Ford

(submitted by Margaret Ferguson Ford)

In 1972, Arnold and Margaret Ford bought the 100 acre farm, east ½ of Lot 3, Con. 1 NER, Twp. that had been owned and farmed for 50 years or more by Margaret’s parents, Stacey and Olive Ferguson.

Margaret had lived on this farm from the time she was born in 1925. Some of her first memories were of the sheep which her father kept. A few of the ewes were either unable or unwilling to nurse some of their lambs. These had to be bottle-fed and consequently became pets. What is cuter than a pet lamb?

Another early memory was of the sugar bush. Her father would boil the sap in a flat pan on a small arch, but he would also build a tiny bonfire and boil some of the syrup down thicker in an old saucepan, then spread that on some clean snow. Voila! Taffy! Often times early hepatica flowers would be peeking through the snow nearby.

When the great depression arrived in 1929 money was extremely scarce. The family was fortunate to live on a farm and always had food from the large garden, chickens, a few turkeys, beef and pork. City people often went hungry. Mom canned a great many jars of deliciously tender beef, apples, plums, pears, quince, berries, tomatoes, etc. She also corned beef and cured pork as home freezers weren’t available, nor was there electricity to power them.

Electricity did not arrive in most rural areas until Margaret was finishing high school. Her homework was done by the light of a coal-oil lamp. Barn chores done in the early morning or evening were lighted by coal-oil lanterns, which had to be handled very carefully. Mom had to light the kitchen wood range even to cook porridge or to heat water. This was especially difficult at grain-threshing time.

A cement cistern in the basement collected the rainwater through the eavestroughs along the roof edges. A hand pump had to be used to bring the water up to the washroom. Water was then carried by pail to a large boiler on the stove, heated and then carried to the hand-operated washing machine. All the fat and lard from the cattle and pigs killed was carefully preserved to make laundry soap. A big iron kettle which sat on the kitchen stove was often in the business of converting the fat and “Gillett’s” lye into laundry soap.

Farming was a radically different occupation in the 1920s and 1930s. At first, Margaret’s father ploughed with a one-furrow walking plough and a team of Clydesdale horses. Later he acquired a two and then a three furrow riding plough, still powered by the same team.

As the animals were pastured on fifty acres of grass located across the road, it was the children’s job to bring them home for milking and watering. They would round up the cattle, bring them home to water and/or be milked, by hand.

Margaret’s first memories of haying were of her father cutting the hay with the team of horses and a mower, letting it dry, raking it into rows with a dump rake and then coiling it, that is, putting it into piles in the field to cure. Then it was forked on to the hay wagon with the rider building the load, balanced so it would not slide off, hopefully. Later on, when her father acquired a hay-loader and a side-delivery rake he needed someone to drive the horses on the wagon plus someone to build the hay load as the hay was delivered to the rear of the wagon. Then the loaded wagon would be driven up the barn hill, the horses unhitched from the wagon and hitched to the hay rope. The big hay fork would be put into the hay, closed and locked and the horses would be driven down the hill until one dump of hay was put into the mow. This was repeated until the wagon was bare. Later, they would spread the loads around in the mow. This would be repeated as each load was emptied. Hot, dry weather made the best hay, but not the best disposition of human or horse. Later on hay was baled, which reduced the work considerably.

Margaret said that United Church was the social centre of their lives. The parents insisted that the children wear shoes to church! In warm weather these were discarded as soon as they arrived home. Generally, they walked the three miles to church.

Margaret attended SS#15 , graduated from Forest High School, attended London Normal School in 1944, taught elementary school for two years, then went to the University of Toronto to obtain her Bachelor of Arts. After graduation she taught for three years before marrying Arnold.

Arnold Ford (1922–1998) sailed on the Great Lakes as Third Class Engineer, manning the engines, first with the Noronic, then for seven years with the Imperial Oil Tankers —Collingwood, Windsor, Sarnia and Redwater. He transferred to Imperial Products Pipeline in 1952, where he remained until his retirement in 1983. Arnold was a perfectionist in all his work, whether trades, farming or woodworking.

Arnold and Margaret, along with their three teenagers, David, Peter and Evelyn, moved to the farm in 1972, living in the farm house for one year before moving to their house on part of the west ¼ of Lot 11, Con. 1 NER in 1973. The Fords lived east of Village for twenty-one years, while farming on the Egremont Road. The house east of the village stands behind a pond, north of the bridge on old Highway 22.

Arnold and Margaret worked the farm from 1972 to 1991, growing cash crops of wheat, red clover, alfalfa, oats, soya and white beans. As Arnold had a yearning to imitate his father and have an apiary, he bought hives, supers and extracting equipment from Harold Park. The taking off of filled supers, extracting honey, and packing bees for winter entailed much work. Not everyone in the family was as enamoured of bee-keeping as was Arnold, but everyone helped pack them for winter, turn the handle of the extractor for hours on end, strain the warm honey and pack it in pails, etc.

One time, when son Peter was helping his Dad, while protected by coveralls and bee veil, the bees found that the pocket openings of his coveralls hadn’t been sewn shut. Poor Peter took off running, but endured a few bee stings anyway.

Another time, son David was running the combine in wheat harvest a few yards from the apiary, near the bush. The worker bees showed their disapproval of that noisy monstrous machine by chasing and stinging the driver.

Every spring the Fords bought some new queen bees and workers from a Chatham supplier who imported them from the southern United States. The bee industry is extremely interesting, if one survives the stings! The mildest-tempered bees are the “Italian” ones. Finally Arnold abandoned his bee project.

On the farm the Fords planted several thousand evergreen trees as windbreaks. These trees were predominantly white cedar, with some pine and spruce. They came from the Ontario Department of Natural Resources Nursery at St. Williams, near Lake Erie. They arrived, well packed in bundles of 25, and cost a small fee of 25 cents each. The family cultivated the trees and sprayed the weeds and grass with Roundup, until the trees grew quite large. They watered them in dry periods and the trees grew very well. Later the Fords received a Conservation Award for their efforts.

In 1991 the farm was sold to Duane and Crystal Ferguson, and there was an auction sale of the farm machinery. An incident which occurred while they were preparing for the machinery sale seems hilarious now, but was rather unsettling at the time. The farm house had been rented for several years to Bob and Penny McGee. As Bob dealt with plumbing and water wells, he had stored a five-gallon pail of odorant, which has the rotten egg odour of natural gas. It is added to propane to detect a leak. Arnold saw the can and opened it, but couldn’t smell anything peculiar. He had lost his sense of smell, as the family later learned. He dumped the pail of liquid odorant into a pile of strawy manure behind the barn. During the night, the wind changed direction. The resulting odour bathed the neighbourhood in an awful smell. Someone called the police, who notified Union Gas, who then called the Ministry of the Environment. When the Union Gas men arrived and saw the empty can, they doubled over in laughter. The Environment official who arrived soon after used his gas metre to try to detect dangerous propane. When he couldn’t detect a gas, just odour, he told the Fords to try and dispose of the strawy manure, which they did. They forked it into heavy garbage bags and took them back to the bush. It’s funny now, but wasn’t then. Such is life!

In 1992, Arnold suffered a stroke, after a prostate operation. Although only 69 at the time, he never completely recovered from the resulting aphasia, in spite of much speech therapy. As a result, the house was sold to Terry and Karen Colborne in 1994 and Arnold and Margaret moved into a Royal modular home in Forest.

In 1972, the oldest son, David Kenneth Ford (1953–), after graduating from Petrolia Collegiate and Technical School, left for Queen’s University for four years in Electrical Engineering, then another three years in Law. He did his bar exams at the University of Western Ontario, London, where he also articled for a law firm. He is married and now lives in Aurora, Ontario.

Peter T. Ford (1956–) graduated from Aberarder Central School, North Lambton Secondary School and Queen’s University, where he studied Chemical Engineering, receiving his degree in 1979. After he had worked at Polysar in Sarnia and had taken a three month excursion to Australia and New Zealand, he took four years there in Medicine. He did medical clerkships in Moose Factory and in Liberia, Africa. After he had married Dr. Anne M. Holbrook (also from ), he interned in Family Medicine in Hamilton. Anne does drug research and works in Internal Medicine at McMaster Hospital in Hamilton. They continue to live and practice in the Hamilton area. Peter has done a great deal of woodworking around their Ancaster home, including kitchen cabinets, oak flooring, oak woodwork and paneling. He is an avid cycler and will sometimes go 100 km. in an outing.

Evelyn Grace Ford (1957–) graduated from North Lambton Secondary School in 1976. She attended the University of Western Ontario for 1 year, then the Mohawk-McMaster program in Physiotherapy, where she graduated with a B.H.Sc. During this time she married her teenage sweetheart Paul Southen, who later graduated from Queen’s University in Theology. Paul, as a United Church minister, is now a Chaplain in the Services and may be sent to any place of conflict. Later, Evelyn studied as a part-time student in Toronto in Osteopathy. She graduated as a Doctor of Osteopathy. In 2007 they live in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where Paul is stationed with the military.

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