Dear Readers;
As we are within a week of Christmas, Lynne, Kailey and I wanted to wish you all a wonderful Holiday Season. I also thought it was a good time to offer a bit of history about the farm. As we have probably told you, the house, carriage house, and barn were built in the 1860's by Lynne's ancestors. The first photo we have of the farm is from 1907 - and if you look closely you can see that the buildings are all showing some age - after all they were at least 50 years old.
Its a bit hard to see but you may notice that the farm, structurally speaking, looks pretty much the same - except for the large pines out in front of the house along the Loyalist Parkway. A few years after this photo was taken by a Swiss pharmacist, and 100 years ago this June 2nd, Lu and Edith - got married in Brighton in 1912. They were perhaps the farms most influential owners.
This undoubtedly hardworking young couple purchased our farm in 1921. They then set to developing it into one of the best known apple orchards in Ontario. Covering almost all of the workable 80 acres of the farm it must have been quite beautiful during apple blossum season (May). Over time almost the entire first floor was devoted to cold storage (except the east wing which was where the horses were kept), At their peak, they were even shipping apples to Europe.
In the midst of this great production we were lucky enough to have access to a picture of Lu pulling a wagon out of the sheep shed sometime in the 1930's.
Yes that is the same building we now use for weddings on rainy days and where we set up to serve drinks after weddings at the; pondsite, down by the lake or elsewhere.
Time past and Lu retired leaving the farm to his son Don. Don Ross was a World War II veteran who worked in the intelligence/underground service for Canada. He must have been haunted by this brutal time in his life. because when he came home, he shared few of his experiences with anyone. His son Pat pictured below in 1956 (between the main house and the barn - with his older brother) says his Dad simply said - and I am paraphrasing; ' I hope you never see what I saw'.
And those may have been the best of times for the Ross family as Don worked hard to run the farm much the way his parents did. But, far to young, he passed away in the 70's while riding along the Loyalist Parkway on horseback.
And after that, time and the laws of entropy had a way of breaking everything down - even the old apple trees around the house and barn of which a few still valiantly struggle to remain as remnants of the once great Ross orchard. When we arrived in 1980 we fixed everything we could and then filled the barn with dairy hiefers, then sheep then beef cattle ...
20-plus years and a great number of farm animals later left us in 2003 trying to decide whether to tear the barn down. Our barn wasn't exactly looking its best yet again
But you know what we opted to do and following much planning, labour and more than a few anguish-filled moments today it is physically stronger than it ever was (thanks to the Ontario Building Code) Chapman Homes, Norm Morrow and the wonderful heritage we had to work with.
And that is a short history of the farm we love...do have a wonderful Christmas - we look forward to working closely with all of you in the new year!
Cheers!
Mark, Lynne and Kailey
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