The Rural Voice, 1983-09, Page 131
During university, Mary Lynn
worked two summers for the Royal
Bank, first as a teller, then as a con-
sumer loans officer trainee, "so I had
a foot in the door." After gradua-
tion, she joined the bank's Stratford
branch, and after a year -and -a -half
there, moved to London as the bank's
first female agrologist.
An agrologist, she explains, "is a
kind of consultive position where we
act as a reference for the branch net-
work and for the regional credit
team. If either the branch manager or
the regional people want a second
opinion on an account, they'll call us
in."
Then Elder or the senior agrologist,
Bill Bearss, take the client's credit file
and start to assess farm management.
To do that, they do farm site visits in
a large number of cases.
"In addition to that, we'll go over
projections and plans for the coming
year to see if they're realistic, do they
relate to what's happened in the past
and go with the history of the account
and then write a recommendation,"
Mary Lynn says.
In the spring, the two agrologists
average two farm visits daily, two or
three days per week.
Unlike Mary Lynn, who knew she
was aiming for an agribusiness
\\\ \\ Mary Lynn Elder
career, Doug Richards says when he
finished his honors B. Sc. "I decided
there wasn't any job I wanted to sink
my teeth into for 20 years."
His solution was to return to the
university for graduate studies after
spending the summer working on the
farm - "my first close contact with
pigs." He'd only been back to the
university for a few weeks when his
father died suddenly, and Doug
decided to take his neighbour's advice
and try running the farm.
Today, Doug and Jane run a
60 -sow, farrow -to -finish operation of
registered purebred Yorks, classed
"excellent" under Ontario's new
herd health policy. The couple's
livelihood is in selling breeding stock
to other farmers, and they operate
their sow herd in conjunction with
neighbours, George Procter's Bod-
min Farms Ltd.
Until this spring, the Richards were
growing their own corn for feed on a
three year corn, one year grain crop
rotation plan.
This spring, at Jane's urging,
they're switching to a two year corn,
one year grain, using a red clover
ploughdown on one of their four
fields each year. The experiment
means they'll be corn deficit, and her-
bicides will be more costly, but Doug
says, "while in the short term it
doesn't pay, hopefully in the long
term we'll have better soil (as a
result)."
When Doug first came home to
farm with his mother, he had little
practical experience in the day-to-day
work on the farm and depended on
the accurate daily journals his father
had kept. At first Doug found it took
him eight to 10 hours to do what his
father had accomplished in half a
day, so it was sometimes frustrating,
but in the end proved "a real learning
experience.
Doug credits his neighbour's exper-
tise and patience in easing his transi-
tion into farming fulitime. His father
had shared equipment with neighbour
Howard Martin, who also had a ma-
jor hand in converting the Richards'
barn to finish hogs. Doug continues
the equipment sharing and finds it
has drastically cut his farm expenses.
When it came to livestock, George
Procter helped the Richards keep the
pig barn going, dropping by the farm
two or three times a week to teach
Doug the fine points of working with
hogs.
Even today, while both Doug and
Jane enjoy the challenge of farming,
they're keeping their options open.
Doug says if they could no longer
farm for some reason, "We have the
advantage -we could leave this farm-
ing career and start another career in
agriculture." Doug adds he feels
sorry for those who have to stay in
farming, no matter what, because
they don't have other job oppor-
tunities.
While Jane prepares the farm's
cropping routine, and assists with the
fieldwork, she's also worked off the
farm for the year the couple have
been married.
Three year's ago, Jane was hired as
project agronomist for the Thames
River Implementation Committee
(TRIC), which was studying the water
quality of the Thames River and its
tributaries - an area of over 2,000
square mile, in seven counties.
Since her marriage, Jane has com-
muted from Brussels to her London
job daily, courtesy of last winter's
milder than normal temperatures and
few snow -storms. Even though her
TRIC job is over now, Jane's com-
muting days are hardly at an end.
Now she's started the course work
leading towards her Masters of
THE RURAL VOICE, SEPTEMBER 1983 PG. 11