The Rural Voice, 1978-12, Page 11John Turner on the hayrake, about 1915.
Farming as it used to be...
Four oldtimers remember
Six generations of Turners have lived on this Huron County farm
By Susan White
It helps to understand what farming used to be like in Western
Ontario when you talk to John Turner on the family place where
he was born 79 years ago. It's in Tuckersmith, in Huron County
and the farm's outward appearance hasn't changed a great deal -
since Mr. Turner's grandfather built the big brick house more
than 100 years ago.
The 150 acre farm sits alongside the Bayfield River. It's on
fairly high ground and to the front you can see highway 8 while
the back fields aren't far from highway 4.
John Turner's great-grandfather settled the land and built a
log house in which three generations, including seven children,
lived at one time. The grandfather who built the Turner's brick
house had 14 children, seven with each of two wives. (One, John
Turner's Aunt Mary, is still living in Huronview, aged 101.)
Although the house that Mr. Turner and his wife built in 1962
when their son George got married and bought the farm is on the
farmstead, and modern cars and equipment are in the farm yard,
the Turner place still has a great deal of the peace and serenity
that was farming when John Turner was growing up.
"A different world absolutely", is how Mr. Turner describes
the farm when he was a boy. His dad grew oats, wheat and
barley, always an acre of sorghum to supplement the cattle's diet
and a field of peas, used to fatten steers.
W heat was hauled to the local mills by wagon and unlike a lc t
of Huron farmers, the Turners didn't grow too many peas "too
bulky and hard to store", John remembers. Some farmers got
cash by selling part of their pea crop for seed. There was little
cash coming into the farm then as the Turners used what they
raised themselves. "I don't know how he lived, John Turner
says, but then people bought very little.
His dad, and Mt. Turner after him, kept a small milking herd,
THE RURAL VOICE/DECEMBER 1978 PG. 11