City raised, but rural in heart and mind, my dad's life work was spent as an agri-banker working with farmers, livestock producers and ranchers, which took our family to Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. My mom was farm-raised in Saskatchewan, and much of my extended family is involved in agriculture in some way. I was reared with a healthy dose of respect and a certain amount of romanticism for the rural lifestyle, and much of how I relate to the world is through an agricultural filter.
A harvest moon is the highlight of every summer's end. Thanksgiving really meant giving thanks for food grown by folks I had known all my life. In addition to several family visits a year, from the age of five on, I spent a week's vacation on my own at the farm with my Pa and Grandma. I rode shotgun in the grain truck, cleaned chickens with my aunt, tagged along behind my uncle through the Quonset dust as he checked machinery, and marvelled at my grandmother's garden that stretched further than I could see. They worked hard, played hard and never took a sunset for granted.
I had an opportunity to speak with soon-to-be retired NDP agriculture critic Corky Evans last weekend as part of his Food for B.C. tour. He was talking to small farm operators about what he perceives as their sense of abandonment by the Liberal government.
I questioned Corky as to why he thought our country has moved so far away from its agricultural heritage and pride to the point that many people raised in cities today have no real concept of how their meat and veggies got into the grocery store for purchase (or why so many of our children think chickens have fingers).
Corky said that with centralized media focusing our attention on all things urban and our citizens' desire to try to make ourselves world-class like places such as Paris through the expansion and infusion of dollars into our cities, the farming way of life has been forgotten.
People like Jon Bell of West Sechelt Farm Produce said he earns almost nothing when he sets up his wares at the Sechelt Farmers' and Artisans' Market every Saturday, but he does it because it is important to him to educate the public about where their food supply comes from.
With growing costs, livestock bans and other crises, fewer young people are taking over the family farm because they can't make a living at it. Corky said that B.C. has defied some of the odds facing other provinces, and the number of land-based farms actually grew through the '90s and is only now in slow decline. There are roughly 20,000 registered farms in B.C. That means there are 20,000 families who he believes feel forgotten by both government and urban dwellers.
Corky takes issue with what he thinks is this government's movement to make small farms nearly impossible to survive. As an example, he cited the Liberal government's making it illegal to buy at the source - a farm gate sale of, say, a chicken - a direct hit on small farm operators who previously made successful livings as suppliers to locals through individual sales. People who raise livestock are tireless. Animal husbandry isn't a way of life you choose for yourself if you hate animals. Holidays are rare. Who is a rancher going to get who is physically strong enough, who will rise before dawn on a January morning to go haul water and hay for cattle and who they can also trust to care for their animals if something goes awry?
For myself, I am still learning a lot about the culture of agriculture in my new province of B.C. But on late summer evenings, no matter where I am, I look for the harvest moon and recall a night when, as a small child, I drifted off to sleep in the humming combine, snuggled up next to the dog, Pa at the wheel and the comforting smell of pipe tobacco in the air. Farming is as much about family as it is about food, and I think it is worth supporting in any way we can.
