The Rural Voice, 2002-12, Page 3About this issue
Christmas, readg or not
It's Christmas time and despite a world that's
increasingly urban, rural scenes are still prevalent on
Christmas cards and statues of barnyard animals are part of
every nativity scene. That's natural since the rural way of
life, after all, dominated the country where Christ was born
and grew up. This month we decided to do a little research
into what the agricultural world of Israel was at the time of
the first Christmas.
Also on a Christmas theme, Barbara Weiler remembers
a girlhood Christmas season when the greatest gift was not
a toy from the Eaton's catalogue, but something much
more personal.
Winter brings a change of routine on farms and it was
particularly so in the past when most farms had cattle and
when cattle came in from the pastures, where they'd spent
their summer, to the claustrophobic life in the barn. It often
wasn't a happy time for either the animals or their keepers.
Arnold Mathers recalls those days of transition while he
was growing up on his father's farm near Wingham.
Snowmobilers across Ontario will be hoping for a
Christmas gift of snow across the province for a prolonged
period of time, something that once was taken for granted
but now is far from commonplace. If the snowmobilers do
get a good run on the trails this year they'll be seeing the
OPP's new SAVE (snowmobile, all -terrain, vessel
enforcement) units, a permanent team of officers assigned
to maintain safety on snowmobile and all -terrain vehicle
trails and the waterways of the province. Bonnie Gropp
found out more about this group of officers and what
they'll be doing.
One of the surprises you don't want to get at this time of
the year is to have trouble with your septic tank. Most of us
flush and forget but now and then those tanks have to be
pumped out and if it happens in winter, haulers are no
longer able to spread the septage on the land. And, under
Bill 81, five years down the road there will be a complete
ban on spreading untreated septage.
Huron County has been scouting a solution to the
problem and recently tabled an engineer's report that
showed the cost of redesigning two of the county's sewage
treatment plants to accept tanker -loads of septage for
treatment is likely going to mean pumping your tank out
will cost you $400, or roughly $11 a month if you pump
your tank every three years as recommended. We explored
the issue further.
Bonnie Gropp's recipes this month focus on chocolate
for Christmas desserts. Meanwhile Patti Robertson says
that you can decorate your home for Christmas
economically this year because many of the trends feature
items rural homes are likely to have lying around.0
Update
Good Food Box expanding
Huron County's Good Food Box program, featured in an
article in our November 2001 issue, is planning an
expansion to serve more people in the county.
The program, which monthly delivers more than 200
boxes of fresh fruits and vegetables to subscribers, is
hoping to open depots in Exeter and Wingham as well as
the current Clinton site.
Unlike some other Good Food Box programs, the Huron
project has also tried to connect local consumers to local
food producers — as much as possible using locally -grown
produce in the baskets, from apples to rutabagas. The
program is also part of a larger initiative called Field to
Table which wants to build on that Zink to encourage more
sales from farms that offer direct sales to consumers and
more small-scale processing of local farm products.0
'Rural Voice
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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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