The Rural Voice, 2019-02, Page 40When Nathalie Vermue hauls
crops back to the bins at
Vermue farms outside of
Bayfield, she’s astonished at the risks
drivers will take to pass on the
winding roads.
“One of my favourite expressions
is ‘you can’t fix stupid’,” laughs the
poultry, crop and sheep farmer,
school volunteer and member of the
Huron Perth Women in Support of
Agriculture (HPWSA).
However, she is a proponent of
bringing school kids, parents
included, to the farm she runs with
husband Koos and children Robin,
Nicole and Lindsay. Not
understanding how farms operate
isn’t stupid, it’s just a lack of
knowledge and awareness. The best
way to fix that is to show people
differently.
“Around Hallowe’en, we had a
scavenger hunt here for my
daughters’ class. We counted sheep
(hard when they are always moving),
showed them the machinery and had
them try to bite a cookie hanging
from a string off the loader tractor,”
says Nathalie. For some of them, it’s
the first time they’ve been on a farm.
Other times, she has hosted barn
tours, carefully disinfecting
afterwards to meet biosecurity
protocols.
“People were surprised how much
room the chickens had. They thought
all chickens lived in cages,” says
Nathalie. “They were amazed at the
nipple drinkers. They asked a lot of
good questions.”
Nathalie says she always wanted
to be a farmer, never a teacher,
however, farmers need to be both
with this generation’s gap in
agricultural understanding.
Nathalie and Koos are Dutch
immigrants. They sold a chicken
farm in Groningen, Holland in 1999
and moved to the former DeJong
farm on Bayfield River Road with its
enormous pond and older chicken
barns. Now managing five broiler
barns, cropping and growing a flock
of sheep (brought in to eat grass
around the pond), the family is busy
with their growing enterprise. The
decision to immigrate wasn’t nearly
so difficult as it was for earlier
generations.
“We didn’t see it as immigrating.
February 2019 37
Show families your
animals and barns
because seeing is
believing
Nathalie Vermue of Vermue Farms Ltd., grew up in dairy, married a
chicken farmer and now raises sheep as her love of farming and rural life
expanded from Holland to Bayfield, Ontario. She likes to share the facts
and joys of farming with visitors to narrow the divide between farmers and
consumers.
By Lisa B. Pot
Farmers
You can’t fix stupid
(But you can show them differently)