We’re excited to see the amount of farmers that are using social media outlets to tell their stories about farming. Here’s a great article from the July 12 edition of the Calgary Herald that features once such farmer. We’re now following her on Twitter and hope you will too! – OFAC

Cowgirl blogger; A farmer’s wife tackles social media
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Cathryn Hagel can milk a cow and drive a tractor. She helps brand her family’s cattle and she’s chased a coyote or two.

And just for fun, she and her family bought a team of draught horses last year. Y’know: the great big ones that pull wagons filled with people.

But she’s no country bumpkin. Not at all. She’s part of a small but growing number of farm women reaching out to each other and beyond, with the help of social media such as Facebook, Twitter and blogging.

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Posted by OFAC on July 12th, 2010 :: Filed under Animal care, Beef cattle, Canada, Education and public awareness, Farm life, Horses, Sustainability of the family farm

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The following is a guest post written for us by Lilian from Food and Farming Canada.

Most of us have very little knowledge of where our food comes from or how it is produced. As a result, misinformation is widely circulated in many different forms – so to get to the real scoop on what’s going on, there’s no one better to ask than a farmer himself.

I had the chance recently to visit with Brent, who raises turkeys on his farm in south-western Ontario, and seized the opportunity to pepper him with questions about one of my favourite holiday meats, turkey.

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Posted by OFAC on May 26th, 2010 :: Filed under Animal care, Family vs factory farming, Farm life, Food safety, Poultry, Sustainability of the family farm
Tags :: animal welfare, antibiotics, corporate farming, food safety, Ontario, turkey

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Farmers must take the lead on animal welfare – their livelihoods depend on it. We like this article, published recently in the Guelph Mercury newspaper, that discusses this fact and a recent national funding announcement designed to take animal welfare even further in Canada – OFAC

Farmers understand benefits of animal welfare
Guelph Mercury
Owen Roberts
May 10, 2010

Healthy animals are profitable animals. And for farmers, profitability is the bottom line. Farmers who treat their animals poorly can face veterinarian bills, and other costly problems – such as a turned-off, unsupportive public. But right now, for the most part, consumers are on farmers’ side. And farmers aim to keep it that way.

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Posted by OFAC on May 20th, 2010 :: Filed under Animal care, Animal health, Canada, Farm life, Innovation and technology, Media, Research

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Posted by AFAC – We’ve had a few successive “soft” winters, but this year we’re starting off with what’s looking like one of the old fashioned kind. November has been overcast, blustery, quite cool, and we have nearly two feet (60 cm. plus) of snow on the level in our neck of the woods. Good sleighing – poor trucking!

Recollecting life on the homestead in northeast Saskatchewan in the early 1940’s, I remember bands of horses ranging free in winter, travelling through the yard, and on to the stubble fields or next hay meadow. In the spring, “winter lumberjacks” would become “summer stubble jumpers“, catching up and laying claim to an outfit for seeding, haying, bindering, stook threshing, perhaps hauling wood, before turning the horses loose, and themselves heading back to the winter bush camps. We had our feed stacks fenced in next to the barn, protected and handy for Mom and her wee boys to feed our own stock, horses haltered and housed, handled and hitched every day. Quite a contrast, but those running out and those stabled in all seemed to prosper! I’m recounting this because it seems we are now in an age of “free expression” on standards of equine care. “Those who think they know may be a source of some annoyance to those of you who do!”

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Posted by AFAC on January 8th, 2010 :: Filed under Farm life, Horses, Uncategorized

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January 6, 2010 – Happy New Year to the readers of this blog. This article was printed in the Toronto Star over the holiday season and we think this columnist got the issue exactly right. Farm animals aren’t pets and they definitely aren’t 4-legged people. And, with only 1 in every 46 Canadians now actively farming, there is a huge disconnect between farmers and consumers. Enjoy the read – OFAC

The annoying tendency to anthropomorphize animals is likely from our lost connection to rural life

by Connie Woodcock, Out There

Toronto Sun, December 20, 2009

When I was a little girl, I fell in love with a series of books about a pig named Freddy and his barnyard friends on the Bean farm in New York State.

I read every one of the 26 books available in my library over and over. I can remember peering at a New York road map in search of fictional Centerboro, the town supposedly nearest Freddy and his friends.

Written between the 1920s and 1950s, the Freddy books disappeared for a while but they were republished a few years ago and there’s even an association called The Friends of Freddy with its own website. I’ve bought several Freddy reprints and reread them still.

I mention this because much as I loved Freddy, Mrs, Wiggins the cow, Hank the horse with rheumatism in his hind leg, and Charles the henpecked rooster, we all grow up and realize there’s no such thing as a talking animal. At least, most of us do.

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Posted by OFAC on January 6th, 2010 :: Filed under Activism, Canada, Consumers, Education and public awareness, Farm life, Sustainability of the family farm
Tags :: activists, animal care, animal welfare, Canada, Consumers, Farmers, misconceptions, PETA

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December 24, 2009 – In the spirit of Christmas, we don’t think this article could say it any better. The author, Jeanine Moyer, was raised on an Ontario farm and is one of the winners of the Guelph Mercury Christmas story contest. We think Jeanine captured the essence, exactly, of Christmas on a Canadian livestock farm. Merry Christmas to all. – OFAC

Farm families have special Christmas traditions
 GuelphMercury.com – News – December 21, 2009

Christmas is the holiday for traditions. Growing up, we knew our family had several Christmas traditions such as leaving milk and cookies out for Santa, hanging stockings and attending church on Christmas Eve. It wasn’t until we were in our early teens that my siblings and I began to understand just how different our family was and that our Christmas traditions were different from most.

Growing up as the seventh generation on our family farm, my sisters, brother and I knew we were different from most families, and for some reason it always seemed most apparent at Christmastime.

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Posted by OFAC on December 24th, 2009 :: Filed under Beef cattle, Farm life, Sustainability of the family farm
Tags :: animal care, animals, Canada, Farmers

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There’s been plenty of news headlines in the last year about the Canadian recession. We like this article – that focuses on how the recession in agriculture has been going on for much, much longer. – OFAC

We can’t abandon farmers to economic insecurity
Guelph Mercury, December 10 2009
By Lilian Schaer
 
http://news.guelphmercury.com/Opinions/EditorialOpinion/article/572775
It’s been about a year since we were plunged into financial crisis and economic uncertainty. In response, governments in many countries, including Canada, went to unprecedented lengths to protect jobs, stimulate growth and reassure nervous citizens.

Here at home, signs of recovery are emerging. We see the economic action plan at work in our communities and every one of us is now a proud part owner of an automaker. But there’s one sector that still desperately needs support – one that is just as important and just as significant as cars, roads or bridges. And that’s agriculture.

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Posted by OFAC on December 24th, 2009 :: Filed under Farm life, Sustainability of the family farm
Tags :: sustainability

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There’s a lot to think about when moving to the country. Sometimes the reality is very different than the dream although most farmers work hard to get to know their non-farm neighbours and explain to them the processes that must happen for a farm to run smoothly. We like the way this writer from the Cornwall Standard-Freeholder explores this conundrum.

The realities of rural life
The Cornwall Standard-Freeholder
Wed Oct 28 2009
Page: 3
Section: News
Byline: ANGELA DORIE;
Column: Over The Farm Gate
Over the years, the balance of those dwelling and working in rural Ontario has changed… and not necessarily for the better. Presently less than 1 per cent of the rural population are actual farmers as defined by the “Farming and Food Production Protection Act” ( FFPPA) and many conflicts arise between them and the non-farmers.

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Posted by OFAC on December 24th, 2009 :: Filed under Farm life, Innovation and technology, Regulations, Uncategorized

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By Dairy Herd news source  |  Friday, October 30, 2009

Mike Rowe, host of the show “Dirty Jobs” on the Discovery Channel, has been trying to separate myth from reality when it comes to farming and many other occupations in this country.

“Anybody from a city, in my opinion, who spends a day, a week, maybe even just a few hours on a working farm is going to be quickly disabused of a lot of what they believe,” Rowe told AgriTalk radio host Mike Adams last week.

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Posted by BCFACC on November 4th, 2009 :: Filed under Activism, Animal health, Consumers, Education and public awareness, Farm life, Media

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Steve Buist, Hamilton Spectator, 2008.06.07

I left the Great Lakes packing plant on May 12 with four boxes of meat piled onto the back seat of my car. Piggy — my pig, the pig I had helped raise and care for — was packed inside those boxes.

Six months of his life, six months of my life, all reduced to four cardboard boxes on my back seat.

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Posted by Admin on July 23rd, 2009 :: Filed under Canada, Consumers, Farm life, Pork
Tags :: Consumers, Farmers, Media, Ontario, pigs, Pork

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