Alan Skeoch

Month: February 2023

  • EPISODE 735 TEMPLIN FANNING MILLS, FERGUS, ONTARIO — FACTORY GIFT TO ONT. AGRIC. MUSEUM

    EPISODE 735     TEMPLIN FANNING MILLS, FERGUS, ONTARIO — FACTORY GIFT TO ONT. AGRIC. MUSEUM


    alan skeoch
    february 7, 2023

    Templin Manufacturing Company, Fergus, Ont., circa 1890



    Templin Manufacturing Company,, circa1900

    Replica Templin Manufacturing Company (circa 1970),  Milton , ontario


    SUNNY AFTERNOON ABOUT 1970

    “Just down the hill was the Templin Factory, Alan”  said aunt Greta (Skeoch) Metcalfe one sunny afternoon
    “Right here in Fergus?”
    ‘Yes, now the Howes and Reeves Garage Repair shop.”
    “That was where Perfection Fanning Mills were made,”

    “I believe the factory is still there…on the second and third floors…untouched
    for decades….access only by a ladder.”
    ‘Do you think Mr. Reeves would let me climb the ladder?”
    “I believe so…I will come with you.”

    Aunt Greta Skeoch Metcalfe was about 80 years old at the time we spoke,  My dad’s
    oldest of four sisters…keeper of the family records…sharp as a tack.  

    I climbed the ladder first, pushed open the trap door.  Aunt Greta followed but only
    head and shoulders exposed to the site.   What we behind was heart stopping.  There before
    us was the Templiin Manufacturing Company…intact.  Like Miss Havisham’s cake
    in Dickens ‘Great Expectations’.  Everything in place but coveedi in half a century
    of dust.  My boots left a trail from station to station where the Perfection Fanning
    Mills were assembled.   Shelves along the walls contained the inventory…the parts
    stations in line … ready for assembly.

    What should I do?  What could I do?

    “Mr. Reeves, I have an idea for you to consider.  Bob Carbert is the manager of the
    new Ontario Agricultural Museum on the outskirts of Milton.  I am a director…along 
    with many others.  Maybe we could find a home for the old Templin Factory,”
    “Sounds fine to me.  Nobody other than you and your aunt have shown any interest.”

    And so for the next few week ends we moved the factory to our farm while
    Bob Carbert built a replica factory on the Museum grounds.  The end  result
    was marvellous as you can see below.

    Unfortunately Bob Carbert retired and the whole site of the Agricultural Museum
    fell into neglect.  Many tried to resuscitate the site but government support was minimal.
    Museums are loss leaders.  They do not make a profit.  Visitors come once or twice
    and then get on with their real lives.  

    Museum managers try to change this pattern of neglect.  Try and try and try.

    I suppose there are only a few people who want to climb that museum ladder
    to see the dust covered reminders of past lives.  

    As to the replica Templin Fanning Mill Factory, it remains.  Closed.  Perhaps
    covered in the dust of the past couple of decades.

    The pictures below were taken when the replica factory was first opened.
    Makes me sort of weepy.

    alan skeoch
    Feb, 7, 2023

    Perhaps the Wellington County Museum might start to pay attention,






  • Fwd: EPISODE 730 I wrote a book! Would you read it? Dealt with machine design in 19th century, 1850-1891, (memorize sentence 8. OK?)

    Fwd: EPISODE 730      I wrote a book!  Would you read it?   Dealt with machine design in 19th century, 1850-1891, (memorize sentence 8. OK?)


    alan skeoch
    Feb. 3, 2023





    Pride! Arrogance!  Both are a part of all of us.  Best kept in check.   
    But who would know if the small candle is hidden under a bushel?

    So let me get this bit of pride and arrogance off my chest and into
    the digital world.

    Around 1980 I applied for sabbatical leave from my job teaching history
    at Parkdale Collegiate Institute.  For decades we had been watching the
    Ontario rural landscape changing as small 100 acre farms were disappearing
    several of which were Skeoch farms in the vicinity of Fergus where our ancestors
    arrived in 1846.  

    Wth the disappearance of these farms…hundreds of the them…the machines of
    19th century agriculture were going to scrap yards across the province.  Some of them
    we rescued and trucked to our small farm, 25 acres, in Wellington County.  Others
    we bought and donated to various museums…Ontario Agricultural Museum, City of
    Toronto Riverdale Farm, Doon Pioneer Village, and others.

    There were precious few records of these machines.  So I decided to apply for the MA
    program at the University of Toronto and as accepted.  This was not an easy decision as
    we had already decided that raising children was best done by one parent staying in the
    home.  Other families made different decisions….or were forced to make different decisions.
    Our decision meant that one salary would be ours and living could be tight.  We could live with
    that.

    But to take a year off was another matter.  I will forever be in debt to the Toronto Board of
    Education which had instituted a sabbatical leave program for oddballs like me..  My salary
    would be reduced to 80% and I would be committed to return to teaching in Toronto.
    In other words we now had a green light to pursue our MA program.  Our?   Did I say
    ‘our’?  Indeed I did.  Marjorie was in full agreement.

    So I joined three departments at the U. of T.  The history graduate program under Dr.
    J.M.S. Careless, (who only had one arm),  The Fine Arts program under Dr. Webster,
    and the School of Practical Science (S.P.S.) under several professors.  The engineering
    profs were so helpful .  Three departments
    was strange but my desire was strange.  I hoped to consider the changes in agriculture
    which swept through the 19 th century and resulted in the fact that we only needed 4 or 5
    percent active farmers to feed 100% of our population.

    The inventions of the 19th century were revolutionary.  From sicles and cradle scythes to
    hore drawn binders to early threshing machines and combine harvesters pulled by
    steam and fossil fuelled tractors.   No facet of agriculture was untouched by these changes.

    IN the end I wrote a 300 page paper titled Technology and Change in 19th century agriculture
    between 1850 and 1891.   Research involved a couple of trips to the Ford Museum in Dearborn
    (Detroit), the New York State Historical Society in Cooperstown, Black Creek Pioneer Village, and others.

    What a grand time we had doing this book.  Each machine had a history…a human history.

    At the same time I was writing this thesis (If I can call it that) I got an extra job teaching at 
    the Faculty of Education, Type A students, helping them become teachers. That job was exciting.  
    I owe thanks to John Ricker, Dean of the faculty and Evan Cruickshank who had been my high
    school history teacher at Humberside Collegiate and became head of history at the
    Facultyof Education.   When the year ended I was offered a job at the Faculty but I was
    duty bound to return to teach at Parkdale Collegiate.  Glad to do so.  Loved teaching young
    people and loved my fellow teachers at Parkdale.  Absolutely no regrets.

    Many of my friends and my brother took different tracks.  I had one amusing job as a Vice Principal
    at a summer program at Monarch Park Collegiate.  Walter C., the principal, told me this was the
    way to be upwardly mobile,  To do so he gave me a yard stick and told me:

    “Alan, I want you to stand outside the summer school and measure the length
    of the girls dresses”
    “What then?”
    “If they are too short send them home to get changed.”

    My immediate thought was “Are you kidding?” Walter was not kidding.  I am proud to 
    say I never sent a girl home to change her shorts  for a dress.  I did stand out
    In front of the school with the yard stick though.  That was humiliation enough.

    “Alan, I want you to check the boys’ washrooms”
    “Why?”
    “Just in case some wiseacre is smoking?
    What if a smoker is in the toilet stall with the door closed?”
    “Kick it open.”

    That was a learning curve for me.  Other principals were not as right wing as Walter.  Many were terrific
    people.  Duncan Green, for instance, when I asked him about a newspaper interview regarding history
    teaching in secondary schools.  “What should I say?”

    “Say what you believe…and say it in as few words as possible.”

    Which takes me back to the 300 page book I wrote on my wonderful sabbatical.
    I can still see the face of Dr. Carelss when I handed him my bound copy of the book.
    I knew at that moment he was unlikely to read the whole thing.  He would not have time.
    What would I do if some kid handed me a 300 page essay?  Point made.

    There were so many funny things that happened on that sabbatical.  And some challenges.
    The big challenge was the French compulsory requirement.  Each grad student was expected to
    be fluent in a second language.  Holy Samoley!   So at the same  time I was doing all this research
    in three departments I had to be studying French to see if I could pass the compulsory language
    rule.  

    I wrote the French test  twice.  Failed the first time and got  zero.  Zero!  Zero was a mid mark between
    +7 and -7.  I don’t know how this was arrived at.  But I would have to get a +2 or +3 to get my MA.
    So I rewrote the test again one spring day along with a bunch of other grad students who accepted me
    as a peer even though there was a gap in our ages…a big gap.  

    One of the most flattering things happened in that second attempt at French.

    “Al, you are number 8, remember that”, said one my fellow students.  I did not know
    what the designation 8 meant until we all went for a beer after the test.  The organizer had
    a pen and paper to record each sentence in the test.  We were not expected to pass the test.
    We were expected to memorize a sentence each.  Sentences translated would be provided
    for the next test.  We were expected to cheat.  (Not sure the same test would be presented)

    What a great feeling i had that day.  My fellow students accepted me.  I was one of them.
    Even though I let them down with sentence number 8.  

    Walter C., my former principal would expect me to see him right away to report the cheating.
    Are you kidding?   That’s a laugh.   I do not rat on friends.

    I passed the second test…got a +2 I think.  None of my friends did that I know about.  How could
    they?  French was no longer compulsory in high school.  Those kids did not have snowballs chance
    in hell to get their MA as long as the French requirement was in place.   

    The requirement was quietly dropped a year of so later I was told.   I was still basking in the
    reflected glory of being Number 8.   Immediately sent a note of thanks to Maida Schroeder,
    my high school French teacher who kept me in the front seat and during the final exam
    slipped me a cartoon that said it takes skill to invent words that do not exist.  She knew.

    My friends at Parkdale held a party for me when I got the zero.  It was good party complete with
    a big poster and my mark emblazoned in red as I remember.

    The thesis had an impact.  Copies were made and are on file at the New Yorks State
    Historical Museum, the Ontario Agricultural Museum, Black Creek Pioneer Village.  Parts have
    been quoted here and there.  

    I returned to Parkdale C.I. for the  rest of my career.  Never regretted one moment.  Just loved
    sharing history with younger generations. 

    The yardstick?   The girls skirts and shorts?  What a humbug.  But I suppose standards have 
    to be set in life.  We can’t have students coming to class nearly nude? That might be too distracting
    for anyone  wanting to do an MA program.  Hard to memorize sentence 8 in that case.

    Now here is a test.

    If I handed you my thesis…all 300 pages nicely bound.  Would you read it?  AHAH!  Thought so,
    Would you read sentence 8 for the test?  Now that’s more like it.

    alan skeoch
    Feb. 3, 2023

    P>S>  NICE things do happen in life.  One of the nicest that year was when my Type A Class
    at the Faculty of Education gave Marjorie and me a gift…an overnight stay at the Moffat Inn
    at Niagara on the Lake.  We went there the  following winter with the kids.  We had a fireplace
    in the room   That is how we celebrated my Master of Arts.

    PPS   And after it was all over a gang of my fellow teachers spent several memorable
    weekends at the Henry Ford Museum in  between the consumption of beer. Henry Ford
    was an oddball collector of old machines.  I think a copy of my thesis resides there although
    I am not sure.   I was asked by the Mellon bank to rebuild a McCormick 1831 reaper and
    ship it to the Northern Ireland Pioneer Village.  That was another result.  

    So there you have it.  Pride and Arrogance.

    alan





  • EPISODE 731 FEB. 2, 2023 COLDEST NIGHT OF WINTER COMING IN 1 HOUR


    EPISODE 731    FEB. 2, 2023  COLDEST NIGHT OF WINTER COMING IN 1 HOUR

    alan skeoch
    Feb. 2, 2023

    NOTE:  This story is to be read/viewed  twice.  Once now on this frigid day and
    once next August when the day is hot enough to fry eggs on the sidewalk.
    Then you will have to decide which is best…FIRE OR ICE?   The truth of the
    matter is that neither fire nor ice are nice. They are killers.  Our lives as human
    beings are IN BETWEEN.  Take a moment to consider that and to think of the
    wonder or wonders.  What wonder of wonders?  That we have peopled the
    earth,   Maybe our arrogance.  Our belief that  we deserve the Earth is just
    a matter of chance.   And our place here is just a lucky quirk of time.  Those
    dinosaurs lived longer on this planet than we have.   And if we want to live
    here longer then we have a task indeed. Lots of people have mulled over 
    these thoughts.   Thoughts made simple and melodic by Robert Frost as
    you know.

    Fire and Ice 

    Some say the world will end in fire,
    Some say in ice.
    From what I’ve tasted of desire
    I hold with those who favor fire.
    But if it had to perish twice,
    I think I know enough of hate
    To say that for destruction ice
    Is also great
    And would suffice.


    AND ALL THE EARTH WAS LOCKED IN ICE AND SNOW….OR SEEMED SO


    note:  This is why second winter scene Episode….the worst or the best

    OUR FARM ANIMALS KNOW THE COLD NIGHT IS COMING


    MARJORIE ALL DECKED OUT IN PINK AND GREEN AND PURPLE…WITH A FUEL STICK OF KIT KAT

    OUR SMALL BARN IN BACKGROUND WAS ONCE ON THE FARM OF J.S. WOODSWORTH…FOUNDER OF THE CCF….
    WE HAD IT MOVED HEERE FROM ETOBICOKE



    NOT LONG AGO THIS WAS A FARM AND THE DRIVEWAY HAD MEANING

  • ADDITON TO EPISODE 728….THE MANURE BOB SLEIGH AND TEAM …LORNE SAUNDERS FARM

    Just fond actual picture ….moving manure by bob sleigh 



  • EPISODE 728 STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES—gsthering horse manure to grow mushrooms

    episode 728   STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES—gathering horse manure to grow mushrooms

    alan skeoch
    Feb.1, 2023



    “Alan, this is stupid…really dumb.”
    “What?”
    “Gathering all that horse manure”
    “Need about a ton of horse manure , figure.”
    “You are going to wreck our car…how much does that load on the roof weigh?”
    “I figure about 400 pounds….8 x 50…roof should be OK”
    “And inside the car?”
    “Less…lots of room for you and the coonhound”
    “If people knew how stupid you can be they must wonder about our marriage.”
    “Wait a bit…wait until the spawn arrives.”
    “Spawn?”
    “We are going to grow mushrooms in the spring and summer….Horse manure and mushroom spawn is all we need.”
    “Why?”
    “Something to do in the winter while you ride your horse….I will gather up the hoseballs.”
    “Wacko!”
    “Lorne and Carol will let me have the teams horseballs as well. ‘Road apples’!  Four or five trips to the city
    with loads like this should do it…a ton of horseballs dumped in that big box I’ve built at the back of our lot.
    No one knows…not much smell. Actually I like the smell of horse manure…better than pigs snd cows.”
    “What if the neighbours see the car looking like this…roof loaded with horse manure.”
    “Who would believe it?”

    NOTE:  I spent the month of February that year (1970’s) hauling horse manure from farm to city.  No one asked what was in
    the sacks on the car roof.   Sort of strange as I expected questions.  No police stopped…no neighbour questioned.
    It was winter…February…when most people are indoors.   These were great days.   While Lorne forked manure
    onto his bob sleigh for the horses to haul it to the back field, I rescued the horse dung.  Somewhere I had read
    that horse manure makes great mushrooms.  And that was all I needed.  Recipe?  A ton of horse manure and
    a package of mushroom spores from Dominion Seed House.  Dump the stuff in the box and wait for my 
    mushroom crop.

    Well it did not quite work as planned.  I checked the mushroom coffin regularly….days and days, weeks and
    weeks.  No mushrooms.  Then around June…months later …there was one tiny little mushroom.  One goddamn
    mushroom!  After all my labour.  Not even sure it was an edible mushroom.  Just like everything else in life,
    mushroom growing demands skill.   That was something I did not have.  

    Not all was lost.  I loved gathering horse manure in the winter time.  Marjorie would take Spartacus, our estrogen
    gelding, up and down the fifth line.  We rescued him from certain death.   Those estrogen mares were chained up
    in barns with tubes hooked to their arses to gather their urine.  Why?  For Birth control pills.  Terrible life for those
    mares.  Had to be pregnant mares for some reason. Their colts were of no use.  We rescued Sparky.  Called
    him Spartacus after the slave in Roman history.


    Imagine this wagon filled to the brim with manure destined for the far field.  Imagine
    sitting on top of  the load bouncing along to the team’s version of Jingle Bells.
    Sweet memories.


    On some clear sunny winter days I even got a chance to ride across the snow clad fields with the loads
    of manure.   I think Lorne just kept the horses for that purpose.  And he was pleased that we could do the
    manure spring together.  He never charged me for the horse manure.  I thought it was free but now realize
    it was a money crop that made the fields more productive.

    Bottom line?   I was a total failure as a mushroom grower.  That puny little mushroom in the plywood 
    coffin was never harvested.   Our car, A Renault 15, did have a special aroma.  Maybe I should have
    sent a note to France telling the car company to add a sentence in their brochure.  “This car can
    carry 400 pounds of horse manure on its roof without denting.”

    Suppose Marjorie had married the Lawyers son in North Bay?  Could he have
    given her a better life.  I think not.


    Marjorie had many boyfriends.  I met most of them.  One even proposed to her at university.  She refused
    gracefully because she liked me better…a bit better.   Now that, I realize, is hard to understand.  Some women
    marry with the expectation they can change their husbands.   Marjorie never did this.   Even when
    our car, house, clothes  had the faint smell of horse manure.

    Was the mushroom failure the only failure in our lives?  Not so.  There were many failures.  I built a
    barn on the farm..it collapsed.   I tried to make maple syrup using a Forth line forest.  Some son of a 
    bitch shot our pails of the trees.  We accepted a contract to grow cucumbers for Manthew Wells Rose
    Brand pickles company of Guelph.  We were laughed at and lost our investment.  The company wanted 
    gherkins and we produced crooks and nubs and cucumbers as long as your arm…all of which were
    dumped.  Our payment for months of labour was less that $50.   Our investment in a tractor and our
    labour was a couple of thousand dollars.  A failure.  Even the tractor, a well used Farmal A, was a disaster
    as I forgot to put anti freeze in the radiator and the hard winter cracked the block.  Scrap.  I loved that
    tractor.  Lots of failures in my life…in our lives.  You would think I (we) would learn from these failures.
    We never did.  That’s what farmers must feel as their glowing expectations turn into broken dreams.



    These fine bred horses did not come from Estrogen barns.  They came from fine mares and stallions.  Spartacus was not that lucky.


    “Alan, you have given readers we are total failures at everything.”
    “Right.  We have had more success raising kids and dogs.    But
    readers like failures.  More human.  Everybody fails at one time or
    another.  




    “If they do not fail.  Have continual success in life.  Guess what happens to them?”
    “I do not know.”
    “Neither do I.”

    alan skeoch
    ev. 1, 2023


    “Marjorie, there seems to be a funny smell in the car these days”
    “Look at the roof.”