Thelma Trask is among 13 Ontario farmers featured in the eighth edition of a popular calendar showcasing the photos and stories of farm families in the province.
The Faces of Farming calendar, featuring this year’s theme of “Real Farmers with Real Heart,” is designed to introduce the public to some of the people who produce food in the province. The calendar is produced by Farm and Food Care Ontario.
Trask and her husband Morley have raised six children on their Alma area dairy farm.
“Her countless treasured memories of their farm life include teaching her husband to dance many years ago between the rows of cow stalls in the barn,” states a brief biography included along with a full-page photo of Trask as the featured farmer for the month of June.
Today, two of her sons, Warren and Gordon, and two grandsons are also working on the family farm.
In addition to raising six children, Trask has worked in the fields, in the barn and “kept quite a large garden,” but these days, the 77-year-old grandmother concentrates on doing the books and her burgeoning pie catering business.
“I’ve been baking pies since I was eight years old,” she says, adding, “So I should know how to do it by now.”
As a young bride she was given a rolling pin as a gift. In the years since, that prized possession has been used to make tens of thousands of pies for church and community events (5,000 alone in the 12 years since she started keeping track). Today she also runs a busy pie catering business.
Trask says she enjoys all aspects of the farming lifestyle, which she has been involved with all her life, having grown up on a Palmerston-area diary farm.
“Of course, we milked by hand,” she recalls, adding milking was part of her daily routine both before and after school.
“I have a lot of experience milking cows,” she states. Today, the 60-plus cows on the Trask farm are milked robotically. “So none of us are really involved in milking anymore. It’s all done by automation.”
Trask, whose participation in the calendar project was sponsored by Gaylea Foods, said she learned of her selection in late July. A photo session was held with photographer Terry Scott White, of Kitchener, at the Vineland Research Station involving her and several of the other participants from the region.
“It was fun,” she said.
With this year’s calendar, the stories of 100 Ontario farm families have now been featured within the calendar’s pages since it was first produced. All of the calendar’s models are real, working farmers and hail from all parts of the province. One of the project’s aims is to show there’s no such thing as a typical farmer.
“Their farms are as diverse as the individuals,” states a press release from Food and Farm Care Ontario, which notes participants range in age from two to 78 and produce a variety of crops and livestock from lavender to poultry, fish, mink, beef, pork, soybeans, corn and dairy.
Trask thinks the calendars help urban residents gain a better understanding of agriculture and farm lifestyles.
“The city people don’t always get to know that much about farming and these give them more of an insight into it,” she said.
Other farmers featured on this year’s calendar include:
– a fish farmer who scuba-dives to check on his rainbow trout;
– a four-generation family that enjoys riding motorcycles when they’re not caring for turkeys;
– a young egg farmer living on a farm that’s been in her family for almost 200 years;
– the winners of the 2012 Outstanding Young Farmer competition;
– a molecular biology student who farms with her family in between university classes; and
– a tobacco farmer who switched to growing lavender.
New this year, an QR code found on each calendar page allows viewers to scan the bar codes from their mobile devices to “meet” the farmers. Each of the codes provides a direct link to short YouTube interviews with each participant.
Many Ontario agribusinesses and commodity groups sponsor ?the calendar. Their logos are featured on each page.?Complimentary copies of the calendar will be mailed as Christmas presents from Ontario’s farmers to politicians, grocery stores, butcher shops and media.
Available online
?Again this year, the calendar will be sold at all TSC stores across Ontario. It is also available through the Farm and Food Care office in Guelph, by using the online order form at www.farmfoodcare.org or by calling 519-837-1326.
Farm and Food Care Ontario is a new organization launched in January. It was created from the amalgamation of the ?Ontario Farm Animal Council (OFAC) and Agricultural Groups Concerned about Resources and the Environment (aGCare). Both groups were formed 25 years ago as non-profit, agricultural education coalitions.
The organization states it is the first coalition of its type in Canada, bringing together tens of thousands of livestock, crop and horticulture farmers and related businesses with a mandate to provide credible information on food and farming in Ontario.
