as though I had to. I made a sign request at some point, and I had my membership, and then I’d donate. I thought, at least I’ll give some money to these
people, because I think they’re doing the right thing.”
But it wasn’t until the possibility of the Deep Geological Repository (DGR) came to town that he decided he needed to do more than just donate money. He made a call to the Green Party, asking what they could do for him. “I was kind of like, you know, ‘what can you do as the Green Party of Ontario (GPO) to help me try and make a bit of a pushback against the NWMO, who has all this funding and all this power, and seems to want to implement the DGR into my backyard.”
Then, the GPO representative on the phone turned the tables on Matthew, asking what he could do for them. “He said, ‘Why don’t you run?’”
That question gave Matthew a lot to think about.
“It all comes back to doing something so you don’t look back with regret as not having done enough with your talents,” he
their dogs along the Hilbert Van Ankum Memorial Trail, a favourite spot for the family’s daily
(Scott Stephenson photo)
Van Ankum’s political support trending upwards
Continued from page A29 explained. “You have a certain amount of talents in your life, and if you don’t take advantage of those talents, you feel guilt and regret. That, I think, is part of the reason that motivates a lot of Dutch farmers in the area to do as well as they do, because they feel they need to take advantage of the talents they were given, and to use them to the best of their ability.”
In this instance, however, Matthew was fairly certain that he didn’t have the requisite talent required for the task. “I said, ‘Well, I’m not a very good speaker. I’ll get nervous and that, and I’ll fold on stage, and it’ll be a sad story.” Nonetheless, he felt that the DGR was enough of a threat that he set his misgivings aside, and threw his hat into the ring. “It was 2022 when I started, and I was kind of slow out of the gate because everything had started already, and I was kind of behind. I had to get my signatures, and this and that… It was a fantastic learning curve! It kind of woke you up a little bit to what you felt strongest about.”
Matthew knows it isn’t enough to just care about agriculture and the environment - a real leader needs to have a comprehensive plan that includes healthcare, education and the cost of living. “It’s touching on all of them, and trying to understand what are the negatives and the positives, and to be able to spit out what you feel that the Green Party is going to change to make it a better situation for people in Ontario, right? If you don’t understand the background on the healthcare system, if that’s new to you, that’s a lot to understand. So you try to glean different points from different people you talk to, and develop an idea in your head of the direction that the government should be going in.”
There’s a long stretch of the trail that runs right along the mighty Maitland River, which was swollen that day from the recent thaw of false spring. “It must have come up a full foot since yesterday,” he observed. “You have the Green Party platform, which is the work of a group of people to develop what you should be saying about these different items. So you do have something to say about them, you know, right? But if it’s not something that you have experience in, or your own personal opinion of, it’s not going to come across nearly as well - you don’t really have any passion in the game, because it’s all just you spitting out what other people have decided is important, which is good - it gives you something to say. But unless you’ve talked with five different doctors and nurses and personal support workers, and all the people that were struggling in the situation, how are you supposed to actually realize what direction the change has to move in?”
After the meeting in Teeswater, Van Ankum knew that, if he didn’t gain any traction with voters in his second election as a candidate, he would be getting out of politics. “I was just going to say, ‘This isn’t for me, the Green Party can do better with somebody else’. And then I did get an increase - I think 800 more votes this time, which was fantastic. It’s a little bit of an acknowledgment that the direction that you’re heading in is a positive one.”
At the meeting, Matthew was critical of the direction that the Conservative Party has chosen. He
also thinks that it’s just not enough to focus solely on the trouble brewing south of the border. “Trump says he’s going do one thing, and then, if he doesn’t actually do it, there’s no topic. There’s no debate, and it’s just kind of wishy-washy… Doug Ford says, ‘Yeah, protect Ontario,’ and he does what he thinks best, which is good. But if it doesn’t actually happen, then it’s not a topic. There’s other issues - you can talk about the increasing average age of farmers across Ontario, and the fewer new farmers entering the industry. Or the increasing costs of everything. They’re more talking about what they’ve done in the past, rather than the direction they want to move into. And I think that we’re selling ourselves short for what we could get done, compared to what we are doing.”
At one point, the trail ahead is washed out by the accumulated melt, and the dogs turn back the way they came, piling into the van and returning home, until tomorrow.
Weber, Huron County work to strike a balance
By Scott Stephenson
The Citizen
For too many Ontarians, the first time they encounter a municipal planner is the moment they need something from one, whether it be a minor bylaw variance or a major zoning change. But planners do so much more than just suggest that your idea needs a bit of a rework; local planning departments play a vital role in maintaining healthy rural communities, especially in agriculturally-rich places like Huron County, where a balance must be struck between development and the protection of prime farmland.
Rural planners are responsible for helping communities to manage land-use changes and growth, so that our communities can be healthy and prosper. But who makes plans for the planners? In Huron County, that honour goes to Sandra Weber - the Director of Planning and Development. Although Weber works everyday to keep our collective future on the right track, she was kind enough to oblige The Citizen’s request for a sit-down at her office in Goderich for an informative overview of what her department is all about.
In Huron County, the planning services are shared between the county and the nine local municipalities of which it’s comprised. In a nutshell, it’s Weber’s job to lead an entire team of planners who do both policy work and review development proposals, in order to ensure that the work is in line with the strategic priorities of Huron County Council.
“In municipalities, we have limited resources, so it’s important to make sure that we’re all rowing in the same direction,” she explained. “We work alongside residents, stakeholder groups, and municipal councils to develop policy directions for how and where we grow. And how and where we grow matters.”
Most people know planners as the people who review their individual requests for variances to the rules set out by the zoning bylaws. And that is a big part of their jobs - each application that comes through, be it big or small, is thoroughly reviewed by planners before a recommendation is made. “We look at balancing the interest of individual applications with the interest of the broader community and the goals of the community, and a part of that is ensuring compatibility between various land uses,” she explained. “So, as an example, the separation distance requirements between a new barn and a house, for odour purposes… I think the land-use planning side of things is very interesting and exciting, because we work with property owners, and sometimes they will come in with just a very preliminary thought, idea, concept for a development that they want to do. And we get to work with them throughout the process so we can see it right from that initial stage of an idea through the process to actually seeing it built and occupied. And then we can sort of see how it fits into the community. So that's exciting!”
But planning isn’t just about helping people figure out if their current desires align with the best interests of their community. “We also look at the longer term protection of resources, such as agricultural land and our natural areas,” she said.
Weber knows firsthand how important it is to protect farmland.
“I’ve always had a connection to the rural community,” Weber told The Citizen. She grew up on a farm just outside of Brussels, where she loved driving tractors and tolerated picking stones. “That’s probably every farm kid’s least-favourite chore,” she explained.
Weber has carried on with her family's farming tradition - she lives on a small beef farm, just outside of Belgrave. All three of her sons were in the 4-H Beef Club when they were younger, and showed calves, both locally and at the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto. Now, Weber is beginning to develop a succession plan for her farm. “We are fortunate to have kids that want to take over our farming operations. It’s super exciting to have them involved, and they’re hard workers, they’re passionate about it. And just to see that carry on to the next generation is really great.”
Being the Director of Planning and Development isn’t all about planning - it’s also about development. And Weber likes that
element of her job just as much as the rest of it. “I think the community development side of my work is equally as rewarding,” she said. “Because I get to work with a lot of different stakeholders and partners across the community… I think I am very much a people person and planning and development is sort of about understanding the needs and goals of the community and what helps to improve their lives and their livelihoods. So it’s a unique opportunity to really get to know the community that you work in.”
Currently, the Huron County Planning Department is engaged with a variety of initiatives, including Take Action for Sustainable Huron Committee, the Water Protection Steering Committee, and the Huron Clean Water Project. “So we call that more on the community development side of things,” she explained. “For the Huron Clean Water Project, we work with two partner conservation authorities, and it provides funding to property owners for stewardship projects on their own properties, like planting
trees or putting in cover crops or hiring registered professional foresters to help them to manage their wood lots or add value to their commercial harvests… if anyone wants more information, they can find it on our county website. It’s a really successful and well-used project, especially by the agricultural community.” The department also provides forestry and stewardship and climate change services across the county.
But planners don’t just pull their recommendations out of thin airthere are various levels of government actually setting out the legislative framework for all the planning policies and processes within which planners must work. “Planners rely on some key legislation from the province,”
Weber pointed out. “There’s the Planning Act, there’s the Provincial Policy Statement. And then our own county and local official plans and zoning bylaws. And that provides the direction and the requirements for development across the county.”
Whenever planners are asked to give a recommendation, they start by consulting all these legislative
documents. They also don’t work alone. “Quite often, that is a team approach in that there would be staff from the local municipalities, public works, and CAOs, and building officials, that might also participate in those meetings so that they have all of the information that they need. And then, of course, we consider input from the public and neighbours when making our recommendations, as well as agencies and municipal staff. We consider the impacts of development on resources, such as agriculture and natural areas. Another important part of it, especially now, when we have more development happening across the county, is making sure that we’re in-step with infrastructure in the community.”
Once all of the relevant information has been collected and organized, it is provided to local councils. “Local councils make the final decisions,” Weber said. “So planners make recommendations, local councils make the decisions.”
One challenge facing planning departments these days is keeping
Continued on page A32
Planning has grown alongside Huron County: Weber
Sandra Weber, Huron County’s Director of Planning and Development
Continued from page A31 up with the recent sweeping changes made to legislation on the provincial level. “There’s been lots of changes over the last five years,” Weber pointed out. “And I think their recent changes to the Planning Act and the Provincial Policy Statement have focused on streamlining development approval processes in response to the housing shortage. They need to have flexibility for more housing and different types of housing. That can be done as of right now, without the need to do a planning application. So, just moving right onto the building permit stage… in the agricultural areas, where residences are permitted, there can be two additional residential units, subject to certain criteria. So I think
that is probably a good change for the agricultural community who is looking for opportunities for housing for succession planning, family members, farm workers. So, to be able to do some of that housing, where it’s appropriate as of right without having to come for a planning application, I think is beneficial for folks.”
Another provinciallevel change designed to help farmers is allowing for on-farm, diversified uses to be established on farms to help supplement farm incomes. “It’s things like home occupations, home industry, agritourism type businesses. And any sort of valueadded to the farm products, like food processing. Examples of that could be an on-farm machinery repair shop, or a winery, or a cidery. And the province has a whole guide for municipalities on permitted uses in agricultural areas. It’s another opportunity, in locations where it’s appropriate and it’s not sort of negatively affecting the farming.”
Yet another big change that’s happened in the last few years - the province has changed appeal rights to the Ontario Land Tribunal. Weber broke down what that means for the average citizen. “Say, for example, for a neighbour to appeal someone’s planning application. So I think that for us that that means making sure that people participate early in the process and let their
concerns be heard at the local level so that there’s maybe some opportunity to try to address their concerns, because they no longer have the right to appeal that to the higher level, which is the Ontario Land Tribunal. So that was a big change.”
Many of the changes implemented by the province are being done in the name of expedited housing development, a pressing issue that Weber’s department deals with on a daily basis. “We have already recognized the need to review our Official Plan and zoning bylaw, and all of our planning documents across Huron County, with a housing-friendly lens… if anyone is curious how to add additional residential units to their property, they can reach out to the building official or the planner for their local municipality and we’re happy to to talk about that. The county also has done a series of housing videos that shows different forms of housing that have been built across the county, and if anyone’s interested in looking at those videos, they’re on the county website under ‘How We Grow’”.
When Weber first decided to go into planning, she attended the University of Waterloo, but found that the program’s focus on urban planning didn’t quite align with her core interests; she wanted to help plan the future of a community like the one in which she grew up. “I really love the rural community and sort of the close-knit way that people support each other and family in rural communities,” she admitted. “I think once I got to the city, I realized that I really missed
home… so, when I had a chance to apply for a student position with the county, I did that and came here. I worked all five of my student co-op terms here, which was a really unique opportunity, and I was very, very thankful for the chance that I got to come back home and work with a team of planners in Huron County that are really passionate about agriculture and community. While I was working here, they encouraged me to go back to school and do my masters in Rural Planning and Development from the University of Guelph. So that is what I did.”
Attending Guelph turned out to be the right move - Weber knew right away that rural planning was where it’s at. “I think it requires a broader knowledge and some innovative solutions, sort of based on the fact that resources are often limited in smaller, rural municipalities. Rural planners often work in municipalities with a larger geographical area and sort of a wider range of uses. In Huron County, we have agriculture, we have natural environment, we have aggregates, we have lakeshore, we have urban settlement areas.”
At Guelph, she also had the opportunity to learn from some truly great professors, including Dr. Wayne Caldwell. “I know he was featured in your ‘Salute to Agriculture’ edition last year!” Weber exclaimed. “He was my thesis advisor, so it was really great to work with Wayne. I had previously worked with him when he was a planner in our department here.”
While a good education is an
important part of the job, being a great planner takes more than book smarts, it’s just as important to know how to effectively communicate with the general populace. “Planning can sometimes be complex or technical,” Weber explained. “I always sort of think about it, like, if I was explaining the planning process to my parents, would they have understood what I was talking about? Both when we’re writing and speaking, it’s always in the back of our minds‘like, is our audience understanding what we're saying? Because that’s so important, you know? And I think many of our planners would tell you that it’s the interaction with the public that they like the best. They like meeting with people, talking to them. They like trying to help them figure out the right process or the right path to take with something.”
But planners don’t just spend their time making plans for a healthier future for the community outside their offices, they’re also actively planning for the future of their own department through their student mentorship program.
“It’s really great to have those young students here, to give them a good learning experience, and for them to know that they can go away to school and come back, and there will be a rewarding career here for them…. I think we’re a very optimistic group. I think we understand the need for growth in communities, and we’re always trying to look for ways to be supportive and to help that growth happen. So, I think the future is very bright.”
