In 1985, when I bought a nice bungalow on a residential street in the small Canadian city I live in today, I soon met the family who lived in the two-storey, red brick house behind me, a home that faced the city’s main street. One day, my neighbour told me that his home used to be a farmhouse long ago. He said our city ended a half a block west of him and everything east of that was farmland. I didn’t do any research into that claim; it seemed reasonable and I took his word for it.
Barry also told me that the farm’s dump – every farm had one – was located in what had become my backyard. So, what was a knucklehead like I am to do? I started telling people I live in a dump.
“What are you talking about?” would come the astonished reply. “You have a lovely home.”
I would then explain the farm story I related to you above, and things were put to rest.
It is 38 years since I bought the house. My neighbours sold the farmhouse and moved away years ago. But I have often wondered if maybe Barry was pulling my leg about the farm and the dump.
Last night, however, for probably the first time since I moved here, I took a close look at the latest property tax notice I receive every six months from the city. It provides a number of interesting facts but one in particular caught my eye. Unless I am reading it wrong, the notice shows that my property is designated “residential/farm.”
FARM????
FARM!!!!
How could it possibly be that after all these many decades, my little piece of heaven could still be designated as farmland?
The last day I lived on our farm outside my city was in 1979. Little did I know that six years later, I would move back onto a farm. I always told people I was raised on a farm but now I can say I still am a farm boy.
This raises some interesting possibilities. I am now thinking one of our sheds would make an ideal chicken coop. I could keep pigs in our bigger one. It has a concrete floor and would be easy to muck out. It would also be great to look out my kitchen window and watch a cow or two grazing away, maybe some geese. A horse. Most of all, I need to run right out and buy a tractor. Just a small one will do.
But, as I have often told our son and daughter, as we sit having supper around our table, the true story about how, many thousands of years ago, woolly mammoth lived in our neck of the woods and that some of them, no doubt, walked around on the ground below our feet.
Not sure about the possibility of this, but I would love to raise a couple of woolly mammoths in our backyard.
And if they happen to die, we could just bury them in our dump. But keep their horns for souvenirs, of course.
(P.S. I guess this also means I need to go out and buy some decent overalls and proper rubber boots, assuming true farmers still wear those things today.)
©2023 Jim Hagarty
