Carl Foster, 69, whose family described him as a man who loved to hunt and fish, was traversing Inverary Lake in South Frontenac in a Kubota covered 4-wheeler on January 23 when he hit a soft spot in the ice and his vehicle went through. His fishing companion, who was following him in his own vehicle, tried to pull him out, but also went into the icy water. He was able to get out. The OPP Underwater Search and Recovery Unit attended the scene and located Foster's body. OPP officials said that there was a strong current at that part of the lake, which made the ice thin and hindered the search and recovery as well.

Roop Sandhu, of the Frontenac OPP detachment, said that residents are advised to exercise caution when traveling on lake ice at all times.

“We don't provide assessments of the ice thickness on specific lakes, however, since it is not within our mandate,” said Sandhu.

Both the Mississippi (MVCA) and Rideau Valley Conservation Authorities (RVCA) have issued warnings about unstable ice conditions on lakes within their respective watersheds.

This week, the RVCA issued a blanket statement covering all lakes and streams in the Rideau system: “Water levels on lakes and flows in watercourses are close to normal for the time of year. However, as conditions change through this thaw period, water levels will increase, and ice on lakes, ditches, local streams and rivers that had just begun to form will become more unstable, posing potential safety risks. Caution should be exercised by everyone when near local streams and rivers.”

The statement from MVCA focused on lakes within the main river system.

“Ice that has just recently formed may be affected by changing flows, especially on the main river systems (Mississippi River including Kashwakamak Lake, Farm Lake, Crotch Lake, Dalhousie Lake and Mississippi Lake, Clyde River including Kerr Lake, Fall River including Bennett Lake and the Carp River) ...Residents on Dalhousie and Mississippi Lakes can expect higher than normal water levels for the next few weeks as increased flows in the upper watershed make their way through the system.

Residents are strongly urged to stay off all ice-covered water bodies as currents can change ice thicknesses drastically. Parents are urged to remind children about the dangers of playing on or near ice-covered surfaces or fast flowing water in ditches and smaller creeks. Hypothermia is a major concern for anyone playing in areas where they could potentially fall into open water.”

At a hastily organized second public meeting to discuss a proposed 13 megawatt solar power project in close proximity to Inverary, representatives from Canadian Solar Solutions faced angry local residents.

Originally Canadian Solar had planned a single public meeting for the project, on Monday August 17 at the Invista Centre on Gardiners Road in Kingston. Since the Invista Centre is located a significant distance from the site of the project, and in a different municipality, a second meeting in Sydenham, at the meeting room in the public library, was convened on August 19. The second meeting also used a question and answer format, whereas the first had been set up as a Open House.

The project is sponsored by Suncorps as well as Canadian Solar, and Dillon Consulting has been hired for technical support. Representatives from all three companies were on hand.

Many members of the audience were carrying yellow signs calling for the project to be abandoned, and when the questioning began the tone was angry and sometimes aggressive.

The project is set to be located on two sites. The northwest corner of one of the larger properties is at the junction of Perth Road and Davidson Road. It extends south and west towards Holmes Road, and the second property is located to the west, on Davidson Road near the junction with Latimer Road.

There are 15 or so abutting properties to the lots that are proposed for the solar farms and those particular property owners were well represented at the meeting.

One of the first questions had to do with location.

“My wife and I, we understand about solar energy and the need for it, but why here? Why are you doing it right here where there is a major road and people are moving in all the time, and there is farming going on? Why here?” asked one man.

Tyler Balding from Canadian Solar, said that the reason his company, and a number of others, are developing proposals in the South Frontenac and Rural Kingston area, is that province is pushing for solar power generation in eastern Ontario.

“The province has asked for projects to be built in certain areas. All of northern Ontario is blocked off, and lately they have filtered us further, down to certain areas of eastern Ontario. These two sites that we are looking at are great locations, because of transformer capacity and because they are not classified as farmland but as rural,” said Balding.

A key factor for the proponents is the fact that there is a transformer that borders the large Perth Road/Davidson Road site, and there are high capacity Hydro One lines linking the smaller site to the same transformer.

Members of the audience challenged the assertion that the area is not agricultural. “My family has farmed there for generations,” said one man, “and while we may not be class 1 farmland, it is land that we have improved over generations, and we have worked to improve the land all that time. We make our living by working the land, not covering it up.”

There are seven classes of soil in Ontario and land that falls into class 1-3 is not available for solar farm development.

However, according to a representative from Dillon Consulting, the fact that the Municipality of South Frontenac has gone to the effort of identifying prime agricultural land as part of its Official Plan process over-rides provincial soil classification.

“In this township it is only prime ag lands that are restricted,” said the rep.

The majority of the issues raised had to do with the project being an incursion into a region that has seen steady and increasing residential development over the last 20 years.

“I moved to this community because I love it,” said a resident. “You should have come to see us before going forward with this.”

Council wastes no time in rejecting proposal

Flash forward six days, to Tuesday, August 25. The scene is the South Frontenac Council chambers, just meters away from the library meeting room. Most of the same people are in attendance, but Canadian Solar has a smaller delegation on hand, just two people, one of whom is Tyler Balding. As well, while only Mayor Vandewal attended the meeting in the library last week, the entire Council is at this meeting, sitting around the horseshoe-shaped council table.

The first delegate to address Council was Tyler Balding. In his 10-minute presentation, he said the company had listened to the public and was prepared to increase setbacks, ensure that neighbours were not impacted, and would gladly adhere to any conditions Council put forward in exchange for a motion of support.

After he spoke, the first question from Council came from Councilor Ron Sleeth.

But instead of asking a question, Sleeth put forward a notice of motion that Council reject the proposal out of hand and make that known to the province, the IESO, and other parties.

Council voted to waive the rule that notices of motion are deferred until the next meeting, and then voted unanimously in favour of Sleeth's motion.

Mayor Vandewal then asked if any of the 20 people who were also on the list as delegates, all of whom were going to speak against the proposed solar farm, still wanted to address Council.

A few did, including Mike Phillips, who said that he was told by a Canadian Solar employee that if the project is not supported by him and the township, the company will make no effort to shield his property from the solar panels if the project ends up being approved without municipal support.

“I should point out to everyone that our vote does not mean the project will be rejected by the IESO. We just represent a certain amount of points in the procurement process,” said Mayor Vandewal, “We've done what we can, but it is out of our hands now.”

All told, South Frontenac has supported two solar farm projects under the large scale procurement process; two others were pulled by the applicant; and they have now rejected one. The deadline for applications to the IESO for large scale solar projects is September 1, and a decision is expected in November.

A number of smaller projects under the Feed in Tariff or FIT program have also come before Council in recent months, and they have supported 25 of 26 that came to them.

As I drove up Sonset Farm's laneway, I noticed an odd structure sitting near one of their barns. There were stacks of straw bales forming four low-rising walls, and a wooden frame supporting a flat, plastic covering. While I could not see through the opaque film, I imagined greens flourishing in spite of the slush and snow that surrounded them.

My guess was right: farm owner Andrea Cumpson said they were growing spinach and arugula in the warmth of aged compost.

This is not an ordinary farm and Andrea and Orrie Cumpson are not ordinary farmers. While Sonset is a typical dairy farm at its core, over the years it has taken on layers, which have allowed it to be more self-sustaining and, ultimately, more resilient.

While it is common for farmers to buy inputs year after year from suppliers and then ship their products off, essentially leaving a clean slate for the next year, Sonset operates with principles that create loops rather than end points. In a nutshell, crops are grown to sustain animals, and animals, in turn, provide fertility to crops.

This is central to organic agriculture, one of several frameworks that inform how the farm functions.

Cumpson joined her husband, Orrie, 31 years ago on the land he then owned with his mother near Inverary and there sought to work towards organic practices at a time when few resources were available to help farms transition. When a course on ecological agriculture did emerge in the early 1990s, the pair enrolled and it gave them the confidence to begin.

"Orrie could see that the land was improving. It was plowing up so much more beautifully and the tilth was better," she says.

They had the land itself certified as organic in 1996, motivated in large part by their plans to market their spelt crop. Spelt has been more than an isolated addition to their farm's output. It provides much of the nourishment for their pigs and chickens, which they market from their farm gate, as well as providing bedding for cattle, which in turn adds carbon to compost.

The flour that the Cumpsons mill on the farm is another important addition to their overall income. "With the uncertainty of supply management, it's not putting all of our eggs in one basket," she says.

Supply management, a long-standing marketing system in Canada that requires that dairy farmers own quota in order to produce commercially, is another framework within which the farm operates. While supply management provides security of income for dairy farmers, it has attracted widespread criticism for inhibiting competition - controlling the amounts produced domestically and limiting imports with high tariffs. With a couple of trade agreements likely to take effect in the coming years - namely the Canada-Europe Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), neither of which has yet been ratified - farmers are anticipating changes in regulation and competition.

It is possible that supply management would eventually be repealed. Cumpson notes, "I've heard stories of people, before supply management, being sent back when they brought their milk to the local dairy."

The concern is that the downsides of pre-supply-managed farming, such as flooded markets and prices that don't account for the cost of production, could resurface, along with fierce competitions from countries like the U.S, New Zealand, and EU countries, where dairy farmers are subsidized by their governments.

This brings us to another of Sonset’s frameworks: Local Food.

One of the main challenges with trade agreements is how local and national governments balance honouring trade policy with citizens' social, environmental, and economic interests.

Cumpson, a former president of the local National Farmers Union (NFU), is concerned about the scope and lack of transparency of CETA.

"It's so comprehensive and could be detrimental to what a lot of farmers are doing. It's very secretive and there are suggestions that the wording is not in favour of farmers in general," she explains.

The NFU released a report in December 2014 outlining its views on CETA. It states, “From the farmer’s point of view, export market growth has not delivered promised prosperity,” noting that, over the past four decades, as agri-food exports have risen roughly twenty-fold, half of Canada’s farms have folded.

This reality has prompted some farms to go in the opposite direction - to a local focus. Cumpson is not only among the vanguards of the local organic community, she was co-chair of the Feast of Fields committee, which organized events to promote local food starting in 2004. Sonset has become one of the best-established direct-to-consumer farm operations in the region.

Local food remains a niche market, but while government policy has not been supportive of small, community-focused farms, a segment of the consumer population has grown wary of the food industry’s practices, seeking direct relationships with farmers in order to have more knowledge about how their food is produced. Cumpson sees this continuing to grow. “I feel strongly that we're just at the beginning," she affirms.

Meanwhile, the greens that were growing unseen when I drove in will serve as early vegetables in a spring that is about to begin, and with spring comes the green blades of spelt. There is a lively spirit to the farm, in spite of the weather, as it gears up for another season.

Jonathan Davies is a farmer himself, and operates Long Road Eco Farm near Harrowsmith with his partner X.B. Shen. Jonathan is contributing a series of articles called Frontenac Farming Life, which profiles the lives of local farmers who are trying to make a living through farming, navigating struggle and hope. If you would like to have your story considered, please contact Jonathan at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

By Jonathan Davies

I sat down with Josh Suppan and Jen Valberg of Fat Chance Farmstead at their home in Inverary earlier this month. The thaw was just setting in and the sun streamed through the glass doors to the deck, revealing a vast, snow-covered meadow.

The view is lovely and the home is cozy. Only, it is a rented house on another farmer's land, and it may be a short stay. The farmstead itself is about a five-minute drive away, on a rented piece of land, part of a larger organic farm. Last year, it was a few miles away from their current plot.

Living and farming in rented homes, on rented land, sometimes each in a different location, is not uncommon for farmers, and it is pretty much the norm for those younger and early into their careers. For Suppan and Valberg, it has not stopped them from establishing a farm business, which, now into its third season, is a fixture in the Kingston-area CSA scene.

The CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) concept, which began in the US in the 1980s, is a way for farms to market goods by providing a weekly allotment of its product, for which customers pay in advance at the beginning of the season. While it was initially designed so that customers shared in both the benefits and the risks (meaning that they would go without if the harvest was poor), Valberg and Suppan ensure that customers receive their money's worth by planting a broad diversity of produce and developing value-added items.

Suppan, who got his first farm job at 13 on a peach and kiwi farm, has pruned, packed and picked in orchards of the Okanagan, and worked vegetable fields on Vancouver Island, where year-round harvests are possible. Aside from being the main driver behind Fat Chance's production, he currently works at a couple of local farms, milking cows and working vegetable plots.

Valberg, who has a degree in business and several seasons of farm experience, currently works full-time at Queens University but helps out “evenings, weekends, and vacation days.”

With their combined knowledge and experience, the challenge isn't so much figuring out how to grow food. Beyond the weekly dose of seasonal produce, the pair provide soft fruit and mushrooms, depending on the season, and rustic bread, as part of a food box program that spans 19 weeks in the summer. So far their harvests have been plentiful.

Furthermore, Valberg's business savvy and aesthetic sense serve them well on the marketing front. She designed their logo and does their promotional materials. For last year's season, they posted weekly professional-grade photos of their offerings on their Facebook page.

The biggest hurdle, initially, was around accessing land. In the spring of their first season – 2013 – they had hundreds of dollars of garlic and nowhere to plant it. After a long stretch of knocking on doors and answering ads, they found a place just in time.

Now that they have land, the challenge is in working within the vision that the landowner has for it. “We have had good relationships so far with renting, but lack control over what we can do,” says Valberg. Renting also means learning the lay of the land with each new property, and finicky crops can be hard to grow well when the soil and slope are unfamiliar to the farmer.

It is also hard to invest in equipment like tractors without knowing how they will fit in with the operation over the long term. This has prompted the pair to contract their plow work to other farmers, and that means having the work done on someone else's schedule.

Where they have an advantage is in their breadth of farming knowledge and interest, which has given them flexibility in their vision for what their farm will be once they have their own property. Says Suppan, “Each time we see a farm, we imagine what our business model will be based on what the land offers.”

They take a slow-growth approach, recognizing that with a lack of access to money and debt, their best bet is maintaining a stable income, including that of their off-farm jobs, which will allow them to invest in the business over the long term. As Valberg puts it, “We can't jump in with a 500-member CSA in year one...we can't hire staff and grow as fast as we could if we were on our parents' farm. We have to mobilize the resources that we have.”

Jonathan Davies is a farmer himself. He operates a small farm at Harrowsmith with his partner X.B. Shen. Jonathan is contributing a series of articles called Frontenac Farming Life, which profiles the lives of local farmers who are trying to make a living through farming, navigating struggle and hope. If you would like to have your story considered, please contact Jonathan at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Many local growers from the area attended the Kingston Area Seed System Initiative (KASSI) workshop titled “Planting for the Future: Building Capacity for a Regional Seed System”, which took place at the United Church in Inverary on November 15. The event was organized by KASSI board members Dianne Dowling, Cate Henderson and Kathy Rothermel.

The day began with an introduction to KASSI by Cate Henderson, who highlighted the various ways the organization hopes to reach its goal of “ensuring sustainable local food grown from local seed” and by doing so, “increasing local seed and food security in the Kingston and surrounding area by generating a robust regional seed system; growing and distributing heirloom and locally adapted seed; and creating a vibrant network of regional growers.”

To meet these goals KASSI plans to establish a local seed bank, host a seed library to facilitate seed sharing and exchange, and encourage local farmers to increase seed production by growing quantities large enough for large farm scale production.

The day-long event also included a panel discussion by a number of speakers, including Kathy Rothermel of Wolfe Island, who spoke of the different models of the regional seed businesses she discovered while traveling in England, the United States and in Canada. She spoke of three seed businesses in particular: Stormy Hall Seeds, Hawthorne Farm Organic Seeds and Fruition Seed. She also spoke about recent updates from the Eastern Canada Organic Seed Growers Network (ECOSGN) conference.

Aabir Dey of the Ontario Bauta Family Initiative on Canadian Seed Security, a national and regional initiative involving a network of partners working together to preserve seed diversity by promoting ecological seed production and improving the public’s access, while focusing on crops important for nutrition and food security, spoke about Bauta, the organization that funded the workshop and its various initiatives.

Last to speak was Mary Britain of Newtonville, who operates her own seed business called the Cottage Gardener. She spoke about her over 20 years in the business and of the “current trends, gaps and opportunities for regional seed producers”. Following the panel discussion there was a question and answer period, after which attendees split into groups and answered three specific questions: 1) How do they see themselves fitting into the regional seed system? 2) What assistance or supports might they need? and 3) What models do they envision to fairly compensate all participants?

Following lunch, attendees watched a presentation by local Verona farmers Pat and Kate Joslin of Bear Root Gardens in Verona, who produce over 50 varieties of seeds, which they sell along with their market garden produce at the Frontenac Farmers Market in Verona. The couple, who have been contracted to grow seeds for both Bauta and KASSI, demonstrated two different kinds of home-made seed cleaning devices, which save them hundreds of hours of time. The first was an air column seed separator that was built by students at LaSalle High School in Kingston under the direction of their manufacturing instructor Bob Chambers. The separator runs on a Shop Vac and is best used for separating smaller seeds like lettuce and broccoli. The second was a winnower seed cleaner that the Joslins built themselves, which uses a regular blow dryer to separate larger seeds. Plans for both devices are available on-line.

Following the demonstrations, attendees were encouraged to fill in a survey to give feedback to the facilitators.

Dowling said that the event's goal was to bring together “people interested in growing, producing or purchasing more locally grown adapted and available seed.” She laid bare her long term hopes for KASSI. “KASSI's dream is that in a few years there might be one or two small seed businesses in the Kingston area.” Her advice to local farmers wanting to produce their own seeds: “While it’s not impossible to integrate seed production with a market garden, it definitely takes a certain amount of planning and organization.” For more information about KASSI visit www.SeedsGrowFood.org

Award-winning and much sought after groups are confirmed to perform at the Classy Country Evening, in honour of The Tristin Osborne Memorial Fund and the Limestone Learning Foundation. The evening features superb music, casual dining, and dancing Saturday, September 27, at Dreamcatcher Farms, 3185 McGarvey Road, Inverary. The Abrams Brothers will headline this year's “country” gala, September 27, from 5 p.m. to midnight, along with Grammy nominee Valerie Smith, and dancing with music by RUDY and Saddle Up! Guests will enjoy a “Taste of Tennessee” dinner along with entertainment from student musicians Emma & Sam McNichols and Brielle LeBlanc, as well as a live auction. Tickets are $125 per person and are available by contacting the Limestone Learning Foundation at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 613-544-6925, ext. 210. Last year's event was sold out. Safe ride home program generously sponsored by Robert Hogan Bus Lines.