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.
John Calder’s face seemed to always be locked in a smile.
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.
When most farms were switching over to combine harvesters, John and Eleanor insisted on taking
the crop off using a binder to cut and tie the sheaves, then each sheaf had to be “stoked” in the field
to dry, then loaded on a wagon, hauled to John’s best Threshing machine powered by an ancient
Rumely Oil Pull tractor. The threshed grain was blown through a long tube into the
granary deep in the bowels of the barn.
When Eric and I were 10 and 12, we were told to crawl into the granary and keep
pushing the grain to the back. It was a race with death. Push the grain back or die.
We kept sinking in the grain…die smothered we felt…so we fought that steady
stream of wheat that showered us. We fought to stay on top.
We did what we were told but got scared as our backs began to touch the ceiling
of the granary and there was only one tiny escape hole. The noise of the thresher
and the humping of the Oil Pull tractor was deafening. Had we been forgotten.
Then SILENCE. “Crawl out boys, time for dinner.” Big spread, More pies than
I ever saw in a bakeshop….Rhubarb, apple, blueberry, mincemeat, cherry…so much
pie that we were not sure we could crawl back in the granary through that tiny hole.
“It’s over boys. Threshing is done.” We looked at each other. We had been part
of something great…something we would never forget. We had lived through it.
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.
