FARM 23 - Meeting Place connects old methods with direct online sales
BY SCOTT STEPHENSON
If you live in Huron County and have an interest in organic farming, you’ve probably already heard about Meeting Place Organic Farm near Lucknow. Founded by Tony and Fran McQuail in 1973, Meeting Place is one of the oldest organic farms in Ontario, and is in the midst of a new generation’s plans to expand in exciting and different directions. The Citizen stopped in to learn about their plans and get a bit of background on what it takes to run an organic farm.
It was a chilly winter day, but upon arrival, there was a flurry of activity. Horses, hogs and chickens were all choosing to soak up sunshine in the pasture. Cattle made their way slowly up a hill where bales of hay waited to be snacked on, and the whole McQuail clan was on hand and obliged The Citizen by posing for a multi-generational family portrait. That family includes Fran and Tony, their daughter Katrina, her husband Ben and their two young children, Imogen and Stella, as well as a frenetic farm dog named Whiskey.
In the meantime, Stephen, a friendly farmhand, feeds the chickens. When the birds see him coming, they squawk with excitement, spilling out of the chicken coop and annoying a few of the farm’s Suffolk Punch horses, who move begrudgingly out of the way. There are almost 60 birds, and during the colder months they still produce about 50 eggs a day.
A trip inside the barn reveals a bevy of quail, hiding amongst strategically-placed cedar branches. The branches give them safe places to lay their eggs and feel protected, a helpful tip Katrina learned on social media. Nearby, four of the farm’s young barn cats were minding their own business.
Further inside the barn, there is an enormous pig named Pickle. Once the runt of the litter, he spent the first few years of his life as a house pig. Now, Pickle is not only the unofficial farm mascot, he’s a local celebrity, having performed in the role of The Pig in the Blyth Festival’s production of Wing Night at the Boot. It’s understandable why he got the role - Pickle has the charisma of a young Marlon Brando.
In the pens next to Pickle are ducks and baby piglets. Once the piglets are five or six months old, they will be close to 240 pounds, and ready for slaughter. When asked about what breed the piglets are, Ben explained that, while he is more than willing to answer questions about farm life, “You’re talking to the least qualified member of the family,” he laughs.
Katrina is the one born into farm life, and has, as an adult, worked to further community education on organic farming techniques. The piglets are a Berkshire-cross, she explains. She was about to go over her recent talk about regenerative livestock in Guelph, when an uproar spread between the two children, who were both shouting that it was time for music class, with great enthusiasm.
Music class turns out to be a virtual, interactive gathering beamed out of Zurich, Ontario, with the goal of familiarizing young children with music, and it meant that the interview was moving inside. Katrina and Ben’s house is at the centre of the active farm, right near the barns, orchard and freezer, encircled by a deck of no small degree of excellence.
Once inside, Katrina answers questions, sets up snacks for the kids, and manages the farm from her phone, while Ben makes coffee, serves up cinnamon buns and guides the children through music class. Adding their own song to the well-appointed farmhouse is a box on the kitchen counter, teeming with baby quail. The box is near the wood stove, and there are extra heat lamps mounted on top.
This part of the interview was punctuated with the tiny chirps of indignant chicks. Katrina explained how she came to take over her parents’ legacy organic farm. Neither Katrina nor older sister Rachel envisioned themselves as being the one to take over, but their parents started broaching the subject in the early 2000s. The decision was a slow one, and Katrina made good use of the time, travelling through South and Central America, working as a pastry chef in Seattle, then at a non-profit in Guelph, and was considering going for a Master’s degree in oceanography.
Eventually, Katrina agreed to take over Meeting Place, and has been learning her parents’ techniques since then, and has been coming up with her own innovations. The Meeting Place mailing list, started in the 1970s, was expanded into an online store. Customers can order (or pre-order) meat, plants and produce online and pick up their order at the farm, or have their order delivered. Hogs were added to the list of barnyard animals for the first time. When the McQuails started the farm, they had to grow all their own animal feed, as organic feed was not yet commercially available. Times have changed, and since 2014 they’ve been able to outsource organic grain.
Another big time-saver was hiring a third-party delivery service to expand the delivery zone, and take the pressure off the young couple so they could focus on plans for community-oriented expansion and child-rearing. Ground will be broken any day now on their new farm store, followed by an event space. Plans are underway for the Mother’s Day Weekend open house, which will feature wagon rides, plant sales and farm-made sausage on a bun. There is talk about an outdoor community movie night, about getting geese, growing berries, and countless other great ideas about the future of the farm.
But what makes Meeting Place an official organic farm? To keep its organic status, the McQuails submit paperwork annually, and are always ready for an inspection, which means everything on the farm needs to have a traceable origin.
To learn more about organic certification processes, and the origin of the farm, meant leaving Katrina and Ben’s house to travel up the hill, past the old apple orchard to a second farmhouse where organic farming icons Fran and Tony McQuail are spending their quasi-retirement. On the way there is a quick introduction to Harley, the matriarchal calico cat of the farm. She had some choice meows about farming, but would only speak off the record.
The elder McQuails both came to farming in the 1970s, approaching it from an ecological point of view. They started raising apples at a time when organic farming was treated as an impossibility, taking over a neglected cash crop farm that had been using all the popular pesticides of the day, something that concerned the McQuails. They worried about the effects pesticides were having on the environment and themselves. Fran recalled the mentality of the day. “They said, you have to use this stuff.” The type of apples they were growing, Macintosh, is prone to diseases like scab, and they were told to use fungicide to prevent it.”
Thoroughly unimpressed with the results, they decided to go cold turkey on the orchard. It took time for the trees to detox, and afterwards they required lots of healing compost and benign neglect. The earthworm population returned. Encouraged by seeing health return to their farm, they began to expand.
In those early days, they worked in exchange for equipment use, and relied on horses to do the rest. Tony still does most of the horse-driven work on the farm, such as clearing the driveway. They started breeding the horses and selling their colts, using the revenue to expand into other livestock. They also studied the organic farming techniques of Europe, where the practice was already popular. They acquired sheep and pasture grazed them. They also started a Community Share Garden, working with local families to collectively grow the organic vegetables they most wanted. “It’s a good entrance for a new farmer,” said Fran. Everybody learns organic gardening techniques, and ends up with delicious vegetables to eat with their families. Soon they started raising lambs, and started their mailing list. Once they really had a handle on the balance and hard work needed to make an organic farm, they realized that the rapidly growing industry had no set standards to define what made a farm organic, so they set about creating those standards, with other, like-minded farmers and agronomists. Those early rules have evolved into the certification system that exists today.
From the beginning, one question kept coming back to Tony. “How do we design a farm that is energy-efficient?” So often, the mentality in agriculture is “get bigger or get out”, but he believes in doing more with less. He believes in holistic management like harvesting sunlight, letting hay roll down hill, and restoring water systems, like the farm’s four ponds. He considers conservation to be a critical part of being a farmer, with endless positive effects on the planet. “Regenerative ecological farming is one of the most cost-effective ways to sequester carbon, and there’s a whole whack of collateral benefits.”
After the interview, it was lunch time, and all the kids, older and younger, Stephen in tow, piled into the house, filling it with the cacophonous symphony of family.
Before departure, Katrina accommodated a quick stop by the meat freezer. Inside, it is quiet. The walls are lined with boxes full of different cuts of pork, beef and chicken, as well as sausages of all kinds. The Citizen selected some pork and cheese sausage, and let the McQuails get back to lunch.