At the heart of the Greenwich, NS, farming scene are five families who have worked the land for more than 200 years. Four of those families have applied to have their land rezoned, which would allow for residential and commercial development. The fifth family is opposed to it. They see it as the proverbial straw that would turn the green grass of home into a strip of urban sprawl...
It's a sunny morning in mid-May. A cool wind ruffles the brown water of the Cornwallis River and whips up the trees along Highway 1 in Greenwich, NS, a busy farming hamlet in the heart of the Annapolis Valley. After the morning blast of commuters, traffic has slowed to a casual pace that will keep up all day, picking up at lunchtime, and again with the after-work rush.
Driving west on this road, past the family farms and markets jostling for space with renovated homesteads and immaculate gardens, you slow down. There's a tractor up ahead, flipping mud like it's confetti. To your left, the land sweeps up to the southern ridge, where apple orchards are heavy with unfurling blossoms. To your right, the terrain slopes northward to dykelands cleared by the Acadians three centuries back, and farmed almost continuously ever since. Cape Blomidon, its momentous red cliffs etched by the world's highest tides, looms in the distance. On mornings like this, when the warming sun burns the last vestiges of mist off freshly harrowed fields and the winding river, you think there's no place like it.
And that's the problem.
Greenwich falls smack in the middle of what Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture CEO Laurence Nason calls the province's "farming triangle"-a tract of land bound by Halifax, Kentville and Truro that produces 65 per cent of the province's dairy products, 83 per cent of its fresh vegetables, 41 per cent of its fresh fruit and more than 90 per cent of its poultry.
Yet, in a seemingly inevitable global land equation that has seen communities form around and then over top of prime agricultural land, this triangle also happens to be where 70 per cent of Nova Scotia's population will live by 2026.
In recent years, Kings County, which includes Greenwich, has become one of the fastest growing counties in Nova Scotia. Pretty vistas, a local university and the one-hour proximity to Halifax have helped fuel a growth rate 2.3 times greater than the provincial average. That, in turn, has driven unprecedented residential development, most of it concentrated along or near this strip of road, often using prime farmland.
Some people think this is a great thing, a promising sign of affluence and bustle in a region plagued by rural outmigration. But for others, the threat of swanky subdivisions elbowing out fields and orchards signals the potential end of a way-and means-of life.
Back in 2005, when a group of long-standing Greenwich farmers applied to have 361 acres of their farmland rezoned to permit residential and commercial development, some area residents-including another group of long-standing farmers-worried that the community's roots were being ripped out from under them. They fought the rezoning, and the matter is still being played out in municipal politics today. The "no" group says that in a time of global food scarcity and soaring transportation costs, building over farmland is an irrevocable mistake. But the "yes" group-farmers whose families have worked their land for more than 700 years collectively-says agriculture isn't what it was. It's so different, in fact, that it's time to think seriously about giving away the farm.
It's a quiet morning at Hennigar's Farm Market, still early in the year for the fresh produce that has attracted foodies from as far away as Halifax for more than 50 years. Employees wearing green sweatshirts work the floors of the immense market, which includes an ice cream stand, greenhouse, bakery and gift store as well as the produce market. Doug Hennigar, 55, emerges from the storage area rubbing his hands, moving with the quick clip of a man who has lots to do.
Like his father before him, Doug left the farm he grew up on as a teenager to attend university. He intended to work as a biologist, but jobs were scarce the year he graduated; when he came home for Christmas in 1974 to find his father in poor health and having difficulty managing things on his own, he made a quick decision. The Monday morning after New Year's, Doug showed up for work on the farm, joining his older brother Jim, and father, Rhodes. Over the next few years, they set to work clearing land, planting vegetables and expanding the farm market, turning Hennigar's into an operation capable of supporting three families.
At 130 acres, Hennigar's was always considered a small farm by Canadian standards. That never stopped Doug from making a success of it though-he and his wife, Heather, won the prestigious Outstanding Young Farmers of Canada award in 1991. The Hennigar family's winning strategy was to differentiate themselves from the competition by selling unique products to customers directly through their farm market.
From the old farmhouse, Doug Hennigar can throw a stone at a once well-worn path leading up from the farm market to the home of Mrs. Williams, who, in addition to raising 11 children, provided Hennigar's with the fresh pies, rolls and breads that made the market a local favourite through the 1960s. The family went on to cultivate 70 varieties of apples, and began pressing their own apple cider. They excelled at marketing; one year they applied stencils to some of their apples so as they ripened they bore seasonal messages like Merry Christmas. They started a portable peach orchard, planting the trees in pots, and moving them inside during the winter, thus lengthening the growing season and producing sweeter fruit. They built a nature trail and put picnic tables around their duck pond. And, as any born-and-bred child from the Annapolis Valley knows, they served the biggest kiddie cone in the world.
"From the beginning we were trying to make the farm a family destination, a unique experience," Doug says. "I guess we were doing agri-tourism before it was even a word."
He has all the markings of a typical farmer-he has a serious face, speaks in low tones and is economical with small talk and laughter. He dresses plainly, removes his boots before entering his home, and is frugal. He does a lot with a little.
But Doug Hennigar is quick to point out that while he may look like a farmer, he isn't one. "I'm a businessman who happens to practice agriculture," he says.
Doug remembers the first time he heard the word that would define the second half of his career. It was the early 1990s and as the Nova Scotia representative for the Canadian Horticultural Council, he often travelled to Ottawa for industry meetings. "There were experts in ties giving presentations and warning us to prepare for globalization," he says. Doug didn't worry about it too much at the time, thinking Nova Scotia was too small to be affected by such things. He shrugs his shoulders matter of factly. "In the end, they were right."
Around that time Doug implemented a new accounting system to keep track of how profitable their fruits and vegetables really were. One by one, he saw vegetables his family had grown for years drop off the list, unable to compete cost-wise with imports.
In fact, Doug Hennigar's experience represents a disturbing trend. Since the 1970s, the market net income on Canadian farms (a measure that subtracts government subsidies, which disproportionately benefit large-scale industrial farms) has fallen steadily. Market net income averaged $3,897 per farm in the 1930s. During the last decade, that average has plummeted to a loss of $323. In Nova Scotia, net income for farmers between 1995 and 2005 fell 24 per cent. A report by Canada's National Farmers Union states: "Were it not for taxpayer-funded support, off-farm income, depletion of savings and access to debt, farming in Canada would have to cease."
Doug Hennigar shrugs. "Globalization is this complicated thing that hits you all over the place. But at the end of the day it adds up to you not making any money."
So Hennigar, and the other farmers who joined in his petition-Peter Elderkin, Harold Forsyth and Hal Stirling-some of whom date their roots back to the New England Planters, found themselves in a succession-planning quandary. They could continue the status quo, toiling at their farms with little financial security. Or, they could safeguard their retirement by preparing their land for profitable sale. Doing so would necessitate a change in zoning-land zoned to accommodate possible residential and commercial development would command a higher price than agricultural land. Doug says they weighed their options, and chose the latter.
Going down the road 1.6 kilometres is not a long way. It's just about long enough to pull out of Doug Hennigar's driveway, head west along Highway 1 for approximately three minutes, then turn right to Noggins Corner Farm, owned by the Bishop family since the mid-1700s. However, the two families who occupy these farms could not be further apart when it comes to the future of their land.
This morning, Patricia Bishop, 33, did what nine generations of Bishop women have done before her in one form or another. She fed, washed and dressed her three young children before ushering them off to school or to a babysitter's, attended to some household business and had some brief conversations with her accountant and people from the community. Then she settled into her office on the second floor of an old family homestead.
Patricia's earliest memories are of the farm: she remembers lying back in the bucket of a tractor, absorbing the vibrations of the engine and the roll of the land into her small body, watching row upon row of apple-laden boughs pass overhead as her father, Andrew Bishop, drove through the orchards, inspecting the apples. In university she studied to become a teacher, and taught for a time in northern British Columbia. But she and her husband, Josh Oulton, eventually came back to the farm.
It has not been easy. The hours are grueling, the responsibilities endless. In addition to running the vegetable farm she owns with her husband, she works at Noggins Corner Farm Market and serves as president of the Kings County Federation of Agriculture. She is often stressed and exhausted.
But the hardships are punctuated by moments of beauty and profound meaning. "I walk through the farm and see how things change and grow, and I feel like what we're doing is nurturing and productive for society. We provide people with healthy food-what could be more important than that?"
Patricia Bishop epitomizes what Cecilia Rocha, director of Ryerson University's Centre for Studies in Food Security, calls the new generation of young farmers: passionate, committed-and endangered. Between 1981 and 2001, the number of farms in Nova Scotia fell by 22 per cent. "The young people getting into farming today are doing it out of a conviction, an ideology and belief that farming is a good, productive lifestyle," says Cecilia.
Patricia's convictions have put her on the forefront of the "no" camp in Greenwich's land debate. Given what she comes from, it's not surprising. Her forebear, John Bishop Sr., was one of the four original Bishop New England farmers to respond to an ad in the Boston Gazette, offering free land to English settlers to replace the Acadian farmers who were expelled in 1755.
Downstairs in the Noggins Corner Farm business office, the walls are lined with black and white photographs of her ancestors, who have farmed the land continuously ever since. Bishop family members have written at least five historical accounts of the community. On Patricia Bishop's desk, a picture of her eldest child reminds her of what she's working for. "I feel a huge sense of responsibility to protect this land," she says.
"When people talk about developing farmland, I think of the Acadians and the Planters and my family and the gift they passed on to us. You can't just wipe that out in one generation."
On a wet, snowy evening last March, the Municipality of Kings County Council met in Kentville, NS, to vote on Doug Hennigar's application, made with three other farmers, to have their land rezoned for commercial and residential use. Doug and his co-appellants, Peter Elderkin, Harold Forsyth and Hal Stirling, sat shoulder to shoulder on one side of the room, talking little, their faces serious and determined. On the other side of the room sat Patricia Bishop and close to 30 supporters. In the middle, the 11 county councillors debated the merits of each side of the issue, alternately passionate, awkward, thoughtful, resigned.
Laurence Nason doesn't envy them in their task. In recent years, the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture, like the council, has spent increasing amounts of time on land use issues. Laurence agrees with Patricia Bishop that farmland-especially in the "triangle"-needs to be preserved. "Topsoil, after all, takes thousands of years to develop."
On the other hand, he supports Doug Hennigar in his assertion that the costs of protecting farmland should not fall on the shoulders of individual farmers, many of whom depend on the sale of their farms for their retirement. Throughout Europe and other parts of North America, Laurence says local governments support the creation of agricultural land trusts or succession support programs to protect farmland. And while the land debate in Greenwich has dragged on for three years now, Laurence warns that it will likely be resolved the same way other agricultural land debates throughout the province are-by the markets.
"We're at a point now where 50 per cent of the farming industry in Nova Scotia has extreme difficulty making the cost of production. If farming were actually a profitable business we wouldn't have these problems, because farming would be the best use of the land."
On this point, at least, Patricia Bishop and Doug Hennigar can agree. Preserving farming means protecting the land, as well as the hands that work it.