Author: terraviva

EPISODE 288:  FARMING WITH JOHN AND ELEANOR CALDER

alan skeoch

March 2021

FARMING in Ontario has changed.  Many farms have been combined into large holdings of several thousand

acres.  Corporate farms.  These farms specialize in production of various grains…wheat, oats, flax, corn, soybeans.

Sometimes corporate farmers have large holdings of animals as well but many others market grain on a grand scale.

John and Eleanor Calder had a diversified  farm.  Successful.  Depends how success if measured, does it not?

Milk was the best income producer I believe.

Sheep for John were a matter of the heart.  He was a shepherd…and not just a shepherd of sheep.

His vision went far beyond that.   John and  I formed a natural bond of shared  interests and some

shared values.  19th and 20th century machines.  He knew how they worked.  I knew how they looked.

  Eleanor (Townsend) Calder is a keeper of the clan.   She, like her mother Elizabeth (Skeoch)

Townsend,  undertook the task of keeping a massive extended family in as close a contact with each

other as possible.  That meant opening up the Townsend/Calder farm to all of us.  I cannot think of

anyone in our family that Eleanor did not greet with open arms.

Today, March 20, 2021, he task of bringing a huge extended family together is just about impossible.  Why?

Because none of us farm anymore.  We are an urban clan spread across he world from Woodruff Farm to distant

points in Canada to New Zealand to England to South Korea to God knows where.    When I was a little boy

that was not the case.  We had many farms in the family.  So many.  Most of them in Wellington County but others

in Saskatchewan.

But the Skeoch Townsend farm was the hub in the wheel.  Why should you care?  Because these pictures should

make you understand just what we have lost in the 80 years or so.  For many of us the rural roots have been

severed  so long ago that sometimes you may feel they never existed.

John and Eleanor made sure that never happened to us.

Eleanor is the big sister…oldest of the the four Townsend children…and the hardest working in my opinion.  Jim and Owen will be

offended by that remark.  So be it.  If a  cow had to be rolled helped with a calf.  Eleanor was there.  If kittens got out of control….I counted

30 cats in the dairy barn once…someone had to keep that population in check.  Enough said.

She met John Calder at the OAC where Eleanor thought of becoming a veterinarian. She would have been a natural except for one problem.

She was female.  Tough sledding.  But all was not lost for she and John fell in love.  Enduring love.  Love that triumphed over minor blips in

the human journey.  First they farmed near Carluke, south west of Hamilton, but something went wrong and they had to trek back to Bellwood.

Trek ?

John was a collector of machines.  Particularly Threshing machines.  He had five or six of them….each as big as a transport

truck.  All had to be hauled by back roads from Carluke to Bellwood.  Along with ancient tractors, hay wagons, mowers, plows,

…etc. etc.   John did this alone.  His tractor hooked to one thresher.  Slowly making way, trip after trip.  Until the Carluke

farm was stripped bare.  I wish I had known.  I would have traced him down on some gravel road inching his way north with 

all his machines.   Eleanor was busy making a new home on the Bellwood “new property” her dad had purchased across

the highway from  Woodruf Farm, the home farm.  

Six of the Skeoch ‘kids]’…left to right,  Marguerite (Skeoch) Metcalfe, Lena (Skeoch) Tosh

Elizabeth (skeoch) Townsend, back row…John Skeoch (Saskatchewan farm 3,200 acres), 

Norman Skeoch (younger, got the Home farm), Arnold “red” Skeoch (my father, tire bullder)

Stories about Red  Skeoch are featured in several of these episodes.  He will either offend

or amuse.   Missing  Arthur Skeoch (tire builder), Sarah Skeoch (teacher, died in 1918-19

Spanish Flu epidemic). 

 Cousin Eleanor picked up the responsibility for the Skeoch clan

from her mother Elizabeth in the picture.   a very strong willed woman.

John Skeoch (Art Skeoch’s eldest son, spent his youth at the Skeoch farms as

we did.  John and I had the thankless job of being executors at the sale of the home Skeoch farm.)

No joy in mudville doing that job.

, Owen Skeoch Townsend (computer specialist…entered the industry when the word

computer meant adding machine, James Skeoch Townsend (agronomist, University of

Manitoba…potato specialist among others).  Owen Townsend’s son Dirk is responsible

for this Blog…he set it up for me.  (Mary, the youngest died a few years ago. We are

the same age.  Mary wanted  me to play house with her on one visit.  Drinking from make

believe cups of tea, eating from make believe dinner plates, cuddling dolls to put them

to sleep.   I was most uncomfortable that day but did what was expected.

 Seems a Townsend is always in the right place at

the right time.

All of my pictures of Eleanor Townsend seem to show her at work.  She is a

sure fire multi tasker.   I am proud to call  her my cousin.  Admire her much.

Alan Skeoch … holding a lamb …taking credit for the work of others…i.e. the ewe, John

who cornered the ewe on a cold  March evening, Eleanor who helped the ewe put out the lamb.

There is no money in raising sheep I am told.  No one told that to John and Eleanor.  They loved the 

role of shepherds.    Fleeces are hard to sell.  Mutton  is  not the best kind of meat.  Spring lamb meat

rings of murder.   

I have one enduring memory of those sheep.  One bright sunny late spring day I wheeled into their farm

…met Eleanor who seemed a little non plussed. 

 “Where’s John?”

“Down in the back field burying his sheep.”

“What?”

“Dogs got into the sheep last night…ripped them bad.”

“Wild dogs?”

“No, I don’t think so.  Likely some pet dogs that were allowed to run loose.”

I hiked down the lane and there was John burying his sheep.  Not all of them

but many of them.  The corpses lay around  like limestone boulders.   John was

not a man to curse but he cursed that day.

“Alan, the dogs did not even kill the sheep.  Just ripped them to pieces. I had to 

shoot them.”,  then i saw the rifle leaning against the tractor as John hauled a ewe

into the pit he had dug.

“Whose dogs?”

“Not sure.  I do not want to talk about it.”

I got the feeling that the rifle would do double duty if a dog showed  up that day.

The story of this farm house will come as a separate Episode.  The house, to my mind, demonstrates

the triumph of the human spirit.

In 1847, Daniel Massey established the Newcastle Foundry and Machine Manufactory in what is now Newcastle, Ontario.^[2] The company made some of the world’s first mechanical threshers, at first by assembling parts from the United States, but eventually designing and building its own equipment. Daniel Massey’s son, Hart Massey, subsequently renamed the enterprise as the Massey Manufacturing Co. In 1879, the company moved to Toronto,^[3] where it soon became one of the city’s leading employers. The huge complex of factories, consisting of a 4.4-hectare (11-acre) site with plant and head office at 915 King Street West (now part of Liberty Village), became one of the best-known features of the city. The company expanded further and began to sell its products internationally.^[3] Through extensive advertising campaigns, it became one of the most well-known brands in Canada. A labour shortage throughout the country also helped to make the firm’s mechanized equipment very attractive.

Massey began experimenting with oil engines about 1910, with engines such as the Bulldog. However, success came only later in the 1920s with the Wallis line of tractors which was purchased by the firm.

In the 1930s, it introduced the first self-propelled combine harvester.^[2] Massey Harris also produced one of the world’s first four-wheel drive tractors. Hart Massey’s sons Charles, Walter, Chester and Fredbecame closely involved in the business and eventually took over its operations. They were the last generation of Masseys to run Massey-Harris. Other members of the family went on to other accomplishments: Vincent Massey became Governor General of Canada and Raymond Massey became a noted actor in American films. The Massey family used its fortune to improve the city of Toronto and many institutions, such as the University of Guelph, University of Toronto, Upper Canada College, Crescent School, Appleby College, Massey Hall and Metropolitan United Church, were partially financed by the Masseys.

EPISODE  286    MASSEY FERGUSON DEMOLITION        THE JOHN CALDER SAWMILL,  BELLWOOD, ONTARIO

alan skeoch

March  2021

“Alan, if you ever need some logs cut into planks, bring them up to the farm.”

John did not have to ask twice.  On week ends i began moving my Massey Harris beams

from Toronto to Bellwood.   And then the nice part happened.  I spent several days

helping John convert old factory posts  into nice white pine planks which we then

fed into his planer.  

Saw dust and wood chips  peppered the air and on some days the wood chip shower

was interspersed with snow flakes.  It was  ‘the best of times’.  Unforgettable. 

Especially when the milling was halted for a few hours so the lambing could be assisted if

a ewe needed help getting the little lamb into the open air.  Then there was  milking time

which took precedence over everything.  The Holstein herd had to be milked on s

a regular schedule.   The Calder/Townsend herd bellowed at milking time.  Painfull.  Could

not be delayed.  Seven days a week job.   Imagine trying to tend a flock of sheep, a dairy herd and a saw mill

all on the same day.

John had his flock of sheep.  Eleanor had her herd of cattle.  There lives were contained within that framework

from which there was no desire to escape. Morning, day, and night labour.   No time to waste?  Not quite true for there were 

hours in the daytime when the saw mill could be put into operation.   Those were my moments.

Some Massey Harris beams ready for the saw mill after we made sure there

wer no nails.   Jus one nail could damage the saw blade.   Most small saw mills

will not accept used wood beams…nor will they accept logs from city trees

lest there be a fence bolt or worse buried in the log.

The wood grain streaks, along with blemishes from long gone branching points, made the southern pitch

pine planks, in my mind, an imaginary terrain of farm fields freshly furrowed but interrupted by granite 

boulders pushed down here by glaciers that towered above the land pushed and pushing those stones.  

John had other jobs than mine such as this gargantuan piece.  John was  not a man to waste things.   Even the towering skeletal

dead elms on his farm were worth salvaging.   Once put through his saw mill the spoliated elm planks had a beauty all their own.

John used these planks with their ghostly markings to clothe the interior walls of the stone house he had almost completed.

I am not sure why John is threatening to eat here.  

END:  THE JOHN CALDER SAW MILL, BELLWOOD, ONTARIO.

NEXT:   EPISODE 287:   WHAT THE CALDER FAMILY WERE DOING OTHER THAN SAWING WOOD

alan skeoch

March 2021

SAMPLES OF WOOD QUILTS MADE FROM WOOD SCRAPS

Post Script   Just a couple of my Wooden Quilts to remind readers that there

was an end use of some of this rescued lumber.  Small bits and pieces captured

my imagination so often.  It began with a crumpled sections of snow fence on Uncle 

Norman’s farm.  Each piece of distressed lath looked like a dark and foreboding

sky.   A little polishing with the belt sander and shaping with the band saw and… ‘Presto’… the 

busted  snow fence pieces became something real.

I made this one in remembrance of an attack on John Calder’s sheep by ‘pet’ dogs…story 

coming in an Episode

These large pictures now hang above fireplace at home and on wall at farm

This is an old school near Thornbury… enclosed in a white pine forest.