News from our rich agriculture history

The Farms.com farm and rural history website is dedicated to celebrating and digitizing the last 150 years of success in the Canadian agriculture and food industry. The agriculture and food industries in Canada have a rich heritage of innovation, and have laid a foundation of excellence upon which we continue to grow. We celebrate Canada’s food and agriculture innovations on these pages.

Haymaking at the Ontario Agricultural College

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED | JUNE 30, 1912 | THE FARMER'S ADVOCATE

Our system of making hay varies considerably with the conditions under which we are working. Some years hay will cure much more quickly than others, owing to differences in weather conditions or in the rankness of the growth. We seldom cut red clover until it is in full bloom. In favorable weather is is usually cut one day, and drawn to the barn the following day. It is very rank and full of

This cartoon originally appeared in the May 1934 issue of The Farmer. It was intended to be a humorous satire of the proposed National Products Marketing Act, which was

This is an example of an iron post hole digger of the “clamshell digger” variety, so named because of shape of the blades. Unlike modern variants which

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One-Sided Trade is Hopeless

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED | OCTOBER 1933 | THE FARMER

Recently one of the leading Toronto daily newspapers devoted two editorials to urging the people of this country to take advantage of the export trade with Great Britain opened up to them through the Empire agreements in Ottawa last year. The writer of the editorials particularly emphasized the possibilities open to the Canadian farmer through these agreements. As he phrased it “The

Brenda Lammens

SEPTEMBER 19, 1955 - FEBRUARY 11, 2017

Farmer and industry leader. Born Sept. 19, 1955; died Feb. 11, 2017 in Woodstock, age 61.

Interest rate challenges 30 years ago led Norfolk County farmers Brenda and Raymond Lammens to their Spearit Farms asparagus operation near Langton.

That decision led, in turn, to Brenda’s distinguished career as a champion of fresh, local produce and her advocacy for a higher profile for women in agriculture. Brenda was a past winner of the American Agri-Women Vision Award. She also served, in 2007, as the second female Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers’

Charles A. Zavitz

1863 - 1942

Little is known of Charles A. Zavitz’s early life save for his birth in Coldstream Ontario, 1863. By the 1880s however he had left Middlesex County for the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph, Ontario. In 1887 the University of Toronto agreed to issue Bachelor of Science in Agriculture degrees to a select and competent class of O.A.C. diploma graduates. One of only five inaugural graduates Zavitz quickly secured employment at the school as the assistant superintendent of experiments.

During his first years Zavitz conducted valuable research and secured the construction

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News from our rich agriculture history

Haymaking at the Ontario Agricultural College

Kin I Sow Oats

POST HOLE DIGGER

One-Sided Trade is Hopeless

lives lived

Brenda Lammens

Charles A. Zavitz