The Rural Voice, 2002-04, Page 31
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About this issue
Taking a worm's ege view
Sometimes there is so much excitement about the
newest technological marvel that we forget the benefits of
some of the simplest, but most essential, ingredients in the
growing farm crops. We forget about the value of bees, for
instance, not only in orchards but in crops like canola and
red clover. And we forget about the tremendous part played
by earth worms in the health of our soil.
Until a decade or so ago when a few courageous farmers
started experimenting with reduced tillage methods of
cropping, the importance of earth worms to farming had
been almost forgotten. These adventurous farmers started
doing worm counts in their soil and one of the scorecards
of their success was increased earth worm populations.
This month freelance writer Larry Drew gets down and
dirty in investigating the role of worms in recycling organic
materials and aerating and fertilizing the soil. He calls them
ecosystem engineers.
Farmers may go through their whole lives without ever
building a new barn. Those who do, probably build only
one or at most two and the lessons learned from one
construction process may never be applied to the next. But
as Acre T Farms, the large Brussels -area farming operation
owned by Joe and Miriam Terpstra, has expanded to its
current size of 13,000 sows, there have been plenty of
barns built along the way. Watching over that construction
boom has been manager David Frank. This month he talks
about the evolution of the company's ideas in building
barns.
Getting bigger like Acre T Farms is one way of coping
with a changing economy, but for other farmers, the
opportunity to be directly involved in the marketing of their
products through direct -to -consumer sales and agri-tourism
is an attractive alternative. The "Beyond City Lights" rural
tourism conference was held recently in St. Marys and tips
on how to overcome the problems farm -based tourism
faces were passed on by several speakers, along with
developing trends in what tourists are looking for. The
good news? Agritourism is expected to continue to grow.
Also this month, Bethanee Jensen came to farming from
a strange route. Though she grew up on a farm, she trained
as an accountant, then got into farming part time. Now
she's not only a full-time sheep farmer in Huron County
but president of the Western Ontario Lamb Producers
Association. Bonnie Gropp tells her story.0— KR
Update
Environment draws interest
How much do rural landowners want to clean up the
environment'? Well in the case of the Huron County
Healthy Futures program, described in our October 2001
issue, the demand for grants has been so brisk the county is
exploring the possibility of getting more money from the
province.
Biggest area of interest has been for repairs or
replacement of faulty septic tanks where the original
$650,000 allotment was quickly used up by 119 projects
approved to December 1, at an average of $5,660 each. The
county sought, and received, permission from the province
to take money from other, less in demand parts of the
program, to increase funding to $1 million.
Other popular programs included plugging abandoned
wells, with 32 grants for an average of $528; clean water
diversion with 28 projects averaging $1,353 per project;
nutrient management plans, with 27 completed at an
average of $1,067; and wellhead protection at an average
of $565.
Next to the septic tank improvements the most expensive
projects were manure spreading equipment modifications
at an average of $5,425 for eight projects.0
'Rural Voice
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A division of North Huron Publishing Company Inc.
Editor & Publisher: Keith Roulston
Editorial advisory committee:
Bev Hill, farmer, Huron Cty:
Diane O'Shea, farmer, Middlesex Cty.;
Gerald Poechman, farmer, Bruce Cty.
Contributing writers:
Bonnie Gropp, Carol Riemer, Ralph
Pearce, Bob Reid, Mervyn Erb, Sandra
Orr, Janice Becker, Mark Nonkes, Larry
Drew
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Gerry Fortune
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