‘I WANT TO THANK EVERYONE’
Community backs Ruiters after fire
A little miracle happened on Tuesday morning. One of the cows from Black Rapids Farm had a calf.
The calf was a bull and will be no help in rebuilding the dairy herd that was largely lost in a devastating fire on Friday. Still, Peter Ruiter is a glass half-full sort of guy.
“I’m a farmer. You have to be optimistic,” he says, looking over to the ruins of his barns.
There’s still a small crop of calves on the way. Ruiter taps on his cellphone, clicks on an app and shows a screen with ETAs for the calves. Four cows — Stacey, Maddie, Solar and Carmen, to name them — are expected to calve in the next week. He’s hoping some of those will be heifers, females that will carry the genes of the herd that his family has been building for almost 60 years.
Some 80 Holstein cows and calves perished in the fire Friday afternoon, including a cow that had a calf earlier that day. Ruiter didn’t lose his entire herd — he had 10 cows in a pasture across Prince of Wales Drive, and another six in a neighbour’s barn.
On Tuesday morning, firefighters extinguished some hot spots at the scene of the fire, and crews were salvaging silage that had not been damaged in the blaze. In the meantime, there is a steady stream of friends, neighbours and strangers walking or driving up the lane to the red brick house with offers of help or cheques. A GoFundMe page raised $12,000 in the first day and $24,000 by Tuesday afternoon.
“It’s just been amazing. It’s people I’ve known for generations. It’s new immigrants. One man said something to me in Arabic. Then he gave me $20,” says Ruiter, who farms with his wife, Rosemary. The couple has three children, Lindsay, Sharon and Mark.
“People are just blowing me away. I want to thank every one of them. Because I’m not asking for this. It’s not who we are.”
Barns can be replaced, but cows are another matter. A strong dairy herd can be the work of generations. Ruiter’s father, Tinus, came to Canada from the Netherlands in 1958 and worked as a farmhand on the farm once owned by the Craig family, living in the white house that still stands next to the farm.
Tinus Ruiter started buying cows to start his own herd. Peter, who is six feet, nine inches tall, was a rookie with the Carleton University Ravens basketball team when he quit to devote his life to farming in 1988. He took over the farm in 1992, redesigned the inside of the barn to make it more comfortable for the cows, and built a new barn for the heifers — young females who have not yet had a calf.
“Everything was getting better. For a while, I thought I had the whole world by the tail,” says Ruiter.
Many of his visitors have had a few words of wisdom to share. “You gotta experience 40 below to think 1 degree is beautiful,” one told Ruiter. He likes that one.
Joe Mullally, who was Ruiter’s English teacher at St. Pius High School, dropped by on Tuesday.
“I grew up on a farm. I know about barn fires,” says Mullally.
“I know Peter from way back. His family are the greatest people in the world. They help their community and their church.”
Michael McCallen has known Ruiter for about four years. “I call him the friendly giant. Peter would help anyone. He would give you the shirt off his back. That’s why people are coming out to help him. It has to be overwhelming. They have a tough road ahead.”
The farm is on land leased from the NCC. In a statement, the NCC said it is committed to doing what it can to help the family recover, but it is too early to provide details.
“Peter and his family are the latest generation of Ruiters to farm this NCC property. It is a relationship that goes back decades and Black Rapids Farm is one of 90 farms on NCC-owned land in the Greenbelt. The Greenbelt is a great place to farm and the NCC is working with all farmers on our land to support sustainable agriculture and to maintain the rural landscape of the Greenbelt as an important part of our national identity.”
The optimist in Ruiter wants to rebuild the barn and the herd. He estimates that building a new barn will cost $1 million. Good-quality breeding stock can be purchased for between $6,000 and $10,000 a head.
“I’m 50 years old. There’s a debt that would have to be incurred. I don’t want to saddle anyone with a decision right now. My wife and I are a team. We haven’t really had a chance to sit back and talk,” says Ruiter. “We’re not making any decisions. It’s all so raw yet.”