GeorgeLaundryFarming.mp3

otter.ai

Summer 2021

yes

Riley Donovan

GeorgeLaundryFarming - created 2014
Tue, 8/17 2:49PM • 54:20
Description: George Laundry gives a Salt Spring Historical Society address on the topic of agriculture on Salt Spring, talking about his personal history of growing up on a farm, the ongoing threats to the Agricultural Land Reserve on Salt Spring, the decline of farming on Salt Spring during the mid 1900s, and his optimism that farming is rising once more.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
ALR, Agricultural Land Reserve, farming, farms on Salt Spring, George Laundry, Musgrave, Ganges, snake fences, agriculture, Fulford valley, Mort Stratton, agriculture on Salt Spring, Salt Spring Island, Second World War, First World War

SPEAKERS Usha, Sue, George Laundry, Unknown, Audience member, Conrad

Unknown
George laundry is a native Salt Springer. He went off to teach school in Ontario, and couldn't resist, but he came back to Salt Spring, and got back into farming and took over some of the family enterprises. He's an active member of the fall fair committee, active member of the farmer's Institute of committee, a well renowned bridge teacher and player. So, George, with a great deal of pleasure I welcome you here this afternoon.

George Laundry 00:40
First of all, thank you for being here. For the guests. For sure. The Historical Society, for having us. Thank you for Frank, how would we ever survive with Frank? Although right at the moment he's (unintelligible). Thank you for Usha, for your help in getting things ready. And a gentleman, I just met the other day Uri Kogan and you'll see some of his work. I just met him for the first time the other day, stunning work that he does with this drone. And thank you, Mom and Dad. Oh, sorry, I don't need that, no. We have a special treat. Usha and Frank and I have a special treat for you at the end of the day, at the end of the meeting. So, what we'll do is we'll end with that we don't want to have one of these endings with all sorts of noise and stuff. I'm going to just finish it. And if you behave yourself as an audience, you get the treat, it's worthwhile, I can tell you it's something special. And the other interesting thing is that I welcome you to embrace 2014. It's the International Year of the Family Farm. How propitious it is that the first meeting of the Historical Society celebrates agriculture. Bob, you got lucky again. Wherever Bob is so. And the goal of this is funded by the United Nations. The goal of the 2'14 International Year of the Family Farm is to reposition family farming at the centre of agriculture, environment and social policies and the national agenda to increase awareness and understanding of the challenges faced by small holders and help identify efficient ways to support family farmers. And that's, I think, not so much history. I'm not going to talk much about history today. We don't have photographs from our family, I think there was only two pictures ever taken. I think nobody could afford camera, my God. So, I'm going to just drift along and, and chat. I'd like to start with three aspects. The whole program will be based on three, in the first I'd like to talk about agriculture. I'm going to dwell a few minutes on sort of the unpleasantness of the agricultural land resources, or reserve and some of the problems that we face as farmers then I'll go back, I'm gonna look at my journey through Salt Spring. And finally, I want to come back to something extremely positive as how I see agriculture going now. And going forward, I see great strides being made on Salt Spring. I was told once by a futurist that the final world war will be fought over food and water. We live in the best place in the world, if ever there was a country that provides us. I'm paid to do nothing, I'm paid a lot of money to do nothing. It's what kind of a country is that? You see, and Salt Spring Island is the best part of that. So let us dwell on this year of the family farm and let us be happy about where we are. This is Uri Kogan's work. And that's just a start. If you get somewhere he's standing out in the field as well. He's got a drone, I don't know how many of you have seen his work. He has a drone about this big. And this is all done through this drone, and he can command it around. He tells me that if the drone gets lost or miscommunicated it goes up 50 feet and comes back to the last part it was at where it was left. From marvelous, marvelous work so you people behave yourself and we've got a treat for you at the end. Questions if you please at any time. If you, if I make a mistake in a date or a name please tell me, people deserve to know. My ears are going, my eyesight is going on, and I don't remember a lot, so this will be the first Easter I get to hide my own easter eggs. Most troubling to me because my heart is in agriculture. Bob said I came back to farm I never left really, you know, my heart has always been here. Bill Akerman told us a long time ago that once you're a farmer you're never anything but a farmer. I guess, Duncan and I could probably design a nuclear reactor but I'm still nothing but a farmer.

George Laundry 05:10
I want to talk a bit about the loss of production in farmland and the loss of farmland. That's the most troubling thing and Ontario, I'll talk to you a bit about the disaster that exists there. And we don't want that to happen here. So, we've got the fade. Frank's going to do another fade for, oh here, it's in here now. This was taken about I think the first picture was taken '30 about the 1930s and the second one may be about '95 or so 19... 2005 about. And when you he runs the fade, you can see the farmland just disappearing now. This is about the 2'05 version of it. You can just see the farmland evaporating. Here we are, now down here. But he'll get this to work. You see, there was no Centennial Park at that time. Thrifty's wasn't there that was all open sea. But down here was, there's a causeway, this was an island of course the Mouat's store was an island. And there was a causeway along there and there was a metal, pardon me a stone bench and Transom (?) of the Ganges was in it. Next to it was a Cenotaph. And as little kids when we were going to school, up in that area up there. We got to meet the first two people that were born on Salt Spring: Ernie Harrison Joe Akerman. And I consider that to be a special privilege to have been in contact with the first two people that were born on Salt Spring, and maybe someone who people can say the same thing but that was a special treat. So, I just want to show all that land, this back in the early days, this about 1900 they considered putting a cause, a canal through here. (unintelligible) islands. I've mentioned before that many of us in the south would be quite happy if the North End just floated off somewhere. But right through there, beautiful farmland, the Japanese farmlands were up in there, the golf course up in that area. But just watch the fade and watch the land disappear. And this is what's happened to Ganges. Virtually nothing left, just the schools now. All of the land up Rainbow, all the big farms up Rainbow road are gone. And all over Salt Spring that's happened. And so, we don't want that to happen anymore. That's just not...okay? Gonna have trouble with me (laughs) Not the first one. Okay, so the ALR, we have to recognize that up until about 1973 there was no ALR. And every school on Salt Spring is on ALR land, every church, every fire hall except one. Every playing ground I guess, is on a ALR and it chips away just got chipped away over the years. And it can't continue, we have this pressure. Now you see from the developers, so. For example, if you take the virtual tour from just pretend in your mind that you've come in from Vesuvius. And soon as you hit I guess it's Tripp road, on the right there's no farms, the farms are gone. On the left is one of the most famous farms on Salt Spring. Gone, well it's not gone. It's still there, but I don't think it's producing food, horses etc. On the right is Parks and Rec. Suppose you were to grow turnips and cabbages on that land. I mean, you could grow enough for all of Salt Spring and I suppose you need playing fields and all of that kind of stuff. And then one of the most famous farms is dead ahead which is now a golf course. And they often tell us well why are you worried? Tell us farmers, farmers Institute and people like that. Why are you worried because it's still in the ALR, but it's a big step to assume you can just take a plow out there and plow up the golf course and start agriculture all over again. That's not possible. Every graveyard you see, all the way down to Ganges, Brinkworthy estates, a famous farm. Right down, the farms used to go right down through Harbour House, excuse me, right to the water.

George Laundry 10:18
5% of BC is arable, only 5%, and the estimate is that by 2025 we have to increase our food by about 30% and yet only 5% of British Columbia's arable. So, in my mind that's a concern. A serious concern. And we have groups of people, the Farmer's Institute has for some time now, been promoting this concept of zero net loss. My understanding is that industry has a zero net loss. Hunter is that right? Yep. The industrial area has a no net loss policy. Why can't farming have that? You've seen what's happened in the last little while. I'm on the Agricultural Advisory party with Conrad and Tony and other people and we go through some interesting arguments over the past. You've been through a fire hall debate. And of course, I'm referring to the debate of agricultural land, not so much the money debate at that time. Playing field at Fulford, we had that debate, and on and on and on about these, the pressure to take the land out of farming. We had some interesting debates in the Agricultural Advisory Committee, they start yelling at us after a while you see, you farmers, it's not fair. You've got all the flat land. That was one of the questions. Well, I know how that happened. We were here first, and farming works well on flat land so. And you don't make any more of it. That's the big difference. We'll need our, we'll need our farmland. The other debate is that they say to us well, okay, so we're going to put up a fire hall, but it's still ALR land. Well, no, when you got a couple feet of rock there, it's not going to grow cabbages for a while. So those are some of the problems that we're looking at. I talked to a person very knowledgeable here. Probably the most knowledgeable water person on Salt Spring, was involved in the ALR at the beginning and he said that leading up to the ALR the loss in British Columbia was 15,000 acres a year. Without, without an ALR. If you want a model, you don't have to go far. I'm sure there's people in this room who've lived in Ontario. And if you go to the area around well, Bathurst and seven, just north of Toronto. They took 1000s and 1000s of acres of cornfields and built a city. This is in the last 15 years, I guess, the town of Vaughan and anyone familiar with Toronto? In your, you know, the town of Vaughan there? Yep. And up the Young corridor is just one solid place of apartment building system. 100 acre farms up in that new market area, large farms, probably more than that there. Because a section in Ontario is a mile and a quarter, guess 1000 acres is it, 1000 acres? And these, they say that what farmers did is sell off and go to Florida. And sold all these farms. Our kids used to work, I used to tell my two boys that working in shoveling manure in a barn is the best job you'll ever have. Because every job will be better. So, learn it. And mom wouldn't let them in the house when they come back. So, the other thing is up around that area King, King township, which is just to the northwest of Toronto. Someone's going to keep the time, are they? Well, they say I've only got an hour and a half, so I'll try and speed it up here. But King township became the place where the wealthy people went and they all took the Eton farm and all of these estates from 50 years, 100 years ago. And they just built these places where they played. Everybody had horses, but nobody grew any food any longer at all the places. I used to take my kids and pick raspberries and strawberries and corn now you can't do that again. And so, the model is there if you want to see what happens when you sell farmland and turn it into houses. It's there for you all to see or that'll happen here.

George Laundry 14:56
Well, no, it won't happen here because we have the ALR. And as long as we protect that, and the reason I mention this is is because not so long ago, you read in the paper about the threat that they might somehow do away with the ALR. And I think that threat is maybe overblown. What seems to be the case now is that they will divide the province into two halves. And the northern part, which is not very good soil will have some different rules. I hear that they're going to leave the Okanagan and the Fraser Valley, pretty much as it is. I've been doing quite a bit of reading on that, and a guy was talking about the Lower Mainland as being the Silicon Valley of agriculture. 100 million pounds of blueberries in a year, 100 million in the lower mainland. We're second in raspberry production in Canada. We're first in cranberries, I mean the Lower Mainland of course. And we're part of that you see the blueberries coming back to Salt Spring, very encouraging. So, they talk about an acre of land in the Frase-, in the Lower Mainland is what they call it. $18,000. an acre is the produce from it. The second best place in Canada is the Niagara Peninsula, $8,000 an acre. And the greatest pressure in the ALR has been of course in the Lower Mainland, around Vancouver. The battles go on, they're all in the paper now, you see. And we just ask you to stand in guard against it. I'll probably speed up a bit here. The loss of land, that's the ALR, the land taken out of the ALR, but there's another problem on Salt Spring and that's the loss of production. And some years ago, after coming home I went, my buddy was, used to fly out of the CIA - that's the Cudmore International Airport. And he'd take me up and we, I'd asked him wants to do a survey of the lower part of Salt Spring, and Burgoyne Valley and up into Musgrave's. And I estimated that 50% of the land that I grew up with is no longer in production. Still the ALR, still there but all the trees have not. And you can tell that from the fence lines and the alders coming into the fields. Musgrave's is completely gone. From late 1800s into say at least 1920, Musgrave's is one of the leading agricultural places. 1000s and 1000s of sheep. I remember in Atkins diary, Sue, Sue wouldn't let me have it and keep it so

Sue
It wasn't mine!

George Laundry 17:51
(Laughter) Don't whine (unintelligible). So. So they talked about a break from the gold mine over in Mount Tuam. The old gold mine was, they talked about a run of sheep. And it was a poor run, there were only 800 sheep. And they had 1000s, they talk about the boats. The main traffic, of course was on the west side of Salt Spring. There was no Musgrave's in the early days. I mean no Ganges in the early days, no Fulford. And it came from Nanaimo, which was a centre of the colony of Vancouver Island down to Chemainus the mine and into Victoria, stopped in Ganges, stopped in Vesuvius, and stopped in Musgrave's and picked up. My dad talks about these incredible naval barrels full of apples and it'd be maybe 70 of them going on a ship. There was a great orchard over there in the old Trench property, something like 1500 trees or so. So, there were sheep over there and all that stuff there. Well. 1930s that's completely gone. I don't think there's a thing growing over except trees now. Not many sheep. So that's land is all gone. And we have the loss of land out of production, the Burgoyne Valley, the famous farm of Dick Maxwell. I mean, we don't know, I guess the status of that. There's some dispute with Parks and Recreation or Parks Canada, whatever it is. Whether or not farming is allowable. Ruckle Farm is another one. I mean, the two guys out there I mean, Mike and Marjorie do tremendous amount of farming. But back in the days of the Ruckles, there was a lot more people farming and a lot. They were big men and farmed a lot of stuff. So, this is a loss of production, land's still there, but the production is down. We can point out any number of areas on Salt Spring where the productions is falling right off. So, I'll just leave that at this point and. There is the constant pressure on farmers. Bylaws. 355 for example. In the AAC, I don't know we've been at this, Tony, for what 10,12 years now and they tried to put it.

George Laundry 19:57
We don't have any friends. The farmers don't have, I mean Conrad and I don't have any friends anyhow, but that's not the point. Farmers don't have any friends. Developers don't like us because we got the flat land. And in the end, I think environmentalist don't like us, because we're, World Health Organization United Nation listed farming as the number one polluter in the planet two years ago. There are three, three, farming, military, and the fashion industry. And normally we're third but we boost up. That's not the people on Salt Spring that are doing that, this is the beef industry primarily in North America, they say that the beef industry causes more ecological damage than all the cars in the world put together. That's not us here. We're not that kind of people. So, these are these are problems that we face, all these bylaws. They tried to put in a Gary Oak bylaw. This is one that Tony remembers. And this was, this would have had serious consequences to people who have open range sheep. You would have theoretically had to put a fence 50 meters and the premise was wrong. It weren't the sheep that were eating the Gary Oaks. Lots of other things, the creek. The old farmers in Fulford used to tell us that a creek was a blessing. And now the farmers tell us it's a curse, because of all the covenants that have to be done. Can't walk your cows across it because they could step on a fish you know, and things like that. We've got the added curse of predators. I mean, this is this is one of the reasons that people give up. Why would you want to go on, the predators, deer, place is overrun with deer. I have about two deer dying from natural causes on my property from starvation every year. I think if we got about six cougars in, friendly cougars in, they could do a lot of good for Salt Spring. Rabbits. I maintain that rabbits, we're on the verge of an ecological disaster. And some old farmers were arguing about how many rabbits there are on Salt Spring. And they took the area of Salt Spring: 70 square miles. Multiply that by 640, which gives you about 44,000 acres on Salt Spring, and pick the number the farmers picked the number of about five an acre, that's 200,000 rabbits on Salt Spring. That's, if you don't think that's on the way to the disaster that every other country in the world went through. San Juan Islands. We should get that guy up to talk. Talks about his park is being a moonscape. I mean, the Australians got their problem under control. They're down to 600 million rabbits now. Anyhow, I don't want to go on with that. Deer. The new problem is geese. Two years ago, one of the big farmers up the North End lost her strawberries to geese and rabbits. Now geese are going to be harder to deal with because they have some kind of national status. They're not predators. They tell me that that if I don't eat the goose, I can shoot it. Because if I ate it, I'd be hunting. I give up. Alright, I'm just gonna read, how has the time gone? I can't. Have I gone on too long? No, no. Well, I wanted to read some stuff, well I could read it later. I'll go onto where I was and if there's time left over. Any questions, please. You know. The second point I want to talk about is is just a little bit of history of my area. I was born 1936, the day that the men in our family are born and die. My dad, my son and I are born in the same day. My dad died that day. Two cousins killed in that day and a nephew died that day. So, I had a guy in Toronto who wouldn't commute with me. Ah well. In 1939 we moved down from the mountain. My dad had homesteaded, 1910 veteran of the Boer War. And they used to say that there were two kinds of people at Musgrave. There were Boer War veterans, and all the rest of people were remittance men. That's as you know, correct, of course. So, 19, he got sick, and the depression finished off pretty much farming up there. Because many of the farmers, sheep farmers, my dad in particular would go in the winter and work off island, he went up to Fort George or Prince George now and work for them, say the winter. And then, so in 39 we moved back to Fulford, and it was slow type of farming. We were a very poor farm. And all the old farmers say that there's two kinds of farmers. Don't forget I get a chance to talk about some of them. They say if you, like the rich farm, you want to make a million farming, you start with 2 million, and then there was us guys who had nothing and farmed and had nothing and managed to keep it all.

George Laundry 25:05
So, but one thing my parents did is they kept the land. And so, when we talk about the family farm, that's important to me, because my farm is already in the names of my kids, there'll be fourth generation, and will through to my grandson who will be fifth generation. And regardless of how poor, my parents were, they somehow managed to keep the land. And I sit in there by the fire at night, in amazement, with my brandy, my dad wouldn't approve. listen to classical music, and I'm paid to do nothing. It's the most remarkable country in the world boy, oh boy. They pay me too much money to do nothing. We had kind of a farm. One of the things amazed me, in retrospect is they didn't seem to grow a lot of vegetables. Mum raised geese and stuff like that and made a few bucks at Christmas time by going up and plucking turkeys up at Marguerite's parent's place. You know all the women in the valley went up and made a few bucks, and she would go up to Carter's place and candle eggs. In the old days, you had to candle eggs, you know, remember all that? Most of my life, I remember getting wood, I told some of you before, about, I guess I was five years old before I realized my name wasn't get wood. Gotta ring to it you know, get wood, you get wood is not a bad name. So, you, you got some pictures up here. I put this, and just hold that one if you could a moment Frank. As I said, we never had any pictures of our family. But this is exactly how farming was done in the Burgoyne Valley. I, my mother rode the cutter. And I would sit on her lap. And that's how we cut hay. And then they would come along, and we'll see other pictures there and they would stook (?) it up. And then the farmers would move down the Valley, a number of farmers and the wife had to cook the meal. And the men would go and then the next day they go on to the next farm. And that's not a bad concept. You know. I think there are some of the old things that are not too bad. My, as I maybe have mentioned, I was raised with the concept that a man has only two purposes in life, and one is to provide for and protect his family. And secondly is to leave the land better than he found it. So, I'm trying to do that. I actually do do some work. So, this is a picture of everyday cutting hay. Come about June, you're like Adam, little kids ride in front of it, and just exactly like that. And one day got my foot caught in the crank that comes back and, they didn't have to take me to the hospital but. This is high class stuff. Okay, Frank, thank you. Let's see what else we got here. I better not move from here. I'll get to Dickens. That's the old Fulford inn. I think that was the second of the fourth of the four versions. There was a pub there at one time before that. Everything burnt down. That's the bridge across from to more or less where the Catholic Church was. That's Fulford, there’s a nice picture, I hadn't seen that one before. That's Fulford, what did we agree, after the turn of the century, Usha, maybe?

Usha
We haven't discovered perfectly yet.

George Laundry 28:37
It don't have to be perfect, no.

Usha
Well, I'm a researcher. (laughter)

George Laundry 28:42
Okay well that's Fulford; it looked the same pretty much? There's one of my favourite pictures. That's the old school, the Burgoyne Valley School and these from the back of 'em. But that tree was always fascinating. The road came up and went around the tree and Ernie Brenton's bus of course, we were going in that, you always, somehow that tree was part of our culture every morning, going to school. Jackie, you'd remember that. So I just, I loved the tree. Here’s a typical snake fence. And just pictures of the valley, of what it was like in the early days and recognize that fence cause I want to talk a little bit about that. Now what are you doing with the other one there? Well, this is Ed.. don't forget the other fence. This is the old Edwards farm. Now there's the famous umbrella tree, that's still there. And as kids it just comes down, it would come right down to the ground. And we could, there, and we would of course play under that as little kids and it was marvelous, this would come down and you'd put it to the side and you'd, that was like a house for you, it's still there. Except it's eaten off at about two feet because they got the deer in there now so. And another picture, so.

George Laundry 30:11
God, it's hard to get good help (chatter) Here's another snake fence, just in case you didn't know what a snake fence was.

Audience member
I have a question.

George Laundry 30:30
Yes, please.

Audience member
As you can hear I'm European. I've never seen a fence like this except here. Why did they develop those kinds of fence?

George Laundry 30:38
Because it's so easy to put up.

Audience member
No posts.

George Laundry 30:41
No posts. Yeah. And it's so easy. We had lots of

Audience member
And rocky ground, that was my other explanation.

George Laundry 30:47
I'm sorry?

Audience member
Rocky ground, hard rocky ground.

George Laundry 30:49
Yeah. Oh, this is this is no problem, putting one of these up.

Unknown
One of the anecdotes I heard was the Ruckle family (unintelligible) they've cut 12,000 rails. You could still if you take the walk around the farm, there's still sections of it back in the bush.

George Laundry 31:03
Oh, we have still old fences. My son was out here and he's a big shot computer guy. And he said he wanted to do something as far removed from computers as he could. So, we put them splitting rails. And all my rails are 12 feet six inches. So, I know that they're mine if people steal them. And I got to be 6, 12 feet six inches because I mis-measured the first bunch, so.

Audience member
Were they designed to keep the sheep in, or the deer out, or what?

George Laundry 31:28
Well, both now, when I did the Musgrave talk, I read, there was my dad's sheep got into a guy's garden. And he impounded the sheep. I don't know how you impound sheep, but yeah. And my dad sent a letter to the policeman, and we have the letter back from the policeman that in those days in unorganized territory, you had to fence sheep out, not in and so he had no right to look to hold my dad's sheep. Nowadays, of course, you get sued if there's a thing like that. There it is. That's the most, one of the most famous fences in Canada. Now, listen, don't laugh. When the farmers moved down the valley, everybody had a job. And I couldn't, I wasn't allowed do anything because I was just a little nosepicker like that. So, they would, I could take water out to the farmers. And it's hard for most you to believe but there was a time when parents knew more than kids. And we take water out to them. And these guys would tease us little guys. And their favorite statement was if you kids knew anything, you'd learn to build a straight snake fence. So, when I came home, I think I'll get even, in rough draft I get even with you buggers. So, I designed a strict snake fence. And a guy friend of mine, a biologist was out here and he took a pic, and he took it back to Claremont, Ontario. And there's a guy there called Edgmund Peg. And he has a museum of fences, this is too silly for words. So, he built this model of my straight snake fence. And if you go down the Fulford Valley and look in my driveway, it's on the right. In fact, you can google, google earth it. Google Earth comes up and looks right down my driveway. And while I'm at it, Sue I'm going to say that the first pictures of Google Earth in Ganges looked down Thrifty's driveway. And who did you see, but Sue Mouat talking to some guy. And I just thought to myself, if ever there is an ambassador for Salt Spring, that's got to be it. That's Google Earth. Okay. And again, the Furness family. Just typical farming. I think we agreed that this was the Nightingale family. Any other any other (unintelligible) on at ones? Oh, yeah, Nightingale, well Nightingale farm anyhow.

Audience member
That's Joe Nightingale.

George Laundry 34:20
Sorry? Okay, thank you. Again, this is what we did. I don't remember ever seeing a machine in those early days. Everything was done by horses. Now. I did read that, down in that, right at Burgoyne there was, there was one, but I didn't ever see anything. That little church. Okay, maybe I'll leave those on and just finish off here because we're going to run out of time. One more, I have to talk about the good things that have happened. The rest of the life I went to university, went to Toronto, graduated math and physics, ended up, well I went to Kimberley for three years and, how, a lot of you people don't realize that I taught the Canadian ski team. For three years ago, I taught them physics of course, but they were, they were centered in Kimberley. So, I went to Ontario, worked there. I really enjoyed Ontario; Ontario was a great town. It was a young man's town, and I was young, and I had always been a very high energy person. And the things that we were able to do in Toronto that you wouldn't able, been able to do here, work in television. Write, wrote a textbook on energy, worked on, probably over a dozen series for TV Ontario, had my own little 10-minute spot in a TV program and stuff like that. You couldn't do that here. And so, I loved Toronto, there were so many people, aggressive people who had wonderful skills and with energy, you could do all sorts of wonderful things with that so. And then I came home here, in '95, I came home for good, although as I said, I'd never been away. And used to meet Johnny Bennett in the store all the time we did the lumberjack then. And he officially recognized my grandson as the future king of Salt Spring. And I want to tell you, there's no higher authority. So, my son will be the first king of Salt Spring. We created, my wife and I created Pastoral, after Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, where we grow as much of our own food as possible. So, I am up there most of the days. I don't call it work because it's what I am. It's not I don't get up to go to work every day. It's what I am. Joe Akerman, I'm nothing but a farmer, so. I have seven gardens for all of the growing seasons. There are five main growing seasons on Salt Spring, and I have one at least one for all of them. We start, I'm working now on the Garden of Eden. That's a low energy endeavor, I hand dig as much as I possibly can, use very little diesel. Just want to mention working, when we grew up in farm working, I remember the statement of a good friend of mine, of ours, late Garnett Lee, and he grew up with a friend at Musgrave's that I met this past year. He grew up in Saskatchewan side by each on a farm and they worked as kids, and they described kids working on the farm as child abuse. And I guess that was partly what it was, I'd be late get up in the morning to milk the cows and miss Brenton's bus, have to ride my bicycle to school, got a detention from Miss Olton. got home at night go another detention, so. Life went on like that you know, so. So, we live now, we listen to music and sit by the fire. And it's I cannot imagine how it has turned out what would my parents think of all of that? And let me just finish with Mort Stratton. But what do I got, about?

Usha
(unintelligible) George.

George Laundry 38:37
Oh, yes, oh sorry. There's a, I just threw those in because you'd remember Roy, and myself, and this picture was, there's another one of fish there with Dave in it. Did we get to that one? There's, I gotta tell you, that's, you wouldn't recognize that, that handsome brute is Dave Harris and his sister Clara, Brian Brenton, and of course myself. I think we got the sweaters from beehive Syrup, you know, we used to send in so many labels from Beehive Syrup and you'd get a sweater or something like that. So, the point here is that this is a time when the creek was a blessing. And you see the difference in age between that picture and the other one. For years and years, and every year we were there, you could fish and there were always more fish. And now there are as far as I can tell, there are none. There was this awful fish called the bullhead day, and you had to take it off your hook and it frightened us because it was so mean looking. So, it's just, that's just a picture to show how we supplemented our diet, you know, cut nettles off a hill. Mum's soup was pour in a gallon of water with a potato in it, and a few nettles thrown in, that kind of stuff you know, so.

Audience member
You're well-dressed compared to me George, that sweater there was knitted by my grandmother, and she knitted that from first principles. They took the wool off the sheep. They carded it. They cleaned it, they spun it on a spinning wheel and then she knitted that sweater. We would go out fishing as you well know, because you were doing it too, you'd get your hook caught in there. (laughter) Without a thought, you'd take your jack knife out, and you cut the hook out. Now I should have been given a whack because it was making (unintelligible) holes.

George Laundry 40:17
And you didn't, you didn't keep the sweater?

Audience member
No, no, I wore it out to pieces, but she would then darn the whole of my jacket, instead of saying cut that out, and I'd go out and catch the things again. But you're right, we could catch fish. And the reason you could catch fish was the mink were trapped out, and there was no otter in the creek as you remember. That's why there were so many fish.

George Laundry 40:43
We won't say some of the other reasons, Dave, so. I want to just finish up a little bit with cycles of agriculture that I've seen, and this is, I'll hurry a bit through it. This is based originally on a wonderful work with Mort Stratton, his unpublished work, but my cycles go on. He talks about the rise of agriculture and the struggle for survival from about 1860 up into the First World War. And with the First World War all our workers were away and stuff like that. And, and it was a very difficult time for farmers and for a strange reason. The government promoted everybody growing, and everybody did grow. And all of a sudden, the farmers found they couldn't sell any of the produce because the prices were down. And so, it had almost the exact opposite effect. And Mort then talks about the Depression, and we know about that, the Depression kills Musgrave's of course, and was so hard on people. The depression probably lasted in British Columbia, because we had no industry, probably lasted into the 50s, I guess. World War Two, we remember our ration books and that, and it was difficult times, we were sending packages, not that we had any, but we were sending packages over to England. And one of the things I often tell people why would a farmer want a lawn because during a war, you know, you threw potato out there and put hay over it and grew (unintelligible) potatoes right on the lawn. But I see all these farms now with these beautiful big lawns and I'm not sure what that's about. I had to have a lawn, they could keep the dust on our, I'd get it. After the World War, the next big thing, probably one of the most devastating things was the demise of the Creamery in 1957. I think there was a picture of the Creamery in there. 1957, and all of us had half a dozen cows, I should mention also I think it was '49. Now, you people might know Marguerite, you might know the earthquake, was it '49 maybe, a lot of the barns in the valley part of them went down. And ours went down and and part of it went down. The hay, the hay barn went down but the cow barn was there. But slowly the cows drifted away for old age and stuff like that. And then in '57, the Creamery closed. And that's probably the most devastating part of agriculture at that point, all the people, all the farmers had four or five, six cows, couple cows, and eventually got rid of them. And they were left with only two dairies in the valley, I think, the Reed (?) dairy and the Shaw dairy. And I think the Shaw dairy closed up quickly, and I think the Reed and the Hugh's dairy he stayed on maybe to '80, something like, 1980, maybe, something, something in that range. Mid 70s, there were a lot of things happening, Vietnam was there and of course a lot of people here were hiding from Vietnam and took over the areas in Musgrave but there seemed to be a start of a general rise back. And that was maybe symbolized by the new Fall Fair, Marguerite and Bev and Mike. Seemed to symbolize this new enthusiasm for agriculture and there were courses being started to be offered in the schools and things like that. Seemed to be a very slow rise but nonetheless positive up from the drop the dairy and that, and then, not an error, but I come home for good in '95, when I arrived there wasn't a single food stand in the Burgoyne Valley. Not one. And now there's got to be at least 10. I can walk this couple 100 yards for eggs this way, a couple 100 yards eggs that way. Meat, I can get beef up just up the road before Furness road, up Furness now there's ham and bacon and cheese. Down the other way, there are strawberries and stuff like that.

George Laundry 45:15
So, it's a wonderful place there. This is not new enthusiasm, for me. I grow mostly vegetables and stuff like that, that I need, and apples and things like that. But there seems to be now, up to now, a serious recognition of sustainability, of the need to shop locally. You notice in the flyers now, the stores are proud to admit that they buy locally. And that's a very positive step. We see the rise of an abattoir, something that's necessary for the community, particularly for small farmers. And yet, probably the most pleasing thing that I've seen is that I am currently surrounded by small farmers. I don't mean small farmers, I mean, for normal sized farmers with small pieces of land, so. (laughter)

Audience member
Where is that? on the screen? Tell everyone where that is.

George Laundry 46:28
I'm sorry? Oh, he's not supposed to show that yet.

Audience member
No, just still to tell them that you're surrounded by them

George Laundry 46:33
Okay well I am surrounded by that, we'll come back to that one in a minute, so. But down this, down up to the west of me a wonderful coupled going tremendous amount of stuff, I guess two or three acres under cultivation now. Next to them is another young couple that have got farm status. Another young couple got farm status and on a little farm, then me who's getting young people to work to protect my pension. And on this side is another group across the road from me, another group, down the road, another two people, I recognize them. You can't hide. And down farther still people growing strawberries now. So, I am in the middle of an old farming area that appears to be exploding. And that's a very pleasing thing. How do people get this land? I don't know. Land is very expensive. But I understand that there are new techniques. Now, for example, if young farmers might use a system of crowdfunding, if you're all familiar with crowdfunding, and I hear rumors that people are able to use crowdfunding to get some and that would be a wonderful way of getting around this horrible cost of land on Salt Spring. So, we've got all of that and as I say I'm surrounded by young farmers. And I didn't cover as much as I wanted to do, but to me, I see some big farms coming back on. Lee's Hill. For all the years I was home, Lee's Hill was primarily, hay, wasn't it, on the West, on East Side. And now there's a guy got blueberries in there, big greenhouse, and a wonderful experiment up at the top with a field of olives, that they're experimenting to see if we can grow olives. Down the valley, there's a big farm, the other Shaw farm, I guess it's part of the Shaw farm, experimenting with grains and hops and things like that. This land that I talked about going out some of its coming back, the young people are reworking these old farms, a couple of the big ones are working this, and I want to end with, I'll quickly with, Mike, I'll go to that in just a second. Probably to me, what I see is maybe the best symbol of the hope for what I would call agriculture and that is the community farmland. If ever there was a successful endeavor that shows you what happens when you get good administration running a project. If you haven't been there, you better go there and see it. It was a struggle that the Farmer's Institute fought for seven years to get that land. And I don't think people would understand the work that the crew, Conrad and the guys and Tony and people like that and Marguerite would jump on the ferry in the morning and go to Vancouver to meet with a lawyer and come back that day, and into the lawyer and tax specialists in Victoria, seven years. And I think the farmland's straightened out now, but Conrad said there's some technicalities yet with the getting rid of the company.

George Laundry 49:57
Yeah. But that was a struggle. And people, I'm sure don't understand the amount of energy that took out of the Institute, over seven years to get that. I think maybe we were used. I don't know. But if ever there was a success, go there and look at that. And I'll thank you all for coming and for your patience and putting up with me. Thank you for your courtesy. I'd like to end with a special party that these people have. This is a beautiful work of Uli (?) (music starts). You can dance if you want. Thank you.

Conrad
(unintelligible) I would say we're within a couple months of getting it (unintelligible)

Audience member
(unintelligible) 96 plots that are in the community garden in the Burgoyne farm, and it was taken in fall..

George Laundry 51:25
I hear that there are 96 plots, some 2 acre chunks, we have a ton of young people who have a 2 acre (unintelligible) and then there are contracts for the hay. One real planting season done a little bit before. One real planting season.

Audience member
Each one is 2550 feet, and they paid $40 a year to farm to (unintelligible)

Unknown
Where do they get the water?

Audience member
The water comes through the reservoir, and it is included in their rental.

George Laundry 52:40
This is all done with this drone. Yeah, yes, you can see the shadow.

Audience member
It's like a little mini radio controlled airplane they're playing, Uri Kogan is not in the airplanes he's down on the ground. He's controlling the camera (unintelligible)

George Laundry 53:27
Marguerite's gonna put in a whole pile more of these plots so if any of you want them new (unintelligible). But show me something in the last while more successful than this.

Audience member
This is only the second year. It just took off. We thought we had a five or 10 year project before the plots that we occupy (chatter and music)