A late, wet harvest on his brother's farm has shown Gord Gilmour how much farms depend on a patchwork of helpers, and how wide the farm labour gap is, he writes in a column for the Manitoba Co-operator. The views are the writer's own.
Gilmour, who describes himself as a 57-year-old "keyboard jockey", went home to help and found himself driving a combine "roughly the size of my house" through 15- and 16-hour days, with "short" 10- and 12-hour days when humidity slowed the work. Spring work his brother and one hired hand can manage; harvest is the hard part.
The crew was a mix: his brother and the hired hand at its core, his father, 87 and then 88, swathing in daylight only, a landlord's grandson gaining experience, the hired hand's husband, a millwright, driving truck when his shifts allowed, a fuel delivery driver, an old friend on vacation time, and his mother, niece and a family friend organising and feeding everyone. The best advice he got, from the hired hand, was not to be the fastest operator but to keep the combine rolling reliably hour after hour; his own rule was to ask the others to stop him the moment he did anything stupid or dangerous.
It takes a village, he writes, and that underlines the labour challenges farms across the country face. When he tells urban friends, some of them experienced tradespeople, about the work, many say they have always wanted to try it. He wonders whether there is an untapped pool of people who respect farming but have never had the chance, and says it would be good to "expand the village" sometimes.
Photo: Bryan Wittal / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)
Source: Manitoba Co-operator
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