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6 THE RURAL VOICE
Keith Roulston
We do have a choice
It was one of those thoughts that
flashes suddenly through your mind,
startling with its insight.
I was driving down the road, my
mind filled with concems about the
impact of changing postal regulations
on our magazine and whether to
borrow money to
update our com-
puter equipment
for the next wave
of the desktop
publishing
revolution.
Suddenly, there
ahead was a
Mennonite
farmer driving
his buggy up his
lane, employing
a technology to
support a way of
life that was
"obsolete" 20
years before I
was born.
I've been thinking about the
Mennonites lately, partly because my
sister and her husband, due to health
problems, had to sell my family farm.
The highest bidder was a Old Order
Mennonite who will turn back the
clock to an era before the returning
soldier who was my father, and his
young wife and daughter, moved to
the farm in 1946. One of the first
things they did on arrival was install
the hydro. One of the first things the
new owners did was take it out.
The Mennonite community has
been expanding in my old neighbour-
hood in Kinloss township, north of
Lucknow, despite rising land prices.
While generations of farmers have
left the land since World War II after
adapting "more efficient" ways, the
Mennonites keep going.
Few of us, of course want to live
like the Old Order Mennonites, with
no electricity, cooking on wood
stoves, driving a horse and buggy
even in vicious winter weather. The
point is, we do have a choice.
There's a saying going the rounds
these days: "Change is inevitable.
Growth is optional." Of course it's
true — change is inevitable. We grow
older and our interests and our
abilities change. Seasons change and
Our lifestyle
dictates our
work options
we must adapt.
Yet the change that's being
promoted is the kind of change that is
thrust on us and we're expected to
adapt to. We're supposed to not just
adapt, we're supposed to "embrace"
change. Get out and buy the latest
technological change: biotech crops,
huge factory-bams, robotic milking
machines. Be an "early adapter" or
die an early death.
But the expansion of Mennonite
communities reminds us that we have
a choice. If we don't want to live the
way they do then we've made a
choice, and we will have to live with
the consequences.
The life we lead today in rural
Ontario is filled with material
luxuries we never dreamt of when I
was young. Kitchens today have all
the convenient gadgets. We not only
have televisions but satellite service
with dozens of channels. The kids
play computer games and use the
internet.
In the 1950s few farmers in my
neighbourhood owned a pickup, let
alone the luxurious crew -cab, four-
wheel-drive monsters you see parked
outside farm meetings today. Many
have ATVs, a time-saver but hardly a
necessity. Some are into yield
monitors and GPS on the combine.
And many farmers feel they're
caught in a vicious circle because of
all the gains. It takes more money to
"live" today yet commodity prices
are the same or less than they were
many years ago, so farmers feel they
must expand and modernize. Then
they owe more money so they have to
work harder — do more. They have
no other choice!
Or do they?
The Mennonites still enjoy the
basics of life: watching children be
born, grow, marry, produce grand-
children. They still enjoy the pride of
producing a good crop, a fine animal.
They enjoy the satisfaction of seeing
a crop safely in the barn. They enjoy
beautiful sunsets.
They're a constant reminder to us
that we do have a choice.0
Keith Roulston is editor and
publisher of The Rural Voice. He
lives near Blyth, ON.