Devon Acres Organic Farm

Location :

Devon Acres Farm is a small farm located in Brant County, just west of Brantford and southeast of Paris. Our farm is at the northern limit of the Carolinean Forest region in southwestern Ontario. We grow vegetables organically on about three acres, pasture sheep, cows and two Belgian workhorses on a good portion of the farm and have allowed and encouraged the growth of natural forest in some areas of the farm; in particular that portion along the northern boundary of the farm following the top of the well treed high southern bank of the Grand River. The forest in the upland areas of this locale would likely have been predominantly oak, hickory and black cherry with lots of american elm, basswood,and chestnut, some white pine and beech as well. The lowlands and bank would have had a lot of birch, eastern cedar, willow, hemlock and maple. I’m making a guess based on the evidence from the existing remanent forest around here.

We grow a very large selection of vegetables, and maintain a small herd of about ten to fifteen cattle for beef and a small flock of around twenty to twenty-five sheep for mutton and lamb. The breeds of cattle are Canadienne and Shorthorn and the sheep breed is Border Cheviot. We usually milk a couple of cows for milk for the house. The beef and the sheep are all grass fed, hay in winter, and are on pasture year round. Calves are brought into the barn each night for their own safety and so that we can milk out the mothers in the morning. Calves for beef get no grain but we normally feed the milking cows a small amount of grain, usually crimped oats, in order to have a good quantity of milk. If our hay quality. ie the protein level, was sufficiently high, then we would not need as much or any grain for the milkers.

We use our two workhorses as the major power source on the farm. They do all the spring preparation work in the garden and do a lot of wagon work drawing hay, firewood and other things as well. We will try to get our tractor back in working condition for belt and pto work and maybe for loading using a front end loader. The tractor would also be backup power for those brief time periods when we need extra work done in the garden or need to get hay in the barn more quickly. We could also use the tractor to run the hay baler.