The Rural Voice, 2002-08, Page 3About this issue
More than one wag to profit
After years of solid prices and phenomenal growth,
Ontario's lamb producers have had to suffer a market
decline in the early part of 2002. But one group of sheep
producers are looking at creating a different revenue source
for their flocks: milk for cheese production.
Even dairy sheep producers won't argue that their
production is any threat to dairy cattle owners: the market
is strictly a niche; even a high-volume dairy ewe produces
a drop in the bucket compared to a Holstein cow and there
are only a handful of producers in the entire province.
Still, Elizabeth Bzikot of the Ewenity Dairy Co-
operative told a legislative committee earlier this year, the
industry has the potential, by replacing a portion of the
imports of sheep -milk cheese, plus creation of new
products like yogurt, to support 500 family farms. Getting
to even a portion of that potential, however, means creating
an entire new industry and getting around the indifference
of government and industry.
Lots of people are trying to find new ways to generate
more revenue from their farm. Ernst and Nelly Hofer of
Newton had one of the most high-profile alternatives last
summer when their Ontario Corn Maze, designed like the
Ontario provincial crest, drew 6,000 visitors and lots of
publicity. Having conquered Ontario, the Hofers are taking
on the world, creating a 36 -acre corn maze layout that,
from the air, is a map of the world. The continents are corn,
the oceans are mixed grain. The 2002 corn maze will open
July 27 at their farm north of Newton.
The Hofers aren't the only people who can draw crowds.
Mitchell -area native Ted Johns, through his cantankerous
farmer Aylmer Clark, has been packing theatres for more
than 20 years in plays like He Won't Come In From the
Barn. Aylmer has come out of the barn for a new
adventure in Bamboozled: He Won't Come In From the
Burr,, Part II opening at the Blyth Festival in August. The
new play gives Johns an opportunity to comment on
everything from GMOs to large scale barns. We talked to
him this month.
Farmers talking about oil crops generally mean
soybeans or canola but more than a century ago Lambton
County farmers got rich with the oil beneath their fields as
the first oil boom in North America erupted, creating an
industry that was to change the face of that part of
southwestern Ontario for more than a century. Larry Drew
looks at the history of oil.°
Update
Composting in a big wag
In our March issue we wrote of the success of Chris and
Matt Cockle of Heronbrook Farm Ltd. in composting
casualties on their large pork operation. Now a Strathroy-
area deadstock recycler has been awarded $118,820 from
the Healthy Futures for Ontario Agriculture program for a
pilot project to compost deadstock.
The grant to Murray Grinsven will go toward the
$142,584 project cost of the composting system, the first of
its kind in Ontario. The project on the Grinsven farm will
serve as a working research model to determine how best
to dispose of animals not acceptable for rendering.
The project will include both covered and uncovered
composting bins. All material will be weighed going in
prior to being mixed with wood chips which will serve as
the carbon source for the process.
Once the material is composted it will be spread on the
Grinsven farm. Researchers involved in the project will do
a complete analysis to determine if there is any
environmental risks from leachate, pathogens or from land
disposal of composted material.0
'Rural Voice
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