By Mary-Ellen Kirby

Local Journalism Initiative

     Have you ever – literally or figuratively – painted yourself into a corner? I will never forget the first time that happened to me. As a very young and much too-cool-for-the-country adolescent, I made the mistake of complaining to my mother about how tragically bored I was, stuck on our stinky farm with nothing to do. With a sympathetic pat on the shoulder and a big smile, she assured me she could solve my problem. She left me sulking in my corner and disappeared. I was sure she would come back in clean clothes, ready to take me shopping in Sherbrooke. I could almost hear the exciting, new Carrefour de L’Estrie mall calling my name! When she returned a scant few minutes later, not only was she still wearing her chore clothes, but she was also carrying a broom and dustpan, a pail of hot, soapy water and a rag. Still beaming her big smile, she confessed that she was glad to hear that I had so much free time on my hands. She explained that because Dad needed her help outside so often, she had gotten behind in the housework and the living room floor was in desperate need of a good scrubbing.

   “Move the furniture and give the floor a good sweep, then wash it and when it dries, you can wax it, too. The floor wax and cloth are under the kitchen sink.” Stunned into silence, all I could do was nod. In those days, children simply did not talk back to their parents. That floor got the best sweeping of its life: the more I swept, the madder I got. I sloshed that hot, soapy water around and scrubbed till the pattern nearly came off the old linoleum, my sense of injustice building by the second. By the time the floor dried, I had worked myself into a fine lather of martyred indignation. In high dudgeon, I grabbed the can of floor wax from under the kitchen sink and, mumbling and muttering under my breath about the unfairness of it all, proceeded to power wax the living room floor. On my hands and knees, oblivious in all my righteous fury, I laid down a goodly coat of paste wax in warp speed – from the kitchen door right into the proverbial corner. So, there I sat: seething – or “stewing in my own juice” as my father would have said – waiting for the wax to dry enough for me to escape my self-imposed prison. It was a formative moment.

    I have been pondering painted-in corners and self-imposed prisons frequently of late. When I contemplate the subtle but alarming changes to the pastoral landscape of my beloved Eastern Townships, I get that same sinking feeling of rueful recognition. It appears obvious to me that we have been painting ourselves into a corner – agriculturally speaking – for quite some time now. Many of the picturesque villages and quaint hamlets set in gently rolling hills that make the Townships so attractive seem to have fallen on hard times; they are mere ghosts of their former bustling selves. In the village where I attended elementary school, there were two schools, two grocery stores, two hotel/bars, two banks, two gas stations, four churches, a post office, a grist mill, a lumber mill, a doctor’s office and several other small enterprises. Today, the only things still standing are one school, one gas station, one hotel/bar and the post office. We have added a depanneur and a restaurant and while three of the four churches remain open, their congregations have shrunk considerably.

   The decline is obvious, but what is not so obvious is the underlying reason for that decline. To grasp the root cause, a trip into the surrounding countryside is in order. In a five-mile radius around that village were 30-40 small dairy farms. The farm children went to school in the village, the farmers bought fuel and rubber boots and nails and baler twine and fencing wire and animal feed and groceries in the village; they went to dances on Saturday night and church on Sunday morning. The farmers sat on town council, volunteered at church, school, charitable and civic organizations, contributed to fund-raisers and organized events: they were the backbone of that community. In that same five-mile radius today, I can count the dairy farms on the fingers of my two hands…and still have fingers left over. So, where did all the farmers go? Like many simple questions, this one has a complex answer. I think one factor was the burden of increasing government interference: many farmers simply quit because they got tired of jumping through ever more onerous regulatory hoops. The rise of the Parti Québécois also played a role: some farmers just packed up and headed for more Anglo-friendly jurisdictions. Then there is the sad fact that fewer farm kids wanted to take over from their parents so that retirement-aged farmers had no option but to sell off the family farm. The pressures – both natural and man-made – exerted on farmers are formidable, no wonder there are so few applicants for the job.

   In our current agricultural landscape, small family-friendly farms have largely passed away and with them, our once vibrant village life. The farmland itself hasn’t disappeared; it has merely been swallowed up by increasingly larger farms who practice the ‘bigger is better’ business model. But the economic spin-offs from one large farm/farmer simply can’t make up for the loss of numerous small farm families: not in our schools, not in our churches, not in our villages. When numbered companies and foreign investor groups with deep pockets can swoop in and buy up large swaths of agricultural land, it prices our own real farmers out of the market.   Not so long ago, buying a farm – becoming a farmer – was an attainable goal in the Townships. A young farmer could be reasonably certain, that with good management, the farm would pay for itself and could be passed down to the next generation. Alas, this is increasingly rare.

   I was never very good at math, but it seems to me that when it is no longer feasible to buy a farm and pay for it by farming it, we have a huge problem. Land speculators produce nothing edible. When Townships farmland leaves the hands of real Townships farmers, our food sovereignty is diminished, our communities contract and ultimately, these beautiful Eastern Townships are tarnished by the losses. And so, dear reader, I think we have arrived at the corner of this conundrum.  We can see our predicament and we can even see how we got in this mess; what we can’t see is an easy way out of this uncomfortably tight corner. Whatever the answers are, I’m certain it won’t be as simple as waiting for the paint – or wax – to dry.

Mary-Ellen KIrby writes from her small farm in Bulwer, where she lives with her husband (a.k.a. the Shepherd), their dog, assorted barn cats, a motley collection of sheep, chickens, pigs and a donkey named Millie.