I am a farm owner in Norfolk…

I am a farm owner in Norfolk County. I ask that you reconsider doing away with the lot severances on farms in Ontario. As members of a small community in the west end of the amalgamated Norfolk County, we watch as enrolment in our schools decline and the numbers attending our churches and members volunteering in our nonprofit organizations dwindle. In recent years, people moving into Norfolk have been the only increases we have seen in these numbers. Many of our children are moving into town to find jobs and housing for their young families. In many cases, these towns are not located in our county.

As an owner of several farm properties, which had formerly belonged to other families, I can attest to the fact that there are more non farmers living in on-farm housing now than there are actual farmers. My husband and I, for example, own farms which had belonged to six former farm families. We have owned up to five homes on various farm properties which were rented out to non-farm owners. a large number of our neighbours are not farmers and, for the most part, we all get along. Many are tradespeople which are desperately needed here in Norfolk and, indeed, all over Ontario! Many have roots here in Norfolk but not all. In my opinion, the OFA is creating a great deal of fear amongst its members with regards to people building and living next door. We know for a fact that this is a non issue and that the real threat to rural Norfolk is the decline in numbers of people able to build and live here in the country leaving us stagnant and leading to us not being able to access services which availability in in urban centres is taken for granted. High speed, or indeed, any internet service is one thing that comes to mind!

Currently we own two homes besides the one where we reside. One of those homes is inhabited by our former hired hand and his wife. We have recently semi-retired and built a new home on the corner of one of our properties and, in order to do so, we were told we must change the designation of the existing house on the property to a bunkhouse. The couple that resides in this house is older and lower income. He still works on a farm here in Norfolk. Their family has expressed interest in purchasing this home in which they have lived for about ten years. Changing this house to a bunkhouse does not save farm land and it could potentially cause an older, lower income family to lose their rental home at a time when rent for an equivalent house would be unaffordable for them.

The land where we built our new home is not highly productive farm land. It is blow sand and the deer are great in number to the extent that crops we have endeavoured to grow on this land are rendered unsalable after the deer have nibbled on them. We were organic vegetable producers and we had an issue with the deer munching on our squash and pumpkins on this location. Many farms have such pieces within their acreages. Would it not make sense to allow homes which would provide and manage their own water and sewers rather than putting further strain on these resources within time limits?

Another consideration is the shortage of employees available to work on our farms. Gone are the days where the farm family can bring in a crop with just family members and a few extras. The labour needs on the farms in “Ontario’s Garden” today are huge with many vegetable farms needing 50, 100, 200 or more employees every season. We all compete for the same local labourers. We run our farms short staffed and cannot possibly find adequate numbers to work on our farms and are increasingly needing to rely on more and more temporary foreign workers. If we had more families building homes in rural areas in Norfolk, there would likely be more young people looking to work on area farms as the children of these families would work at summer jobs on the farms.

As well, more people coming into the rural area would drive the local economy as more people would support local farmers markets and other attractions within the area.

These are just a few of the reasons why I believe that allowing more severances on farm properties makes sense for the farm communities, the counties and for Ontario!