A One Hundred Year Old Homestead

Anecdotal evidence suggests that there is a very significant change in the farming landscape that doesn’t get mentioned very often. Around the turn of the last century a farmer was most likely born in a farming family and, except for schooling, probably spent most of his life on the farm. In this century, many farmers are drawn to the occupation after pursuing other careers or interests. They often come to farming with a greater understanding of the economic and political issues facing farmers than did their predecessors. Anne is very much a farmer of this century. She went through university and received her degree in fine arts and went on to teach art in elementary school. She learned to weld in arts school and has always been a bit of an inventor. The many practical and political aspects of farming are engaging challenges for her. “The great dilemma of farming was totally intriguing to me, the idea that everybody has the right to healthy food. Yet how [industrial farms] produce food is so unsustainable. How are we going to feed people and yet take care of the land? It’s a huge dilemma that I don’t think we’ve come very close to solving.”

The dilemma may not be solved but on Sudoa Farm, Anne is working with sev- eral neighbours to find solutions. Diver- sity is one of the keys in sustainable farming. Part of the 126 acres is share- cropped with another local farmer who grows certified organic spelt, oats and wheat and cuts hay for his organic beef herd. Some of the new ideas seem a lot like old ideas. “We’ve got 20 acres of beautiful deep black peat bottom land where most of the vegetables are grown. We divide that up into four sections and it’s sort of like the old COWS rotation— corn, oats, wheat and sod. Corn being a heavy feeder, oats being early, wheat being later and sod being green manure. So every four years one field is put into green manure. We’ll get a nice thick, thigh-high mass of material—and Joyce [a neighbor who works with draft horses] often comes in with her horses and ploughs it up.”

Neighbours offer more than skill and ideas. The community created by working together has enormous value to Anne. “Sometimes there’ll be seven or eight of us pulling carrots and all of a sudden we break out in song or start telling stories from our childhood. Last year there was a folk tale that came up [in one of our groups] and there were two or three versions of the same tale told from different cultures. It’s life-affirming work. It’s so optimistic and valuable. It brings people together in simple, joyful ways because of that,” she says.

But farming isn’t just about fun and feeling good. There are many mistakes and natural disasters. (When I spoke with her she just finished replacing a roof that had blown off in a gale force wind.) So it isn’t just the camaraderie and the curiosity that keeps Anne going—it’s the vision. “We need to start again and build a system that’s going to work. If I didn’t have that optimism I wouldn’t be farming. I think that’s one of the hallmarks of farmers, optimism. If you have a terrible crop what do you do? You just get back up, dust yourself off and away you go.”

This optimism is not the same as naïve stubbornness. The outlook in this province is encouraging. The number of small farms is actually on the rise. The certified organic market continues to expand every year. The vitality that diverse and sustainable farming adds to a community is obvious both economically and socially.

For Anne, perhaps the biggest incentive to continue farming is the value it adds to her life. “[I’m] a person who has a certain amount of anger about the way things are,” she says. “Sometimes I get so angry that we’ve choked out all other ways of life except capitalism. So in order for me to feel good about my life, I transform that anger into building systems that are complex and beautiful and productive, just to bring that energy into something that is life-affirming and creative. It brings [together] all my interests and skills. There’s always something to do. It’s such physical, immediate work, that you can’t get into trouble. I can still read about what’s going on in Palestine or about what Bush is doing and all the things that are going on in the world and still have energy for what I’m doing because I believe in what I’m doing.”

That’s a powerful outlook to have on farming, and on life.

Anne Warren, just back from getting a Christmas tree on Sudoa Farm, Winter 2002.