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Mechanical sod. cutter has made the work much easier than a few years ago when sods were cu and rolled by hand. I -- ® Pearl Irene Bilbey (nee ~ Wright) of Kinston, North Carolina died on July 10th, 1978 in the Hahnemann Hos- pital, Philadelphia, Pennsyl- vania after a short final illness brought on by cancer # that she had been battling for some years. Pearl was born in Black- stock on the 5th of January, 1923, the first born of Isa- bella, and Carl Wright, She ;- was a Thember oT the M ca - Church and graduated from the Public and High Schools in Blackstock. She attended Secretarial College in Toron- to and obtained two gold ¢edals for typing. After- wards she became a legal secretary and then a private secretary to the president of Household Finance Com- pany. On the 18th of June, 1960 she married Douglas Bilbey a physician and then profes- sor at the University of Toronto. The Rev. Philip Romeril officiated at the § service. The couple spent a ° - five months honeymoon tour- ing the States and Canada before settling in London, England. In 1965 they re- turned to Canada to work in Toronto and then to open a practice in British Columbia. In 1971, they were admitted to the United States, where they spent some years in Las Vegas, Nevada and lately settled in North Carolina. It was some few years ago that Pearl was aware of a cancer and she bravely fought the disease without making her condition widely known. In the last year she 'stayed in London, England in order to receive treatment at the Royal Marsden Hospital. During a short vacatitn in Philadelphia she exper- ienced breathlessness and was admitted to hospital where she died suddenly. Pearl leaves a gap in the lives of her family and all who knew her. She had a -gefmie mawre and a serene presence. She was a lady in the true sense and her favor- ite saying was "I would , rather have doors opened for me and be offered a seat on the bus than become 'a liberated female'."' She was accepted in all company and was a geat Royalist, her delight was having been present at four garden par- ties at the Palace in London and attending as a guest, other Royal functions. She was proud of her Canadian heritage and of -her Anglo- Irish-Scottish forebears who pioneered this great country. Itis customary to say good things about people after they have gone, but every- thing that can be said about Pearl has been said during her lifetime. markable beyond compare. Patience was her great vir- tue and the wisdom of Solomon her hallmark. She believed that the quality of life was more important than the quantity, and that to exist as an incurable invalid was unacceptable to her. Mercifully her final illness She was re-. OBITUARY- Pearl Irene Bilbey was short and she died with a dignity. She was dearly loved. by her father-in-law, Victor Bil- beysand her late mother-in- law Dorothy, who paradoxi- cally expressed the opinion that "She was far too good for their son." Pearl had a very full life and was well known for her -artistic ability and success as a hostess. She travelled extensively around the world and made friends throughout her life. She was a wonderful wife, a loving daughter and a true Christian. She is survived by her husband Douglas Bilbey, her parents Isabella and Carl Wright, sisters Kathleen (Mrs. Dalton Dorrell) and Dorothy (Mrs. James Mar- tow), nieces Nancy (Mrs. William Dickson), Leanne (Mrs.-James Wills), Heather - Dorrell and Janice Dorrell, nephew Frederick Marlow, and grandniece.Laura Mills. The service was held at McDermott - Panabaker Funeral Home, Port Perry, the Rev. Philip Romerill officiating. Burial was at the Union Cemetery Cartwright on the 13th 8f July, 1978. Pallbearers were William Dickson, Wallace Holmes; ° Harold Kite, Neil Malcolm, Merril Van Camp, and James Wills. Flower bearers were John Barton, Douglas Hogg, and "Ivan Thompson. The Blackstock U.C. Ww. 'organized the refreshments. "The World's Heaven's gain." loss is smile PORT PERRY STAR -- Wednesday, July 19, 1978 -- 29 The sod farm "Another kind of agriculture When you say the word farm, most people quickly think of food production. But for 'the past 20 years Vallie Lovering has been operating a different kind of farm on his 125 acres along * Highway 12 just north of the 6th Concession in Scugog Township. His farm product doesn't end up on the dinner table, but instead graces the back and front yards of homes all over Scugog ¥and several other communities. Mr. Lovering is a sod farmer, something he has "been doing since, 1951, when he first went-to work for somebody else, cutting sods by. hand, rolling them the same way, and getting paid $12 a day for his labour. But like many proudly in- dependent men, he soon decided that if he was going to work hard at something, _ he might as well get into business for himself. Talking to Mr. Loverivg about his sod business, one quickly gets the impression that he is very proud ot the fact he hasbeen his own boss for nearly 20 years; indepen- dent, and successful. "People laughed at me,' he.told-the Star in an inter- view last week. "They said a sod fagrm- would never work, I'd be out of business in a couple of years. Well I'm still here, "' he said with a -------- When he bought the land in 1959 in partnership with his brother it didn't have much "going for it, rough, filled with rocks and willows. "We cut the willows, cleared them, and then graded, and gra- ded, and graded," he recalls. And when he planted Ms first four acres of grass seed get somebody to plow the land because he didn't own a plow. When the first sods were ready to come off, they were cut by hand with an implement that cost about $5. Things have changed. There is now almost 100 acres of green sod, and the "cutting is done with a special automatic machine that costs nearly $20,000. While the work is still hard, the automatic machinery now makes it possible for two* men to cut and pile as much as 5000 square yards of sod in a single day. Although he has experi- mented with different kinds of grass seed, almost. all is Marion, a variety of Ken- tucky blue grass. While sod can be taken off about a year after seeding, Mr. Lovering prefers to wait for two years because it really needs that length of time to mature But waiting too long can present problems as the roots may go too deep to allow the sod to be cut off. Like any.farm cr op a lot of work is necessary before the harvest. Prior to seeding, the land must be chisel plowed, cultivated, har- rowed and levelled. As all gardeners know, grass is vulnerable to any number of weeds, so spraying is also an important part of the opera- tion. . And there are things that. "especially tough with large a year or two later, he had to" can't be controlled, such. as winter kill, and Mr. Lovering said that this past winter was patches of kill showing up * this spring. The dry weather we've been having recently is also having a detrimental , effect, and last week Mr. Lovering was forced to irri- "gate for the first time in - ment down by several years. On the average, an acre yields about 4500 square yards of sod. The sods are cut in pieces 81 inches long, 16 inches wide, each weigh- ing about 40 pounds. They are shipped on skids made up of 80 square yards of sod. " BUSINESS SLOW . The sod business in 1978' is not as good as it was a couple of years ago, due mainly to the downswing in construc- tion of new homes. In fact, last year the farm shipped about 60,000 square yards of sod in the first six weeks, while in 1978. a wet soring and late starts has cut ship- half that amount. i . we've had in a long time," said Mr. Lovering. And it is a long way oft the boom years of 1974-7 Mr. Loveri ing is a bit philo- * sophical about the slowdown this year. It keeps expenses down, -he hasn't-had to hire any extra help, he probably won't have to do any seeding this- fall, so the bottom line may not be all that bad. And despite the fact that business is off this year, he remains optimistic. "I've had a good living for 20 years out of this business. Where else could a guy like me, with grade 7 education, do as well? I'm not going to go hungry, and I could have been. a lot worse. off." As sod farms go, 125 acres is not considered a large operation. Mr. Lovering equipment of all kinds tied up in the farm. And after quoting--the price of $14,00 which he paid for the farm back in 1939, he quickly adds, "I wouldn't take ten times that much for the land to- day." ~ Rolled sods coming off the machine are stacked in skids for Shipthey by truck to the customer. 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