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The Citizen, 2017-09-07, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2017. PAGE 5. Other Views Gelebrating a vanished culture For those who grew up around farming, even many years ago, events like this weekend's Thresher Reunion bring their youth flooding back. Ross, my best friend when we were growing up, recently sent me an e-mail filled with nostalgia after attending the Bruce County Heritage Farm Show in Paisley. He hasn't been around farming much since the early 1960s, having gone to Manitoba and taken a city job before moving back to Kincardine after retiring, but memories flooded back to him when he walked down the rows of tractors from that era. He wrote me to tell me the featured tractor at Paisley this year was a Minneapolis Moline, which was the tractor my father used for most of our years on the farm. Ross himself was taken back to the 1950s when he saw a Massey -Harris 22, which he had driven on his family's farm across the road from ours near Lucknow. There's a comradeship among old farm kids. He mentioned that all he had to do was ask someone "What was the first tractor you ever drove?" and the conversation would be off. I'm sure the same sort of discussions can be started in the antique car displays by simply substituting the word car for the word tractor — and this conversation would include both urbanites and farmers. For men — I can't speak for women — memories of the cars their parents drove when they were young, and the car they learned to drive in, are indelible. Still, while cars have changed over the years, those changes haven't reshaped a society the way changes in farming equipment have changed the rural way of life. The creation of the Thresher Reunion in 1962 is significant because this time marked a watershed in rural Keith Roulston From the cluttered desk culture. Until the 1950s nearly all harvesting was done using threshing machines which required a crew of (mostly) men to bring in the crop and operate the threshing machine and a crew of women to feed them. As Paul Thompson pointed out in his collective play Death of the Hired Man, presented at the Blyth Festival in 2000, life on the concessions would never be the same after combines replaced threshing gangs. It wasn't just the hired man who disappeared from the farm scene. A far more profound change came because farmers began working more individually instead of trading labour back and forth. It wasn't only harvesting grain that was changing. My friend Ross recalled how he had driven that 22 Massey pulling a wagon with a hay -loader behind it. The loose hay was pulled up by the hay -loader and deposited on the wagon where his father forked it across the wagon -rack. At the barn a huge fork, attached to a rope, was driven into the hay and then the bundle of hay was pulled up by the tractor or horses until it reached a track at the peak of the barn and then ran across that until the hay was dropped into the mow. By the end of the 1960s, balers had replaced hay -loaders just as combines replaced threshing machines. Elsewhere, most farmers still heated their homes by burning wood. Trees were cut down by a cross -cut saw which required one person on each end of the saw to pull it back and forth. Sometimes there would be a "bee" when neighbours got together to cut the logs into stove -sized blocks with a circular saw powered by a belt from a tractor's pulley. But soon the arrival of the gas -powered chain saw meant each farmer could harvest trees on his own. At about this time there was another blow to neighbourliness when the National Farm Radio Forum shut down in 1965. For 25 years previously, families in many neighborhoods would gather, usually at a different neighbourhood home, every Monday night during the winter. They'd listen to a broadcast on CBC about an important topic, then discuss it. Afterward they'd play cards and share a lunch — and, of course, local gossip. All these changes, occurring about the same time, meant there were far fewer reasons for neighbours to get together. For decades there had been a tradition of people joining together to share burdens and find solutions. People built schools and churches together. Farmers began co-operatives like the Belgrave and Hensall co-ops. When farmers at one Farm Forum group near Blyth felt they needed a market for their milk closer at hand, they started a cheese factory in Blyth. This tradition spread into the villages where people came together to build arenas. For me, this all came around the time I was growing up and moving away from the farm anyway. Still, coming home to rural Ontario as I did after going to university, I have never been able to shake the feeling that the cultural change brought about by technology on the farm has damaged the biggest advantage rural communities possess: our ability to come together and work to solve our shared problems. Seeing the IPM in a new light For the past several months in The Citizen's editorial offices, the upcoming 100th International Plowing Match and Rural Expo (IPM) has represented a significant amount of work. For the editorial body responsible for producing a mammoth special edition highlighting all the different peoples, places and things at the plowing match, our special issue dedicated to the IPM has represented a huge investment of time over the past eight months. The issue was a daunting task put before us and, like all other challenges Shawn and I have faced since I started here, we met it. I'm not bragging, I'm just saying, with a huge sigh of relief, that the IPM special edition, all 52 pages of it, is now on its way to the printers and will be showing up in mailboxes and at the site next week. It was a challenging task, especially in a year when we produced special sections for anniversary celebrations for Blyth and East Wawanosh as well as several local Lions Clubs marking milestones. With each of these specials, we endeavour to give the occasion as much coverage as is due. The IPM issue, however, was a beast unlike anything we've tackled in my seven -and -a - half years at The Citizen. There were stories to write and photos to gather over a huge period of time, decisions to be made about what would be a leading -up -to story and what would end up in the special edition and then the countless hours of interviewing and writing that accompanied those tasks. It was a magical experience. Families I've known for years I now know better. I've discovered connections with families I never knew. Like every story in which people are at the centre, I've come away with a much greater appreciation for the people behind the IPM. While the size of that sigh of relief I talked about cannot be understated after Shawn and I spent two more -than -full days putting the edition together, the real takeaway from that experience is that now I can look forward to the IPM as what it is: an amazing opportunity to celebrate all facets of rural life. Yes, I grew up in Huron County and yes, I was at the Dashwood "Sunshine Match" in 1999, but, at 14 years old, I didn't really appreciate what was going on there. Now, more than double the age that I was (and with a little more free will as to what I'll do at the match), I feel like I can head to the grounds at Walton with eyes open to take it all in. I've been to the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair. I've been to numerous Huron County Plowing Matches. Now I get to see what happens when Huron County gets ready to welcome over 100,000 people to an event in my own backyard. For those of you who haven't been out to the site to keep an eye how things are going, let me tell you it's impressive. Two weeks ago I was there taking photos of some of the buildings that have been erected there. Three weeks ago, I photographed electrical workers putting up the electrical infrastructure for the site. Last week, however, was when I finally realized just how big of an undertaking the event will be. I visited the site on Friday and saw the tents going up and, with the number of tents that were already there I was more than impressed. The grounds stretch beyond sight. Fully - constructed buildings are dotting the landscape and tents are filling in the spaces in between. What were once several family farm fields are well on its way to becoming the Tented City. I'm anxious to see how it all plays out and glad that, as defacto photographer around the editorial office, that I'll get to be the one taking the majority of the photos at the event. I'm excited and I think I have to thank the people who shared their stories with me to share with the readers of The Citizen and our special Salute to the International Plowing Match that will be available shortly. To the McGavin, Townsend, McCall, Scott, Terpstra, Dodds and Carter families, thank you for sharing your stories and your ambitions for the IPM with me. To the Queens, including Lynne Godkin, Melissa Veldman and hopeful IPM Queen Marion Studhalter, thank you for sharing your experiences. To every person who pointed me to another person or answered a question, again, thanks. And to every other person behind this event (because I know there are many of you out there) thank you for making such a thing possible a short drive from my doorstep. I don't know when the next IPM will be held in Huron, but I know that few will compare to the 100th and it's been an honour to be a part of telling its story. To everyone who wasn't a member of a committee or a volunteer, you still have a chance to make it memorable. Plan to be at the event. Take in the sights, the sounds, the tastes and the fun. See you all at the match. Have a nap As I've been telling anyone who would listen last week (I wrote this on Friday, Sept. 1), I need a nap. It's been a long week and what I need to rejuvenate myself, both mentally and physically, is some good, natural, healthy sleep. Yes, the regular refrain going back and forth between Denny and me has been that we need a nap. We have been at the office before the sun has come up just about every day this week and we haven't been the first ones out the door when the 5 o'clock bell rings in the evening. Last Monday was a big deadline for us. We not only had to prepare everything for the Aug. 31 issue of The Citizen, but also for the special issue we prepare every year for the Thresher Reunion in Blyth and for the special issue for the 2017 International Plowing Match — a whopping 52 -page issue that will be sent out to tens of thousands of people. And once all of those stories were written and the pictures had been prepared, we had to lay out those special issues, which called for 10-, 11- and 12 -hour days on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Then, on Friday (thanks to Labour Day our deadline for the Sept. 7 issue was moved up) we had to do a week's worth of work in one day. And while all of that work likely still won't please everyone (nothing on earth is capable of unlocking that achievement), I think it's all been worth it after looking at the quality of the work you will see in the coming weeks. So... back to naps. I can't wait to have one. The time will come, no doubt, that I have the time to have a nap. I'll be tired, things will be quiet around the house (meaning that my new neighbour, a rooster — seriously — will shut up for a few hours) and the planets will align and I will have a nap. We all need them. It's rare that I don't hear from my chiropractor about the glorious power nap he just had. I often have an appointment after he takes people in the morning hours and before he takes them in the evening, so that power nap is essential to his ability to function both in the morning and into the evening. Naps were a hot topic on last season's The Bachelor (you'll remember, of course, that I watch The Bachelor and I don't care what you think of that bit of news) when Corrinne could often be found napping. Other contestants in the house also criticized her for her napping ways, but she was having none of it. She snapped back to them that everyone naps. "Michael Jordan took naps. Abraham Lincoln took naps," she exclaimed. And, thanks to Pastor Mark Royall's recounting of his trip to a Washington, D.C. church he visited that Lincoln used to frequent, we've now mentioned the great president in two straight issues. Look at us at The Citizen — moving up in the world. And while, admittedly, I did not fact -check whether or not Jordan and/or Lincoln did indeed take naps, we can only assume, for the purposes of this column, that they did. In fact, in my hometown of Scarborough, there was a famous hotel called the Hav-A- Nap on Kingston Road. And while its TripAdvisor score would lead you to believe that a stay there leaves much to be desired and its reputation among those in the GTA was a place for people not exactly looking to nap, the moral of the story is that there is a hotel rather close to us that has honed in on how important naps are to keeping the world turning. Meanwhile, I'm off to — that's right — a wedding meeting. My long-awaited nap is calling for me. One of these days I will answer its call.