Contributor to Poultry Industry And Oldest Alumni Pass

Frederick (Fred) Gordon Proudfoot

Bruce Blacklock

NSAC alumnus Bruce Blacklock passed away peacefully in Port Elgin, NB at the age of 105 on Sunday, Nov. 9, 2008. Graduating from NSAC in 1922, Mr. Blacklock was the oldest living alumnus. In 2004, Mr. Blacklock was interviewed for the Agricola News. As NSAC neared its 100th anniversary in 2005, it was only fitting that Mr. Blacklock, who celebrated his own centenary in 2004, be featured. Mr. Blacklock had the interesting perspective of many decades of farming. The interview appears below.

Mr. Blacklock was born on a farm in Little Shemogue and lived on a farm all his days except the two winters he spent at NSAC. It was a typical mixed farm of the day, mostly beef, cows, a few hens and a few sheep. Mr. Blacklock worked the family farm with his father while attending NSAC and in 1924 was the third generation farmer along with his wife.

What size farm did you work?
(There was) 90 acres of cultivated land and (we) ended up with 150 acres of workable land and about 750 including woodland. One hundred acres was a pretty big farm when you depended on horse power all together We didn’t have electricity out in our country until after the second world war, about 1947.

Was the tractor a positive addition to the farm?
(In the late 1940s Mr. Blacklock acquired his first tractor)

( It was a ) good thing. You had to consider the horse. You could only work them so long. With the tractors, if you had a couple of drivers, you could work them 24 hours a day. It was altogether different. You could get your crop in a lot less days and get it in a lot earlier.

Any improvement in the crops because it got in quicker?
Not so much different, but the way the crop was got off changed altogether. When I first started farming we cut the grain with the old fashioned binder, then it was stooked up and stored in the barn and then threshed it later on. As time went on with more machines, it was only a short time until the grain was harvested right off the field. You had to wait a little longer (for the grain to be ripened) but then the grain could be harvested and threshed right out in the field.

Was money a big issue?
Not a terrible big issue, maybe to the fellows you owed. There was no use in worrying about it, you paid when you could, when you got the money. Once in awhile somebody would get in trouble. Generally you arranged things so that you could do fairly well financially.

Do you think farming is easier today?
Farming today is so altogether different, more like big companies - with big outfits —they’re financed in a different way and the financing is a bigger part of it, no question about it. You have to go more by the book now. The toughest time I can remember was through the thirties. We didn’t have any money. But if you were on the farm you were always assured of something to eat. And that was a lot more than a lot of people had. There have been tough times (today) but there’s been nothing like (that since).

What’s your reaction to BSE?
It seems almost ridiculous that one cow could ruin a whole beef trade —but that’s just about what it amounted to. There’s a lot more things like that in agriculture today than when I first started out farming that you have to contend with.

What about the future of farming —any advice to give people?
It’s changed so from when I started farming that I wouldn’t have any advice to give anyone now. I wonder a lot of the time if the family farm as family farms go, isn’t a thing of the past. You’ve either got to be in big today or stay home. It looks that way to me —I may be wrong. It takes so much money —even the family farm —the machinery you have to buy —you have to have machinery & my gracious —you can pay more for a tractor than I paid for machinery for a lifetime.

Was the community a big part of farm life?
There’s another part of farm life —it’s in the community. You have to take your place in the community if you live on the farm. I spent a lot of time with different organizations including the school district. Communities have certainly changed. I know in our sector where I lived there were so many farms. Now everyone has moved away and left them; there’s not the population or the people there to work- the community is altogether different. That’s one thing about farming —you have to have an interest in your community. If you want to have a community you have to spend quite a lot of time working on things in the community, which is a good thing.

Do you think this will come back around? —this influx into the cities?
No, I don’t think so —it doesn’t when you look back at history. Things don’t come back like that they keep on going —in another hundred years it’ll be something different —it will not return to what it is today.

Do you think we take better or worse care of the land than in your day?
No, I think they’ve learned to take good care of the land —some of these big outfits when they got started out- I didn’t think they took the same kind of care of the land that we learned to do, but I see they’ve learned pretty fast.