The Rural Voice, 1998-05, Page 30Trial by fire
For the Fisher family, getting their new dairy barn built was
just the beginning of their adventure in expansion
Story and photos by Keith Roulston
!W PPM Int 1to4
The new free -stall barn on the farm of Alan Fisher of Owen Sound (top) has been
a huge labour saver over the older barn (seen in the foreground). The milking
parlour (bottom) is open to the rest of the barn. But there have been tremendous
growing pains for Fisher (above, right).
Alan Fisher doesn't have the
barn he set out to build —
and he's glad he doesn't. In
fact, after the adventures of the
Fisher family over the past few
months, he's happy to have any barn
at all!
But perhaps you have to go back
four years for the beginning of the
26 THE RURAL VOICE
adventure. Fisher, who had always
been interested in the dairy business
since growing up on the family farm
nearby (his father sold that farm in
the late 1950s and then moved to the
current farm where they raised
horses) had been dairy farming since
he left high school. Though he still
dabbles in race horses, the cows have
always been the backbone of the
farm.
Four years ago come August,
Fisher got caught by a Holstein bull
they were using to breed heifers at
their farm across the road (they own
350 and rent another 150). "I was
only 12 feet from the fence but it was
two feet too far," he recalls of his
attempt to avoid the charging bull.
His son, who was nearby, was able to
rescue him and get him to the truck
but he was in such bad shape that his
wife, Donalda, who is a registered
nurse, didn't expect him to make it to
the hospital. He had five cracked
ribs, a torn breastbone, a broken
collar bone, a collapsed lung, a
bruised heart and doctors at first
suspected internal bleeding. He spent
a week in intensive care.
Donalda and the family picked up
the work at home while he was
healing, doing a wonderful job,
Fisher says. They also learned just
how inefficient the old barn was.
As he slowly recovered his first
thought was that he wasn't going to
invest a lot more in the farm but
coast toward retirement. But with
their son Tom set to graduate from
the University of Guelph last spring