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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1987-07-29, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JULY 29, 1987. PAGE 5. Goats for milk more than drop in the bucket for Morris family For the VanderSterre family of Morris Township, milking goats was the ideal way to get into the dairy business when time, space and money are all in short supply. From left are Peter, 4, Rachel, 5, and Sarah, 21 months, with parents Fred and Henrietta. BY TOBY RAINEY Fred VanderSterre of RR 4, Brussels is really a traditional dairyman at heart, but he milks up to 50 goats a day at his small acreage on the Sixth Line of Morris Township, because it is the only way he can be in the business at all at this time in his life. Without an established family tradition of dairying to back him, andwiththree small children at home, Mr. VanderSterre says that what makes the goat business attractive is that there is no quota attached to it, making it the ideal choice for someone like himself who could not begin to raise the tens of thousands of dollars needed tobuy into a herd of Hol steins at today’s prices. “And I enjoy the goats,’’ he says. “They are a good, depend­ able animal, and they have been The International Scene Give me that TV religion BY RAYMOND CANON Sometimes I think that even God must be a bit confused by what he sees in the field of TV religion in the United States; certainly I confess to being somewhat at a loss to understandwhatisgoingon. What we have been seeing these past few months are charges and counter­ charges on a scale which we thought belonged only to the field of politics. What brought the house of political cards tumbling down was the revelation that good old Jimmy Bakker had been somewhat less than faithful a few years back and had paid a goodly sum of money to keep his indiscretion hushed up. However, as is usually the case, the truth will out and the result, among other things, is that Jimmy and his heavily laquered wife, Tammy Fay, are now on the outside looking in. As I write this, the PTL empire which they built, has now filed for voluntarybankruptcy, a ploy which can be used in the United States, but not in Canada, to keep the predatory financial wolves from the door while the financial good to us over the past three years.” And it is obvious that the VanderSterres have been good to the goats, as the gentle animals crowd around the family and respond with perfect obedience to the routine they have been trained to observe in the spotlessly clean milking parlour, paying no atten­ tion to the stranger in their midst. When the VanderSterres bought the farm in 1984, it was already set upasagoatmilkingfacility, but Mr. VanderSterre has improved and refined the operation until it runs smoothly with the five to six hoursa day, seven days a week, that he can put into it, with a minimum of help from his wife, Henrietta, who is kept busy with Rachel, 5, Peter, 4, and Sarah, not quite two. Most work days start at 4:30 problems are sorted out. I’m sure I will offend some people whatever I write about religion but I must confess to finding both Jimmy and Tammy a bit hard to take. I used to watch them now and again over Channel 43 from Cleveland at 6 a.m. and found them very strong on asking for money and very weak on solid religion. Somebody has called them the “Jim and Tammy Show” and that is about what they were, entertainers. What I liked about the proceed­ ings were the singers but that seemed to me to be peripheral to the main theme of selling religion. About the only monument to the Bakkers appears to be the huge religious amusement park, if I may use that expression, which last year attracted more visitors than any other similar park with the sole exception of the Walt Disney attractions. That, to my way of thinking, is saying something but what it is 1 am not quite sure. But, if God was having a bit of a problem making out what the Bakkers were really up towhen He a.m., since Fred also works out six or seven hours a day at Wayne Fear’s Monoway Farms, only a few kilometres away. He has worked at a variety of jobs since^emigrating from Holland 11 years ago, but has been in some aspect of farming for the past five years, and knows that farming is where he wants to stay. He plans to work out for another two years, at which time he feels the goat herd will have developed to the point where it can become the family’s sole support. To this end, Mr. VanderSterre has em­ barked on a careful program of selective breeding and harsh culling, raising his own replace­ ment does to conform to a high standard of quality which not only produces a high percentage of excellent animals, but has improv­ ed the dairy quality of the herd to a remarkable degree as well. took their reportedly huge incomes into consideration, He must have had a good laugh at Oral Roberts sitting in his prayer-tower, telling all the world that God would “call him home” unless people donated no less than $8 million to his Oklahoma headquarters by the end ofMarch. What Oral really did with the money I am not quite sure but it is certain that he was saved from the threat of a godly thunderbolt by an eccentric mil­ lionaire who, while he admitted he was not exactly a Christian, did seem to like Oral’s style. Some of the surveys which have been taken on evangelical givers show that fully one-third of them all earn less than what we could consider the poverty level. Wheth­ er they are the same third who also concentrate on achieving instant prosperity by buying lottery tickets on a regular basis is of course problematical at this time but the comparison does strike me as having some merit. Where does it all go? In the United Church which I attend and of which I am the chairman of the In the past year alone, milk production at the dairy has gone up by 15 per cent over the 1986 volume, witheachofthe50or so Sanaan Nubian does giving an average of 800 litres of milk per year, with the odd excellent animal capable of pushing that as high as 1,300 - 1,400 litres. If left alone, a doe would normally come into heat once a year, usually in the fall, and after a successful breeding would pro­ duce a kid or kids 150 days later. However, since the demand for goat’s milk and goat’s milk products remains steady through­ out the year, with even a slight increase in consumer demand in the winter, Mr. VanderSterre manages his herd for steady production throughout the year. He says this can be accomplished by regulating both the amount of light the doe gets, and the type of feedsheconsumes, and by regulat­ ing the temperature of her sur­ roundings. Except during the coldest months, the VanderSterre herd is kept outdoors, with dry does, fresh does, and milking does all together on succulent pasture, along with any kids which may be in the herd. The kids are left on the does until they are eight weeks old, while their mothers continue right along with the milking herd, capable of producing enough milk for both the kid and the milking machine. Replacement kids are tagged, and the remainder shipped at 10 weeks, or when they reach a weight of30 - 35 lbs. Always careful of his animals, Mr. VanderSterre likes to truck them himself to the Kitchen­ er livestock market, where prices are kept fairly stable because of the relatively low supply in Canada, combined with a high ethnic demand in some quarters. Culled older animals are also shipped, in the face of steady demand. Young does are first bred at 18 to 20 months of age, and introduced into the milking herd for a few days about three weeks before they are duetofreshen, sothatthey become used to being handled in the milking parlour, as well as to the routine of twice a day milking. Mr. VanderSterre says goats are highly intelligent animals, and learn very quickly what is expected of them. outreach committee, we make sure that our charity dollars get the biggest impact possible. At PTL, however, millions of dollars seem to have vanished into thin air. How much did Jimmy and Tammy get? How many other nests were lined? Perhaps now that the income tax people in Washington have started to take an interest, we shall soon find out. What really amazes me is the number of Americans who are involved in such religious activi­ ties. A recent Gallup poll indicates that one in every three Americans considers himself to be evangeli­ cal, the common denominator of which is that they all have had some direct spiritual experience. The old picture of the evangelicals is changing, nevertheless, in that more than half of them now live outside the South and about half ofthem have spent some time in college. Fifteen percent of them are reported to be blacks while about one-fifth also hold what are considered to be fundamentalist views - i.e. they believe in the literal truth of the Bible. The herd shows ample evidence of both intelligence and training, as they crowd up the ramp in the parlour, entering the milking platform three at a time and going directly to the proper stanchions, where they munch on a 16 per cent dairy ration for the very few minutes the milking by machine takes, then jump down and return obediently to the holding pen until the whole herd can be released at once to pasture. The rich alfalfa-Timothy mix pasture is managed on a unique grid system which Mr. Vander­ Sterre says is common in New Zealand, but is seldom seen here. The pasture is marked off in a series of small plots, each only about five feet wide across the width of the small field, with the electric fence controlling access moved five or sixtimesaday, so that the herd is always grazing on fresh, untrampled roughage, whichhastimeto grow in again before the herd returns to that particular plot. Mr. VanderSterre says that it causes quite a double take from passing motorists as they see some 50 spotless white goats all lined up shoulder to shoulder across the width of the pasture, grazing in a regimented fashion but controlled by the unseen wire, which they could easilyjump if they wanted to, but obey simply because they know they are on to a good thing in their present situation. The milk is stored in a stainless steel cooler similar to that in a traditional dairy barn, but much smaller. It is picked up every Tuesday by a truck, from Hewitt’s Dairy Limited in Hagersville, between Hamilton and Simcoe. The family-owned dairy handies cows milk as well, but has a separate facility for the handling of raw goat’s milk, which trucker Hugh Henderson says he picks up from some 35 producers in Sou­ thern Ontario, bringing in some 25,000 litres a week from produ­ cers inanareathat ranges from Brussels to Aylmer, Grand Valley, and Georgetown. There are four commercial goat's milk producers in Huron County alone. The Hewitt dairy handles all the ^demand for raw fluid goat’s milk. Continued on page 12 Most of them are also members of independent evangelical churches and these are the ones that are really showing the growth patterns. It is the Pentecostal and Charismatic churches, such as the Assemblies of God, who are strong on faith-healing, that have been winning converts faster than any other denomination. These are the ones who tend to get on television and they have demonstrated their effectiveness by persuading peo­ ple to send in as much as $200 million a year. Jimmy Swaggart, whom i find to be one of the most stereotyped, admits that he took in during the course of 1986 no less than $175 million. His style of fire-and-brimstone religion cer­ tainly seems to sell and sell well. And so it goes! Frankly 1 will not be surprised one iota to see Jimmy and Tammy Fay back on TV sometime, somewhere. They are hooked on T. V. and probably don’t know what to do without it. Judging from the money that is pouring in, so are a lot of other people. God alone knows where it all goes.