A large brown enveloped addressed to me with my cottage address on it had some real gems inside. There is no mail service at the cottage but Canada Post knows my farm address having lived here for 47 years. It was delivered just like that — no additional wording needed.
The envelope came from a woman in Sauble Beach, Ont., which is on Lake Huron. There was a short note inside with numerous clippings about Renfrew County in the 1960s from The Family Herald. She wrote: Hello Maynard, Been a long time reader of your columns….I have a large collection of old Ontario farm magazines. When I saw the article you did on Frank Dench a few years ago I decided to copy a few on Dench for you and put them in an envelope and they just kept on growing! Lots of treasures in those old magazines. Keep writing and enjoy!
The kind woman, whom I didn’t know and had never met, had photo-copied 15 articles from The Family Herald for me. I thanked her. She said she knew I’d appreciate them. Most of the articles were about farming in the mid to late 1960s in Renfrew County. One from August 19, 1965 is entitled: Hard Lessons in the Drought. It has a photo of Ag. Rep. Frank Dench, a photo of Ray Elliott of Renfrew using an irrigation pump to irrigate his alfalfa forage crop, and an Arnprior farmer walking in his oat field. The article deals with the drought years experienced here in the mid-1960s.
An interesting paragraph reads as follows: The problem of obtaining hay has sent farmers scurrying all over Ontario for supplies. At Pembroke, Harry Wilson, who maintains a herd of some 100 purebred Ayrshire cattle, went 240 miles to buy hay in the field at $10 per ton. He moved his entire machinery operation and trucks to the site to get the fodder he needs.
There was plenty of rainfall and hay was good in northern Ontario so Harry obviously went to the New Liskeard area to get his hay.
Another article on the drought entitled Three Who Skirted the Drought from The Family Herald of September 30, 1965 has a photo of George Nesbitt of Glasgow Station at his feedlot.
The most interesting article is a two-page feature with 13 photos of an auction sale conducted by Ken Eckford of Forester’s Falls at the farm home of Mr. and Mrs. John T. Burchat of R.R.1, Douglas. The farm had been sold to Allan and his son Barton Kurth. The article was featured in The Family Herald on Oct. 12, 1967.
Photos show Eckford at work and his two busy clerks — retired schoolmaster, Willis Hawkins and retired farmer, Percy Brown.
More on that sale in an upcoming column. If you have old feature articles you don’t want anymore, send them to me at 2196 Foy Rd., Renfrew, Ont. K7V 3Z5.
