The Rural Voice, 1994-08, Page 10Adrian Vos
Swan song for a columnist
There is an opportunity for organic
growers to find a huge market in the
U.S. CanadaExport, a publication
from the Canadian government, notes
that export ready manufacturers of
natural Canadian products are
invited to exhibit in the Canada
Pavilion at Natural Products Expo
(East), to be held September 9 to 11
in Baltimore. This market exceeds
sales of $10 billion annually.
* * *
Much is said about "the way of
life" farmcrs enjoy and city people
read farm stories about lifestyles with
a nostalgic longing for the good old
times. What they don't know, and
even many farmers do not realize, is
that the lifestyle of farmcrs is little
different than that of non -farmers,
whether they live in urban or rural
areas. Lifestyle/family farm, it has
diffcrent meanings for different
people. The old perception of the
family farm was that of a closely knit
family where the work was shared
among all members. This is still the
way on a very few farms but more
and more a family farm is defined as
one where the family owns and
manages the operation, even if the
family employs 50 people.
The divergence between the old
and the new perception began with
the school consolidation. When the
little red school houses closed, the
children were bused to towns and
cities to mingle with children of
various backgrounds. They quickly
learned that the city kids were paid to
cut the lawn while they, in many
cases, were expected to slop the hogs
as part of the family. Thcy soon
began to sec the hard labour on the
farm as child labour and before long
they, too, had to be paid to work in
the barn or on the field.
While in the cities it was already
accepted that both spouses worked
outside the home, the greater
demands of the children were partly
responsible for the farm spouses
emulating their city counterparts and
one spouse finding outside
employment.
That hallowed rural lifestyle
doesn't exist any more, except in
6 THE RURAL VOICE
some rare cases. This may be
regrettable, but is a fact that cannot
be denied.
* * *
Thcre comes an end for everything
in life. Now the
time has come
for me to end 22
years of farm
writing. It began
with a small
column in the
local newspapers
which I called
"Agricultural
Tidbits". It soon
appeared in 11
weeklies from
Mount Forest to
Dresden. This
was aimcd at the
non -farmer to
make him better understand what
farmers were up against.
Encouraged by the publisher,
Keith Roulston, I took a number of
writing courses and broadened my
market. I wrote articles in Ontario
and Western Canadian farm
magazines and sold articles in
England and in the U.S. I am
particularly proud that at least one of
my efforts was translated into
Spanish for the Latin American
market.
My main interest remained with
The Rural Voice in which, in the
beginning, I wrote extensively, so
extensively, in fact, that one of my
colleagues at the Pork Board used to
call it "The Rural Vos".
This was also the time that I won
six national writing awards from
"The Canadian Farm Writers
Federation" in competition with farm
writers across Canada, an
accomplishment of which I am very
proud.
When I retired from active
farming nine years ago, I gradually
have attended fewer farm meetings
until at present I hardly attend any.
This leaves most information I
receive to come from the farm press.
This second hand information is not
satisfactory.
I have enjoyed the opportunity and
Reflecting back
on 22 years
of writing
the trust by the various publishers of
The Rural Voice. I am extremely
grateful to you, the readers, for the
support and criticism you have given
me, the odd time in a letter to the
editor, sometimes by telephone, but
mostly when I met you at a show or a
meeting. I also appreciate the letters
critical of my opinion. A writer of a
column is, by necessity, arrogant, or
he couldn't write it. The letters have
helped to keep me from getting too
conceited. I will miss all of this.
I dug up some old issues. In the
October of 1975 issue, I opened the
debate on foreign land ownership in
an article, when an ad by Canada
Permanent Trust, in The London Free
Press asked for 100 to 1,000 acres of
land for cash money.
In the same issue I wrote in my
column about the dangers of absentee
ownership. We all know what
happened since. Maybe it was a
needless alarm.
In November of that year I
bemoaned the fact that so few farm
women attended farm meetings,
despite the fact that Gerry Fortune
was the president of the Huron
County Federation of Agriculture. I
wrote that even when they do attend,
many leave it to their husband to
speak for the farm. This has changed
to some extent as more women are
willing to take on positions of
leadership than when I wrote that
column.
In August 1980 I commented on
the fact that many European and
American corporate farms went out
of business because of low profits. I
figured that the end of these moneyed
giants was near. Now we know that
this has not happened, at least not in
the U.S. Giant chicken and hog
farms prosper. When they will choke
on the manure they produce is
anyone's guess, but they may find a
way to process the stuff.
In July of the same year Gisele
Ireland began her column. Being
younger than I by a considerable
margin, we likely will enjoy her wit
for many years to come.
I was fortunate that I could see
both the farmer's and the consumer's
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