| Jul 22, 2010


Irwin Babcook with a cement marker made for the farms' centenary.

It was a matter of luck for Irwin and Jerry Babcook to be able to find a couple of hours in a late July morning to talk to me about their family farm. But all the June rain had given way to some hot sunny weather and the first cut of hay was in, which is pretty good for mid-July.

Last year there was more rain than sun in the early summer and there was even a 10-day stretch when no haying was done at all. “I think it was sometime in August last year before the first cut was done,” said Irwin Babcook, “so we're feeling pretty good this year.”

The Babcook farm is an average-sized dairy operation by Ontario standards, and is pretty large for a Frontenac County farm. There are about 140 head of cattle on the farm, of which 65 are of milking age. To keep those cattle going, the Babcooks have to fill one silo with the equivalent of 10,000 square bales of chopped hay (hayage). They also bale up 300 double-sized round bales, which are each the equivalent volume of about 20 square bales and do about 1,000 in squares for a total of about 17,000 bales in the first cut.

“With that all done we have a bit of a lull before we deal with peas, corn, and the second cut,” Irwin said.

Irwin and Jerry Babcook, their son Tom and his wife Karen, are a four-member team that run Crater Farm these days. Their son Vincent, who is a carpenter, also helps keep things going. The Babcooks, who should not be confused with the Babcocks - but that is another story - have been working the same land for over 150 years. Irwin and Jerry are the 4th generation and Tom and Karen are the 5th.

When George Babcook started up the farm in the 1860s, homesteading was a major industry throughout Frontenac County. Within 40 years there would be farms set up right to the top of the county, but ever since that time the farming community has been shrinking. Most of the farms are now clustered in the southern end of the county, and even in the south the farming community continues to shrink.

But for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being George Babcook's efforts at accumulating adjacent lands in the latter half of the 19th Century, the Babcooks have thrived and Crater Farm remains in good shape, physically as well as financially.

Photo right: The farm in 1908.

There have been many changes. Like all local farms, mixed farming was how the Babcooks made their living 60 or 70 years ago. There were chickens and sheep in addition to cattle, and tending a large garden and picking fruit from the farm orchard were as much a part of the daily routine as milking cows and cleaning barns.

Dairy became a larger and larger part of the operation in the 1950s. The Babooks went to all Holsteins in order to improve milk production in 1948, and when the dairy quota system came in the early 1960s, the economic necessity of focusing on a single major product led to other enterprises being dropped, one by one.

When Irwin Babcook was a teenager during the 1950s the milk had to be trucked into Kingston, to Wilmott's Dairy, which was located on Bath Road across from where the Canadian Tire store is now located.

“In the summertime, Wilmott's didn't need as much milk, but the Parham Dairy, which was owned by Jack York, would need milk and cream for the summer cottagers, so we would truck up there. I remember gathering milk at home and from neighbours and driving up to Parham. I would pick up a quart of chocolate milk at the dairy and drink it on the way home,” Irwin recalls.

In the early 1960s the dairy quota system was introduced and for Irwin's father Gerald and grandfather Ray, who were running the farm at the time, it meant that a single-minded focus on dairy production was the best way to make a good living on the farm.

This logic has continued to this day. “The quota system has worked well for us. It establishes a fair price for our product; it is not subsidized by the government. It really works for everyone,” Irwin said.

Over the years, improvements to the feed, the purchase of more quota, and a lot of hard work has allowed for a healthy herd to be maintained, and for the milk to keep flowing.

In order for the farm to keep generating enough profit to keep two families going, the Babcooks have had to manage their herd and their property with an eye to the bottom line. The family farm is also a small business and making the right investments at the right time are as crucial to a farm as they are to any other kind of business, including succession planning.

The barn at the Babcook farm is a graphic illustration of this. It was built in three stages. The old part of the barn, which is in the middle, has low ceilings and worn wood. To the left is a newer barn, put up in 1986 by Irwin Babcook. It is larger, airier and more modern, and to the right is a state of the art barn, set up to milk the 64 milking Holsteins cows on the farm. The windows on the new barn open and close automatically in the wintertime to maintain a consistent comfort level; the flooring is made of recycled rubber for comfort and all of the electrical outlets hang high from the ceiling to eliminate any chance of accidental exposure to the animals.

“I wouldn't have built the new barn,” said Irwin Babcook as he showed off the facility, “I didn't see the need for it myself. It was something that my son Tom wanted. He researched it, put the plans together and we went for it. Now I really see the value in it. It's better for everyone. Sometimes it takes a new set of eyes to see what improvements are needed.”

Tom and Karen have also taken an interest in showing cattle at the Kingston Fair and elsewhere. The addition of the new barn when Tom and Karen came into farming is consistent with the way the farm has been run since the beginning. “Each new generation adds something to the operation, but we also recognize that each preceding generation worked harder than the next one, if you know what I mean,” Irwin said.

The other thing that Irwin insisted upon was the extent to which the farm operation is a four-person job between Jerry, Tom, Karen and himself, with each of them making equivalent contributions.

The combination of appreciation for the history of Crater Farm and a drive to improve and adapt the operation to modern conditions is one of the secrets to the continuing success the Babcooks have enjoyed in their corner of Frontenac County.

Although four Babcooks work the farm, other family members have renovated old houses and built new ones on adjacent properties.

On a dairy farm there are times of the year that are busier than others, but bringing the cows in twice a day and milking them is a 365 day a year enterprise, and the cows can never be left un-milked.

If things go well, the 65 milking cows can be brought in, milked and fed, and turned back out to pasture in about 90 minutes, but that's on a good day.

Crater Farm has a couple of extra distinctions beyond being one of the few five-generation farms in the region. Crater refers to the Holleford crater, which is located near Irwin and Jerry's house, just off Holleford Road. The crater was discovered when aerial mapping of the region took place in 1955, and since then geologists and astronomers have made periodic pilgrimages to the farm to view and analyse the remnants of an event that scientists believe was a cataclysm beyond anything that has been seen on earth in human memory.

It took place between 55 and 60 million years ago. A massive meteor, estimated to have been 800 metres in diameter, penetrated the earth’s atmosphere and hit the ground where the Babcook farm now stands. It is estimated to have been travelling at 55,000 kilometres per hour, and it had an impact of a force that exceeded the impact of 10 Hiroshima-sized nuclear warheads. It left a 244 metre deep, 14.9 kilometre wide crater. The crater has filled in over the eons, but the land is still different from the surrounding countryside.

While the crater’s impact above ground is not that visible, geologists have found massive amounts of crushed rock deep underground, which have led them to conclude that the Holleford Crater was created by one of the largest meteor strikes in the history of the planet.

The other distinction of the Babcooks is more contemporary. Jack Babcock, who was the last surviving Canadian World War 1 veteran and who died recently, was born about a mile up the road from the farm, and was a cousin of Irwin Babcook's grandfather.

“I contacted him a few years ago,” Irwin said, “and I actually tried to get him to agree to a state funeral after he died, because I believe we need more heroes in this country, but he didn't go for it. I did ask him if he was a Babcock or a Babcook, however. He laughed at that, and said he used to insist on being called a Babcook but he eventually gave up on it because no one listened.”

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