The Rural Voice, 1999-02, Page 44L
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40 THE RURAL VOICE
Book Review
A tempting taste of an interesting life
Reviewed by Keith Roulston
First of all a confession. Until I'll
Never Marry a Farmer landed on my
desk, I had never heard of author
Lois Hole. After reading the book,
I'd like to know a lot more about her.
Obviously I am showing my
ignorance here. According
to the biography supplied
with the book, she appears
regularly on CBC
Television's Canadian
Gardening, she writes
columns for the Edmonton
Sun and the Globe and
Mail, she has written six
other gardening books and
she speaks, on average, to
100,000 people a year. In a country
where 5,000 in sales makes a best
seller, this book had an order of
10,000 copies from the Chapter's
book chain alone.
This is a strange book, difficult to
pigeonhole. It's part autobiography,
part a guide to family living and part
a recommendation about vegetables.
And so for someone like me with no
knowledge of the author before
picking up the book, there are only
maddening hints of the fascinating
history of Lois Hole and her husband
Ted, the farmer she swore she would
never marry. Their early struggle,
and ultimate success is a story that
deserves more exposure.
Hole does reveal that she grew up
in tiny Buchanan, Saskatchewan
thinking farms were the loneliest
places in the world and vowing never
to marry a farmer. And indeed when
she met Ted Hole he wasn't a farmcr.
Though studying agriculture at the
University of Alberta, in Edmonton,
he had no background in farming,
being a plumber's son and trained as
a plumber himself. But he had a
dream of being a farmer and spoke
about it with such passion that her
misgivings were overwhelmed. They
were married in 1950 and moved to
the 200 acres he had bought near St.
Albert, just outside Edmonton —
close enough to the city that Lois
didn't have to fear isolation.
In early years they struggled
trying to find what was the right line
of farming until Lois' prolific garden
and the fact they were on a main
highway close to the city brought
customers to their door seeking
produce, and introduced them to the
market gardening business. That
operation grew and later they
switched to a wholesale vegetable
farm, specializing in
carrots (they sold
over six million
pounds over the
years) and they
introduced a garden-
ing centre selling
plants from their
greenhouses. Whcn
their sons Bill and
Jim decided they
wanted to be part of the family
business, they felt the garden centre
operation had the best potential and
decided to phase out the carrots.
The book also contains stories of
the interesting people Lois Hole has
mct along the way, people likc
Virginie Durochcr, the illiterate
Metis neighbour who raised eight
children in a two -room log cabin.
She had learned so much from
experience that she became Lois's
best teacher over the years as thcy
worked side-by-side on the Hole
farm until Durochcr was 80.
Through meeting pcoplc like Mrs.
Durochcr, Lois Hole has picked up
wisdom about life as well as
vegetable growing and she imparts
that in her stories. She begins each
chapter, for instance, with paragraphs
that relate life to growing plants, like
finding the best location for each
plant — and each person — to grow.
And she briefly goes through each
vegetable group, talking about
growing tips, ways to cat them and
her favourite varieties (although for
Ontario gardeners this information
may be less valuable).
In all it's a fascinating book,
complete with plenty of full -colour
photos by Akemi Matsubuchi. Still,
it's just a teaser for a full account of
the success of Lois and Ted HoIe.O
I'll Never Marry a Farmer: by Lois
Hole, Hole's Enjoy Gardening, $40.
Internet site:
www.telusplanct.net/public/holes