By MIKE STACEY
When I was a kid we lived on a farm out in the Fraser Valley. None of the farms had cute names, farmers did not walk around in spotless bib overalls and straw hats, and it sure as hell wasn’t Little House on the Prairie.
The farmers were all thin, wiry and dressed in clothing that had been caught up in machinery, torn, sewed back together and washed a million times. Their hands had the look of a baseball glove. The same applied to their wives. No driveways had shiny new cars, but once in a long while a shiny new piece of farm machinery would appear somewhere out of necessity.
Dad said more than once that he could never be a good farmer because he did not grow up on a farm. In my mind this would also apply to farm vets. The Bond family is living proof of this. Some things cannot be taught in school.
When we made the move to Salt Spring I could spot the farmers right away. In those days farming was “Do well or die.” I remember one oldtimer telling me, “The beef got sold, we ate mutton.” The difference here was that there was not a great deal of dirt, so it was that much tougher to stay ahead of the game.
Almost 60 years later we have small farms and gardens producing food for local consumption. This is not a life-or-death situation anymore, but is great news for those of us who like to know where the veggies came from and how many chemicals were NOT sprayed on them. There are a whole lot more people here now, and some of them are jammed up tight against one another on small properties.
Enter the rooster. There is no “rooster issue.” There is a noise complaint. It matters not what produced the noise. The Capital Regional District (CRD) did not crash this party, they were invited. I have known plenty of bylaw enforcement officers and none of them enjoy this kind of thing. They prefer a quick settlement so that everyone goes home happy.
In the current battle between neighbours, the voice of doom is telling us that the CRD is going to do away with all the roosters and wipe out small farming on the island. That is a load of swill. The CRD wants out of this situation, and sure as hell doesn’t want to make it worse. But a story like that, with somebody being persecuted by the government, will get lots of attention.
What we have is two neighbours, both with heels dug in so deep that they are unable to settle the issue themselves, so everyone else is being dragged into it.
The actual rooster is oblivious to all this. All he wants is to get into the henhouse, put on a little Barry White music and get it on.
The writer is a Salt Spring resident.