News from our rich agriculture history

The Farms.com farm and rural history website is dedicated to celebrating and digitizing the last 150 years of success in the Canadian agriculture and food industry. The agriculture and food industries in Canada have a rich heritage of innovation, and have laid a foundation of excellence upon which we continue to grow. We celebrate Canada’s food and agriculture innovations on these pages.
A Farm Museum
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED | OCTOBER 1935 | THE FARMER

I wonder how many rural people have thought of the possibilities of a farm museum. During the past few years, while travelling through some of the rural districts of Old Ontario, I have seen some very fine collections of old-fashioned farming tools and pioneer relics. The array of old spinning wheels, ox-yokes, cradles, flails, cowbells, candle lanterns, etc., is always very interesting and in

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Johnston Hall

This cartoon, published in the June 14, 1924 issue of the Canadian Countryman celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the Ontario Agricultural College (now part of

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Rat Trap

This is an example of an old-fashioned wooden rat (or mouse) trap from an unknown time period. Obviously, the purpose of this device was to lure in and kill those pesky

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Is She Worth Her Keep?
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED | JUNE 24, 1920 | THE FARMER'S ADVOCATE

NO; the school-teacher has not been of much account. In the rural districts she has, perhaps, been a leader, socially, but she has not been of very much account. If she had been, or, rather, if her office had been considered so, trustees would have “tumbled over themselves” trying, first to get the best woman available for the place, and then to give her a salary commensurate with

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lives lived

Charles W. Nash

AUGUST 15, 1848 – FEBRUARY 13, 1926

Charles William Nash was a distinguished Ontarian scientist who was most well known for his service for the Farmers’ Institute. A man of tremendous knowledge with a lifelong passion for ecology, he was diligently involved in spreading scientific information to farmers for the betterment of agricultural development.

Nash was born in Bognor, Sussex, England on August 15, 1848. During his early childhood he developed an acute fascination with the wildlife around his family’s seaside estate. Demonstrating a scientist’s inquisitiveness at a young age, he would

ADELAIDE HUNTER HOODLESS

FEBRUARY 27, 1857 - FEBRUARY 26, 1910

Having been raised by a widowed mother of twelve children is likely what turned Adelaide Hunter Hoodless into a strong, hardworking icon. Her father passed not long after her birth in October of 1857 in Canada West, now Ontario. Named Addie at the time of her birth, the girl worked hard while growing up on a farm until she followed her sister Lizzie to Ladies’ College in Brantford, Ontario.

While attending school Addie met John Hoodless, the only heir to the Hoodless Hamilton furniture manufacturer. The two married in 1881 and moved to Hamilton, Ontario together. The move

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