The Rural Voice, 1990-03, Page 33acres of potatoes. Generally, their
plan projects a long-term rotation that
will bring the whole farm into organic
production.
This year they will again be ap-
plying for certification by the Organic
Crop Improvement Association. The
deBoers don't need to be certified if
they're feeding their crops to the dairy
herd — all milk goes to the marketing
board so there's no price advantage in
being certified organic — but there
may be price advantages in certifying
other products, such as the lamb.
Both Ken and Jocelyn have Bach-
elor of Science degrees in agriculture
from the University of Guelph. Ken,
who grew up on a Bruce County farm
and worked for the Lucknow Co-op
store (he still works a couple hours a
week to serve the local Amish com-
munity), says he has always wanted to
farm. Jocelyn, who grew up in Acton,
started as a Junior Agriculturalist and
worked on farms during summers.
They chose to farm, and to farm
the way they do, for traditional and
vital reasons: closeness to the land,
independence, family values. "My
kids like it now that I'm home," Ken
says simply. "There's more to life
than just money."
The deBoers have three children:
Rebecca, 8, James, 6, and Jeani, 3.
And Jocelyn, in addition to being a
partner in the farm and having worked
sewing children's clothing, runs a dia-
per business, with Ken's help as sales-
man. She began last year, designing,
making, and selling cloth diapers, after
realizing that she could make as good
a diaper as any, and sell it cheaper.
Today she puts about 30 hours a week
into Kreations for Kids, and employs
four women in her large sewing room
at the house.
Jocelyn is also secretary for both
the provincial and federal Huron -
Bruce New Democrats, and Ken is a
director of both the Jubilee Foundation
of the Christian Farmers Federation
and the Ecological Farmers Associ-
ation of Ontario. "I just have a feeling
that we're the kind of people who
want to have 16 -hour days," he says.
And they've made time for an
interview, though they're both a little
wary of publicity. Farmers are curious
people when it comes to looking over
fences, and Ken, who says he himself
has made detours to take a look at
someone's fields, notes wryly that
they're "stuck with a corner farm."
Farmers using organic methods are
particularly likely to be subjected to
examination by their peers, he adds.
"We have to have all of our ducks in a
row. You hear the horror stories about
knee-high corn on organic farms, but
you don't hear about the corn that did
grow tall."
Conscious that weeds are a
favourite subject with critics, Ken
remarks that "a totally clean field is
not a healthy field, but you can go too
far on that too." Weeds are trying to
tell you something, he says. "It's just
unfortunate that you have to wait a
whole year to try again." Adds
Jocelyn: "There are things we'd like
to change still. There are some 'I
don't knows' in our operation."
But both agree, despite feeling
the peer pressure, that their methods
"really aren't all that much different"
from those of "conventional" farmers.
"We don't really perceive ourselves as
being that much different from any
other dairy farmer," says Jocelyn.
But Ken is self-conscious, she
adds cheerfully, when, for example, he
takes their $200 manure spreader out
to the fields. In fact, the deBoers had
to invest a grand total of only $5,000
in their machinery, including the com-
bine, which they co-own, along with a
Lely weeder, with a neighbour. With
mock grandeur, they call this arrange-
ment "The West Wawanosh Machin-
ery Co-op."
The inventory is "not fancy," Ken
remarks, though it holds up next to the
implements of his Amish neighbours.
It includes: one 55 -hp tractor, more
than several years old; one baler, 20
years old; one grain drill ("It came on
the ark with Noah"), and some other
"prehistoric" pieces. They borrow
some haying equipment from Ken's
father, and hire custom operators for
round baling and filling the silo.
The system works. Take the spelt
crop: the price they will receive from
OntarBio, an organic grain co-op in
Durham, Ontario, is projected to be
$300 a tonne. The deBoers shipped 1
1/4 tonnes/acre last year. They didn't
have their own seed drill then, so the
planting and some of the field work
was done by a custom operator. Once
the bill for the custom work was paid
($50/acre) and the seed cost was cov-
ered ($32), total expenses were $82.
Gross revenue will be about $375.
And the deBoers point out that
they may be getting lower yields in
their other crops, the barley for exam-
ple, than farmers who use fertilizers
and pesticides, but their costs make
the final figures comparable.
The long-term goal, after all, is
to integrate all the parts of the farm,
feeding crops back into livestock and
using the manure to feed the next
season's growth. The deBoers note
that a typical criticism of organic
production is the extra tillage required
to keep weeds down. But they say
that only once in every six or seven
years will they have a field in a row
crop — corn — that needs scuffling
for weed control, and that they'll only
grow corn until they have enough hay
to put up haylage.
Critics of the organic movement
also repeatedly remark that organical-
ly grown food is not any "healthier"
than conventionally grown food. But
the deBoers see this argument as a red
herring. They don't necessarily farm
organically to produce healthier food,
they say. The issue is the larger envir-
onmental question. People who buy
organic food, they say, are supporting
a sounder approach to the use of re-
sources, and preventing the abuse of
those resources.
But the connection is abstract.
"People buy food, not a bag of soil,"
says Ken, "so it's hard for them to
connect a bright red apple with the
breakdown of the ozone or the village
well being polluted with chemicals."
The deBoers repeat that "there are
all kinds of things that we still have to
work on," but they look forward to the
challenge knowing that if they can't
escape low prices, they can avoid
being caught between them and high
input costs. And they plan to be stew-
ards of a farm that, essentially, "works
by itself," and on which cropping
decisions are made primarily in terms
of the sustainability and diversity of
the farm unit, not last year's market or
predictions about next year's prices.
"We can direct the farm," Ken
says, "but then leave it in such a way
that it is as good, or better, when our
grandchildren take it over."OLG
MARCH 1990 29