by Patricia Grotenhuis
Starting up a business is challenging, and starting up a farm is no different. Add in an international component and it becomes more challenging yet.
Not all farmers take over the family farm. Amy Cronin and her husband Mike were both raised on dairy farms but became hog farmers after they married. Thanks to a lot of hard work, the farm has grown and expanded, with farms in both Ontario and Iowa.
Cronin and her six year old daughter Emmy are featured in the 2012 Faces of Farming Calendar published by the Farm Care Foundation. Their page was sponsored by Molesworth Farm Supply because of Cronin’s work on the farm and in the industry.
Amy and Emmy - the faces of April
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Posted by Farm and Food Care on April 4th, 2012 :: Filed under
Animal care,
Canada,
Faces of Farming,
Family vs factory farming,
Farm life,
Pigs,
PorkTags ::
agriculture,
animals,
Canada,
farm,
Farmers,
Ontario,
pigs,
Pork
by Patricia Grotenhuis
A summer job for the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food during university led to a life-long love and a diverse business for Cathy McKay. McKay is featured in the 2012 Faces of Farming calendar published by the Farm Care Foundation.
Cathy McKay
McKay’s page is sponsored by the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers’ Association. She’s the first apple grower to ever appear in the annual calendar that features the faces and stories of some of Ontario’s farmers.
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Posted by Farm and Food Care on February 22nd, 2012 :: Filed under
Canada,
Consumers,
Education and public awareness,
Faces of Farming,
Farm life,
Innovation and technology,
UncategorizedTags ::
agriculture,
Consumers,
education,
Farmers,
Ontario
By Leslie Ballentine, Farming and food commentator
It isn’t only wealthy benefactors and government agencies that help with hunger relief. Farmers help in many ways too. On September 30 at 12 noon, Ontario farmers will jump on 100 combines on a Perth County farm to set a world record soybean harvest. Five farmers from the Listowel/Monktonarea have planted a 160-acre field of soybeans with a goal of harvesting all 10,000 bushels it in less than 10 minutes. Their hope is to raise $200,000 by auctioning the soybeans at the site right after the record-breaking attempt.
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Posted by FFC on September 20th, 2011 :: Filed under
Crops,
Faces of Farming,
Feeding the world,
FoodTags ::
agriculture,
farm,
Farmers,
Ontario
By Leslie Ballentine, Farming and food commentator
The over-used term “factory farm” never seems to be defined. Many farmers and others who work in the agriculture business consider it an insulting term, much like a racial slur that shouldn’t be tolerated. Here is what one farmer thinks.
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Posted by FFC on March 23rd, 2011 :: Filed under
Animal care,
Education and public awareness,
Family vs factory farming,
Letters to the Editor,
Sustainability of the family farmTags ::
agriculture,
animals,
farm,
Farmers,
Housing,
Ontario
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 FFC on May 26th, 2010 :: Filed under
Animal care,
Family vs factory farming,
Farm life,
Food safety,
Poultry,
Sustainability of the family farmTags ::
animal welfare,
antibiotics,
corporate farming,
food safety,
Ontario,
turkey
Steve Buist, Hamilton Spectator, 2021.06.07
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 FFC on July 23rd, 2009 :: Filed under
Canada,
Consumers,
Farm life,
PorkTags ::
Consumers,
Farmers,
Media,
Ontario,
pigs,
Pork
Steve Buist, Hamilton Spectator, 2021.06.06
The use of battery-powered electric prods to get hogs moving is a controversial animal welfare issue.
The prod is poked into the back or rump of the pig and with a push of a button, a flash of electric current jumps between two contacts. It’s enough to elicit a loud squeal in some pigs.
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Posted by FFC on July 23rd, 2009 :: Filed under
Meat/slaughter plants,
Pork,
TransportationTags ::
animal welfare,
economics,
labeling,
meat,
Ontario,
pigs,
Pork
Steve Buist, Hamilton Spectator, 2021.05.28
Six months, 250 pounds. That’s Piggy’s destiny in life.01 At first, he’ll double his weight in a few days, then it will double in a week, then every couple of weeks, then every month. It’s incredible, isn’t it, to think that a barnyard animal is capable of growing so large, so quickly.
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Posted by FFC on July 22nd, 2009 :: Filed under
Canada,
Education and public awareness,
Farm life,
PorkTags ::
animal welfare,
artificial insemination,
Farmers,
meat,
Ontario,
pigs,
Pork,
Research
Luisa D’Amato, Waterloo Region Record, 02 Aug 2021
It’s Sandi’s turn to be milked.
She stands patiently in the barn, her pale-pink udder bulging between her long legs, as dairy farmer Terry Lebold wipes her teats with antibacterial solution and attaches four suction cups to them.
Within five minutes, about 20 litres of milk has been vacuumed out of her, the white liquid whirling through transparent plastic tubes. Lebold touches her hind flank lightly, disconnects the machine and quickly dips her teats in a reddish iodine solution to prevent infection.
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Posted by FFC on July 22nd, 2009 :: Filed under
Canada,
Dairy cattle,
Farm life,
VealTags ::
agriculture,
Canada,
Consumers,
dairy cattle,
Farmers,
food,
milk,
Ontario
Food For Thought looks at how we use hens as protein factories to produce an egg a day for our tables
By Luisa D’Amato, Waterloo Region Record, 05 Jul 2021
When you walk into the long, dimly lit barn where Gary West keeps 25,000 egg-laying hens, the first thing you notice is the sound.
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Posted by FFC on July 22nd, 2009 :: Filed under
Education and public awareness,
PoultryTags ::
eggs,
Farmers,
free range,
Ontario,
Poultry
