March 24 started like any other Sunday morning. Even though I’d received a text the night before that one of my closest farming friends had been taken by ambulance to the Hull Hospital because of a heart problem, we got ready for church.
When I sat down for breakfast, in the heap of mail on the table was a notice of an auction sale that really bothered me. One of Pontiac’s best farming families was announcing an auction sale.
The leader of the farm team had died young from the world’s most dreaded disease and because of health problems for another member and a lack of other members to take the reins, the land had been sold to someone from afar. The equipment listed on the auction bill was not little hobby farmer equipment but big, good equipment that any full-time farmer would be proud of.
It’s a sad sign when the land is worth more as an investment than the profit it would return if used for almost any kind of farm.
Then we went to church where the sermon was aimed at the strife in the world because of different languages spoken, different skin colours, customs and different religions. Even before Hitler decided to exterminate the Jews and had plans to propagate only blond haired, blue-eyed geniuses, countries were invading other countries for those reasons mentioned above.
After dinner, I received another text that my farming friend and neighbour was “not good.” Without any thought, we went to the Hull hospital to support our friend and his family. After spending the afternoon at the hospital I joked with him that only his wife was allowed to stay for the night and shook hands goodbye and promised to return.
On our trip back to Shawville, for the first time in my life, I noticed that most farms along Hwy. 148 where there once were dairy farms, pig farms, beef farms, and farm houses full of families, were mostly only empty crop fields, abandoned land and the occasional beautiful, big farm house where a family lived, but worked in the city.
Even though the quality and safety of food produced by our Canadian farmers is second-to-none the long work hours and lack of return on a farmer’s investment has chased most of our next generation of farmers off the land and has being doing so for the last 50 years.
When we were about halfway home from Hull we received a phone call that our wonderful friend and neighbour, and partner on numerous successful projects that only fools would tackle had passed on to the next life. Rest in peace Leo.
Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon on land that has been in his family for generations. gladcrest@gmail.com
