Our People, Our Stories

Having spent much of his early life on his grandparent’s farm in Freelton, Ontario, Steven Taylor discusses how his childhood experiences of agriculture and rural life have inspired his decision to practice urban farming. Today, Steven grows a variety of crops in his bountiful backyard garden in the City of Guelph, and his story highlights how the practice of growing food in an urban setting has enabled him both to reconnect with the land, and to reclaim the rural farming traditions of his youth.

PART 1: Family Farming in Rural Freelton

On the day I was born in 1985, my parents left my grandparent’s 100-acre farm in rural Freelton, Ontario, and drove to McMaster Hospital in the nearby city of Hamilton. Shortly after, we returned to my grandparent’s farm where I went on to spend much of my early life. At that time, Freelton was a very tight-knit community and had a population of around 1000 people, as well as a corner store, a bank, and that was it.

Like most people in Freelton we lived in a farmhouse, and our farmhouse was an older brick-wall building with no insulation to keep it warm. This meant that during the winter, we would have to continuously tend to the fireplaces so that we wouldn’t be cold. If the fridge was empty, we would go out and milk the cows and sometimes even supply some to others in the community who would use the milk to make butter. Depending on the year, we would grow and harvest corn and cabbage, etc., and then take our harvest to market. While my grandfather worked the fields and grew a lot more of the cash crop side of things, my grandma had a greenhouse and grew fresh flowers and tomatoes which she sold at the Waterdown Market in Waterdown, Ontario.

One of the biggest things that stood out about life on the farm was the unlimited access we had to nature. I was able to go out into forests, and there were ponds, streams, animals, apple orchards and food growing in the fields. In the springtime we would be in the fields walking behind a tractor and picking up the stones that would come up after turning the soil. In the summer, we would be busy cutting the grass.

When the fall came, we would go out into the forest to mark dead trees, cut them down with a chainsaw, and then drag them back to the house with a tractor. Then, we would chop the wood into smaller pieces and stack it up underneath a shelter so that it wouldn’t get wet. Sometimes it would take a few weeks to do this, so it was a huge process that involved many people, and it was something that I got to be a part of for many years because in that type of environment, it's all-hands-on-deck and nobody is going to kick up their feet and watch another person work.

Eventually my parents bought a house right in the town of Freelton where we had enough land of our own to grow things like corn, tomatoes, and quinces, and where my parent’s farming background kind of carried on with them. While my mom is from Montserrat in the Caribbean, and both my mom and her mother worked on a farm, my dad grew up on a farm and had farm chores for his whole upbringing, so he really lived the farm life. At our house in Freelton, my dad would often drive the tractor from my grandparent’s farm over to our house and use it to plow our plot of land, so we had our own little farming life right there.

Years later, my parents bought a house in Guelph to be a little bit closer to where my dad was working, but we continued to travel back to my grandparent’s farm almost every weekend. When I went back, I got to observe and be immersed in a working farm through every season of the year, and there was always something happening, and always something to do. I saw that everything had to be done within the means you had for day-to-day sustenance, and you had to know how to survive purely by everything that was around you, which was essentially nature. Because it’s all around you, it literally becomes your world, and becomes a part of you. So, in that sense, it’s something that was in the DNA of my upbringing. It's hard to explain and describe, but it’s just a feeling that you get when you're outside working with nature, and because we were so entwined with our life there, I didn't realize exactly what it meant to me until afterwards – until it was gone.

Today, Freelton has completely changed from how it was when I grew up and that way of life just doesn't exist anymore. When my grandparents got older, their property was sold, and our farm was eventually demolished. Now a multimillion-dollar mansion has been built in its place, and it’s the same story throughout Freelton. The whole rural community has changed, and it is no longer just a group of people who are farming and involved with that way of life. Instead, it’s become a very upscale community that is primarily into horseback riding and other wealthy hobbies. This means that the area is only really accessible to people with a higher wealth background, but growing up it was more of a survival thing, and it was more about people going to the land in order to farm it and make a living. You had to work with what was available or leave and go somewhere else. So, it's the whole aspect of moving out of the country to survive essentially.

PART #2: Urban Farming in the City of Guelph

About 10-15 years ago, I decided to start my own backyard garden here in the City of Guelph. I just remember the need and urge to grow and reconnect with land, so I did what I could and dug out the gravel from my backyard space. Then I bought new soil and created a small plot of land where I started to grow a variety of fruits and vegetables. I mainly started with annual plants and experimental things to see how well they would do in that space, but over time the garden has evolved and flourished into a massive permaculture paradise with a balance of both annual and perennial plants. The soil also continues to get better with the practices I'm using.

Some of the crops I’ve grown are elderberry, kiwi, blackberries, ground cherries (gooseberry), goji berries, 3 different types of grapes, 3 types of raspberries, wild ginger, sea buckthorn, haskaps (honeysuckle), cabbage, swiss chard, dinosaur kale, curly kale, red kale, eggplant, strawberries, rhubarb, garlic, zucchinis, potatoes, cucumber, various types of peppers, and several different heritage varieties of tomatoes in almost every colour.

I love to grow sunflowers, which attract some beautiful songbirds to the garden, and I have a pear tree, a cherry tree, and an herb garden where I grow more exotic things like chocolate mint, Thai basil, and pineapple sage. I also grow plants from other places that tie into my Caribbean background, including Zulu Peppers, okra, callaloo, and other forms of wild spinach and other plants that you won't normally find here (in Canada).

Urban farming felt very natural to get into, and it was almost like a lineage coming through me when I started. Even though it's not easy work, it’s very rewarding. When you are participating in activities that your parents, grandparents, or even great-grandparents also spent their time doing, it feels like you're taking part in an ancestral practice or ritual, and so it’s a way to connect back to your ancestors.

My mom also works with me on the garden, and each year we see that as the roots go deeper, the more at home the plants feel, and the more abundant they return to you. We have a garden partnership where I end up doing a lot of the hard, physical labor, whereas my mom does a lot of the day-to-day maintenance and nourishing of the plants. Some days my mom is out in the garden pulling weeds or picking and harvesting the berries, and she brings her own knowledge from her Caribbean farming background. This includes plant identification, knowing how deep to plant something in the ground for it to get well-rooted, or teaching me that when you harvest a plant, you cut the top off and put it back into the soil, so that it can replenish itself as soon as possible. All of this has been incorporated from my mom’s knowledge of farming both in rural Ontario and, before that, in Montserrat where she practiced a sustenance style of farming meant to grow food to eat and sustain the family.

I think we all need opportunities to return to the soil to grow things. If we have a small piece of land – even if it's a small plot in the backyard somewhere, and even if the soil isn’t great, if we can put a shovel in it, we can start there. Then, if we do have a little space that we can take advantage of, what will we do with it? Will we plant grass seed? Will we put flowers in there? Or is the space we have something that we can use to nourish our bodies? I also think everybody needs to have a connection to the rural, whether that’s in rural Ontario, or any type of rural spot, because we aren't all city people 24/7. We need that connection to the land, which is essentially what nourishes us, so we need a connection to that nourishment. If we think that we can just get our nourishment and connection from a grocery store, we’ll lose a vital part of who we are, so that's kind of what inspires me to always keep that link strong and alive – it’s a ruralization of the urbanization.