Sustainable Farming in Ontario

[jayt90]

For about a year, I have been ordering beef, pork, and sausages, packaged and frozen, from beefconnections.ca

This is a group of farmers in central Ontario who pool their resources, and deliver packages of frozen meat from their farms to the Toronto area every three months.

They raise their animals in near organic conditions; one of them is certified organic, at a higher price. In late June I was able to visit one of the farmers, Robert Huber, and look at his operation.

While old fashioned, Mr. Huber is on the leading edge of modern farming, without any precepts or concerns about factory farming. In fact, his 700 acres provide sustainable food for the 300-400 pigs and cattle on the farm. I'll describe some of the new methods used as we go through the barns and fields.

Here is a new friend as we walked through a pig barn

The pigs are Durocs, but Berkshires are being started in response to discerning consumers. Here are some newborns under a heat lamp

And some a few days older

The pigs are raised in spacious pens cleaned daily with fresh straw from the farm. Some have outdoor access; they are destined for a health food market.

They are raised on grain meal grown on the farm, including soy meal from Huber's extruder. The temperature of this meal makes soy digestible for pigs. Oddly, no one else in the province is doing this.

This is Robert Huber with one of his boars

I was able to walk through the barns in shorts and sandals, and the smell was not bad at all. The high density pig farms elsewhere in Ontario have an unbearable stench, and this can get into the meat.

Cattle are a mainstay of the operation, and English breeds are raised. You can see their freshly baled hay in the background.

Here is a young animal

And another

Mr. Huber has an innovative method of planting peas with his grains, which includes wheat, barley, oats and flax. The combine is able to pick up the peas with the grains, and the mixture of grains and peas is very nutritious for the animals.

I left the farm with some free range brown eggs, a summer sausage, and some steaks I had requested, all butchered under Federal inspection.

Here is a skirt steak from Huber's beefconnections.ca

A fitting end to a fine farm visit.

Edited July 1, 2007 by jayt90 (log)

[Magictofu]

Thanks for this very nice piece.

[Dianne]

Good piece, Jay.

[jayt90]

I forgot to mention that Mr Huber has an innovative fuel programme for the farm machinery. He spends $7000 per year on diesel fuel and that cost keeps rising.

He is planting a 13 acre field with canola, and plans to harvest the oil and prepare it for diesel machines and tractors. The crop will not support that kind of price on the canola market, as Ontario oil is inferior to western Canadian canola. But the machines are fine with it.