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iii RETR man IC" wa Al wit AMADA SRE NUP Ron a RG I a cy EN Ss ET eB stad 6 hii i ro Taint th RAYS kiN Rael iis esd En EARP NE Cr ir PORT PERRY STAR -- Tuesday, July 23, 1985 -- 21 Working at Sharview Farm with Chap and son Day in and day out, the A a | barn lights still on early The following is another in the Port Perry Star's summer series of how people make a liv- ing, and what their work- ing day is like. Last Fri- day morning, Star editor John B. McClelland visited Sharview Farm, just south of the Prince Albert School. Gerald "*Chap" Jones and son Steve were doing the morning chores and the first milking of the day of their 40 registered Hols- teins. He watched, chat- ted with Chap and Steve about dairy farming and took a few notes. Let me say at the outset that I'm a bear in the morning. Most days I'm lucky if my brain kicks into gear by 9:00 AM. Last Friday morning, as I drove into the yard at Sharview Farm, I didn't even notice the morning sun breaking through clouds in the east. It was a few minutes after 6:00, and | was trying to shake the cob webs from my sleep- starved head. Chap and Steve were standing outside the milk-house waiting for me, and waiting to get on with the morning milk- ing. The kettle was boil- ing and Steve poured three cups of coffee. I was grateful for rot on ly did it taste good, it helped wake me up. As we stood in the milk-house sipping cof- fee and chatting, I look- ed around at the 800 gallon bulk milk tank, ww # - -r, x - ind: va Re # vw at ol INE Tad vint; the pumps and hoses, the six milking units that soon would be taking the fluid from 40 full udders. Steve prepared two pails of an iodine solution used to clean the udders just prior to milking as an anti-bacteria prevention. With the coffee finish- ed, they started to get on with the task at hand. Chap slid open doors at the back of the barn and 40 Holsteins ambled in. They hardly needed any prodding at all as they moved into place in front of the stanchions. A light steel chain around the neck of each animal was clipped to the stanchion to limit movement. As the animals munch- ed on fresh hay, Steve filled a cart with a pro- tein supplement mixture of corn and soy, and put about a shovel-full into the trough in front of the animals. Chap swept loose straw and fresh manure into the gutter trough. Flow Motion As the actual milking got underway, I noticed there is a kind of motion and flow to it all. Chap and Steve each work a row of cows, using three milking units at a time. The units are simply attached to the teats of the cow. A pulsing action creates a kind of on-off vacuum which gently squeezes out the milk. It "uns through the tubing to an over-head pipe and 1s pumped into the large bulk tank in the milk: house. Chap has been milking cows for nearly 40 years. Steve grew up on the farm, and joined his father full time about five years ago. Watching them go about the job, one almost gets the im- pression they could do it blind-folded. The udders is wiped clean with the iodine solution, the milking unit goes on, and it seems to take no more than a few minutes before the udder 1s empty, the unit remov- ed and placed on the next cow in the line. As Chap moves quick- ly and easily along the line of cows, we talk about farming and dairy farming in particular. It's in his blood. He's never really known anything else but farm- ing. His family owned a dairy and mixed farm in what is now Highland Creek, east of Toronto. The 401 split that farm down the middle, then in the mid-60's part of the land was expropriated for a housing development. Chap went to work for the public utilities, but after a couple of years of that, he'd had enough. He bought the Sharview Farm in 1968 and with his wife Andrea and a young family, he went back to what he knows best: the land. "You have to like far- ming to be in it these days. The mornings are great, I don't have to sit in any traffic jam or Steve and Chap outside the milk-house after completing the mor- ning milking and chores last Friday. watch for red lights to get to work in the barn," he says with a smile. Like most farmers, he takes pride in his self- sufficiency. When machinery breaks down, he does his own repairs; same goes for carpentry, welding, wiring and so on. Calling someone out to the farm to do work like that is too costly. Headaches? Sharview is 150 acres, all of it planted in corn, hay and grain. And it takes that 150 acres to feed the 40 milkers and 60 young and dry cows, day in and day out all year long. Chap says he doesn't have to buy feed other than the supplements. What's the biggest headache a farmer faces? "There are a lot of things that can cause a farmer headaches, but you can't worry about them all the time. "If 1 worried about everything I'd end up in the hospital," he answers. But because he grows just about everything the animals eat, he does say that a crop failure would be really tough. "Farming," he said, "1s nnt something for worriers."' He's pleased that son Steve has come into the business with him, and says he hopes that even- tually the farm will be able to support one or both of his other two sons as well. Sharview underwent a pretty extensive expan- sion about five years ago, with up-dated equipment and an enlarged herd. Chap says he's still pay- ing the debts for that. As he neared the end of the milking. he stopped for a minute and mused about selling off everything. taking the money and living off the interest "You still have to get up In the morning, whether vou're milking cows or not." he said, dismissing the thought of selling out Sull. farming as an ex- pensive business While dairy farmers. with tight production quotas gover ning the industry. may be better off than other agriculture sectors where there are wild price fluctuations. costs of everything continue to £0 up Buying more milk quota. for example Chap did some quick arithmatic and said that to add five more milking cows. the cost of buying the necessary quota (from the Milk Mark- eting Board) would be about $30,000 For a person to go out and start a dairy farm from scratch. buy the herd, the quota. the land. oo -- AG Chap Jones gets set to go to work on one of the 40 Holsteins at Sharview Farms in Prince Albert. all the equipment, a house and the buildings, the price tag could easi- ly be a million dollars. Farming, of course, is changing all the time. Automation has taken some of the back- breaking work out of it, but the hours are still long, especially at this time of the year Last Friday morning, Chap was looking at the weather and hoping he could get at the second cut of hay, if it didn't rain. And those 40 head of Holstein would be back in the barn about 5:00 in the afternoon for another milking, just like they are every day, 365 days of the year Chap says that with two of them handling the chores, it's pretty easy for either Steve or himself to 'get away fishing" for a day or two But even during the times of the year when they're not plowing or planting or taking crops off. there 1s always something to fill the time between milkings With the morning milking over. the cattle are let out of the barn. the milking equipment cleaned thoroughly and put away for another few hours. when the routine will be repeated again. a twice daily routine that probably doesn't vary much on the hundreds and hundreds of family dairy farms across the country Farming 1S not just planting crops, feeding and milking the cows Herd management, breeding, disease con trol, hygene, are all part of the farmer's daily life Steve has taken an in- terest in cattle breeding and completed a course at the University of Guelph. He shows me a wall-chart with arrows and dates and all kinds of coloured pins by which he keeps precise track of every animal on the farm; when it's bred, the pregnancy test the due date for the calves, when the animal will return to the milking herd I's all very confusing to me, but Steve can tell al a glance what's hap- pening with 107 or so head of cattle Monthly computer print-outs help him keep track of the milk produc- tion of each animal; the number of pounds, the fat content, how the pro- duction compares with the rest of the herd. These print-outs tell him if a cow is not producing and if it's time for replacement. I can't help but wonder that the computer is as vatuable- a tool for to- day's farmer as the milk- ing stool or horse drawn plow was half a century ago. And 1 can't help but wonder what farming may be like half a cen: tury from now. More changes, to be sure. 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