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Scugog Agriculture Three generations of Grahams have tilled the soil at Purple Hill Harvey Graham is an optimist, a happy opti- mist. Farming has been good to Harvey and his wife Joan. Born and raised on the family farm at Purple Hill on the Shirley Road south of Black- stock and Port Perry, as a teenager Harvey was not a great fan of farming . Harvey’s ancestors came from Ireland in the 1840s, settling on Purple Hill a decade later. Harvey’s dad sold the original 100 acre Graham farm in 1950 and bought a neighbouring farm and some adjacent fields, all with better soil. Both the original and the new Graham farms were on poor land: hilly, sandy and lots of gravel. “My father barely made a living from the land,” Harvey added. His father ran a mixed farm with hens, pigs, sheep and a dozen cows. Harvey added that in the 1950s farming took a distinct change in Ontario. “There was no hydro until 1940s, so all the work on the farm was done by hand,” he said. He remembers well his ploughing days be- hind a team of horses. “There was always a hired man. Sometimes, in the better farms, not ours, there was also a hired woman who helped with the housekeeping and some of the chores such as milking or feeding the chickens.” “Farming with my father was hard work, and Jong hours so I thought that I would leave the farm and study law,” he said. However, the local agriculture representative of the Department of Agriculture, Ed Sumers, persuaded him to go to the Agricultural College at Kemptville. He even arranged for a scholarship for Harvey. At Kemptville, Harvey developed an ap- preciation for the potential of agriculture. More importantly he gained a real love of farming. It was about this time he developed a love for a local beauty, Joan Hoskin, whom he had met at the Young Peoples’ Group at the Blackstock United Church. Her parents owned the hardware and grocery stores in Blackstos Joan’s father, Frank Hoskin, ran the hardware business while Joan helped her mother Muriel run the grocery store, the Carload Grocery Store. Muriel now a hearty 96 years old lives at West- shore in Port Perry. After graduation in 1956, Harvey returned to the farm and a year later, he and Joan were mar- ried in the Blackstock United Church where they had first met. “| have seen some amazing changes in farming.” My father's farm was lucky to get 80 bushels an acre.” .. Harvey Graham In 1958 Harvey bought his father’s 350 acre farm. With his experiences at Agricultural College in mind, he switched the farm from mixed farming to specializing in dairy cattle. He increased his herd to 160 milking cows, although they still kept a few hogs and chickens. In 1980 he changed the farm again, giving up his dairy cattle and switching to cash crops — beef cattle, grain, and custom farming (using his machinery to harvest for others). “T have seen some amazing changes in farm- ing,” he claims. “When I took over my fathers farm I was lucky to get 80 bushels an acre. Now farmers have no difficulty in getting twice that. The improved machinery for tilling, the fertilizer, and crop genetics enabled us to get 200 bushels an acre this year, the best we have ever done, and the prices are good too.” “The addition of ethanol into our gasoline now provides another potential source of income for farmers. The use of ethanol keeps the price of Please turn to page 22 FOCUS - AUGUST 2011 21