By Keith Roulston

    I talked to my neighbour this morning as we were both dropping off our Blue Boxes for pickup and he was preparing to go on to the barn to feed his cattle. I must admit it was the first time in a couple of months that we’d chatted.
    From another of my neighbours I understand that I’m likely the shirker here. He speaks more regularly with our neighbours and knows what’s going on. It may be because he’s still farming while I live among farmers but don’t farm.
    Still, in reading Lisa Boonstoppel-Pot’s story about Perth County farmer Tom Melady in last month’s Rural Voice, I realize we’ve generally lost something. Speaking at a S.H.E.D. (Sustaining Healthy Farms Through Empowerment and Dedication) meeting, he said that 70 years ago there were 100 families on farms of 100 acres in a rural block of 10,000 acres. There were churches and community centres and card parties and church suppers and grocery stores. Neighbours talked to neighbours across the back fence. 
    Today, there are 10-15 active farmers each running about 1,000 acres. “The local church has closed, a community centre is less active, we shop at Costco and there is no back fence to talk over,” Melady said. “In fact, they are so busy, there isn’t time to talk.”
    But as someone who grew up on a farm in the era Melady talks about, I’d say another thing doesn’t exist anymore – and is sorely missed.
    When I was growing up, a part of social life on the farm was the Farm  Forum. In the winter time our neighbours, like farmers all over Canada, would get together to discuss an important subject, with the staff at the radio program providing some extra research and speakers. Following the radio broadcast, there would be a series of questions to discuss, a secretary would sum up the discussion, and write down the general feeling about each question to be sent to Farm Radio Forum and then people would get on to the real fun of the evening – card games – and everything ended with  lunch.
    I don’t know about Melady’s neighbourhood but we still have a family on every 100 acres in my neighbourhood – it’s just that only a few of them still farm. But maybe it’s even more important that farmers and non-farming neighbours discuss things and share conclusions.
    Even though, because of my job, I kept up with many of the general trends in farming, probably more than my non-farming neighbours, the farm world has changed so much that there is much for all of us non-farmers to learn.
    When I was growing up, farms were still pretty much the same. We had one neighbour who had a larger dairy herd than the rest of us, but most people still milked cows. Most of us separated cream from the milk and took it to the creamery in Lucknow. We fed the milk to pigs which we either shipped or sold at the local auction (with the odd pig making roasts, chops and sausage for our table).
    We raised cattle following the same process: most sold to men who shipped them to market in Toronto, some sold at the local auction with the odd one finding its way to the family table.
    How things have changed. The rest of the farm my house used to belong to is now rented to a large cash-cropper who grows thousands of acres of corn, soybeans and wheat, often using equipment that my father would hardly recognize because it’s so big.
     Most of the farmers, though they specialize, are older, now nearing retirement. They tend to specialize, one milking dairy cattle, one growing chickens and raising hogs. Several keep market cattle.
    I think something like Farm Forum which brings farmers and non-farmers together would be educational to both sides.◊