The Rural Voice, 1993-09, Page 351
ZS 4A1r
Jim Armstrong — years of
experience with plowing matches.
im Armstrong is sitting on a
wooden kitchen chair, fore-
head furrowed as he tries to
find an answer that will
explain his almost lifelong
interest in plowing. At this moment,
he looks remarkably like one of the
expressive ceramic portraits of career
men his daughter makes (known as
Bosam Heads) which hang on the
wall behind him. There are several of
these pieces, one of a jaunty sailor
with his lips curled around the stem
of a pipe, another of a jolly baker, his
hat tilted rakishly off to the side and a
more subdued head of a farmer, skin
creased front too much sun and
worry.
Jim himself is a farmer, nowadays
sharing the duties with his son and
living off the family farm in a
modern home a few kilometres east
of Walkerton. "I see the plow as the
tool that unlocked the fertility of the
earth," says Jim with a smile as the
ridges in his forehead melt away.
With this expression, the likeness to
the caricatures on the wall fades, for
though Jim is in his early 60s, he
doesn't bear the creases and grooves
of his counterpart staring woodenly
across the kitchen. One assumes that
though he, too, has been overexposed
to the sun from days sitting on the
tractor, the lack of lines on his face
testify to a man content with his life.
He admits he's not the type to dwell
on upsets in his life, like the heart
attack he suffered a few years ago. A
self-proclaimed optimist, he chooses
not to dwell on the negative but
instead buries it away and waits for
better days, like a plow turns over the
old and furrows up the new.
No wonder then that organizers of
the Bruce County International
Plowing Match were eager to have
Jim join the executive committee to
help plan the event in an advisory
capacity. His positive commitment to
the project, combined with years of
experience with the International
Plowing Match, has made him a
valuable member of the committee.
Jim's experience is extensive. In
1973 he was a director on the Ontario
Plowmen's Association (OPA). In
1978, he and his
family, consisting
of wife Carol and
children Bill,
Elizabeth, Karen,
Deborah and
Wendy, hosted the
1978 IPM at their
farm in Huron
County. A year
later he became
president of the OPA before
becoming a director again in 1980.
That same year he was also the OPA
The man
behind
the plow
Jim Armstrong
is a veteran of
plowing
matches
around the
world
By Lisa Boonstoppel-Pot
representative on the Canadian
Plowing Council (CPC). By the mid-
1980s he was president of the CPC.
Then, in 1988, he was the back-up
coach to the World Plowing Match
held in Iowa, U.S.A., and the
following year was the Canadian
Coach Judge at the same match held
in Norway. In the years since and
between, he's judged at the IPM and
local competitions.
is past experience with
H
plowing matches testifies to a
profound interest in plowing,
probably what many people would
consider a strange attraction. But to
Jim it was almost natural considering
his family had farmed for
generations, turning over land year
after year on the Peel County farm
near Inglewood which Jim took over
in 1960, after his father died. The
Armstrongs had long been dairy
farmers, building
up a line of
purebred Holsteins.
Everything was
going smoothly
and the family was
one farming year
away from having
their farm
designated a
"century" farm
when Jim had his heart attack. It's
something he doesn't like to talk
about, true to his nature of not
Armstrong's past
experience with
plowing matches
testifies to a profound
interest in plowing.
SEPTEMBER 1993 31