Change of careers leads to ‘Some Pig’ farm
Meet the terrific, radiant, humble Barbara Schaefer
Piglets were being born in the U-Haul trailer that Barbara Schaefer and a friend had rented as they drove four newly purchased sows to his farm.
Helping the farrowing sow to deliver her litter during the eighthour road trip in November 2007 was the starting point of Schaefer’s crash course in pig farming. A decade later, she owns a successful solo operation with 300 rare Large Black pigs running free, has established a “meat only” Community Shared Agriculture project, and also runs an abattoir that she aims to have officially certified as the first humane slaughterhouse in Canada.
But, in 2007, the 58-year-old says she knew nothing about farming. Her journey to becoming the proprietor of Upper Canada Heritage Farm started with romance gone awry and led to the happy ending of running a successful business, with a focus on treating animals humanely.
A single mother of three children, she was dating a divorced landscaper with four teenage sons, who wanted to bring some pigs onto his hobby farm. Schaefer, then employed by Nature Canada and involved in environmental policy development and project management, was in regular contact with a number of environmental groups. Through one of these groups, Rare Breeds Canada, she helped him find the Large Black pigs.
“Heritage breeds such as these lend themselves well to small agriculture,” explains Schaefer, “because they are very hardy and easy to raise outdoors. They are selected for their hardiness, docility, good mothering, excellent carcass quality and the ability to withstand the Canadian summer and winter weather.”
A week after the pigs arrived, Nature Canada’s funding was cut and it was forced to lay off onethird of its employees, Schaefer among them. At that point, she enrolled in a provincial government program for entrepreneurs aiming to start their own business.
While that part of the plan to grow the pig farming into a commercial operation was effective, the personal connection with her then-partner in the operation failed a year later.
“I had to find a temporary home for me, my kids and pets and about 80 pigs,” she says, adding that although she was not compensated for her investment in fencing and the pigs’ field huts that she had to leave behind, the move eventually proved to be the turning point in creating a successful business. “I bought this 100-acre farm north of Brockville and got everyone back together. And I was very fortunate to be mentored by the farmers nearby. The learning curve was very steep, building huts and fencing was a slow process and the early days were a struggle, but I am still here and I love every aspect of the life.”
Her philosophy, she emphasizes, is to raise a heritage breed to help it proliferate and to give her pigs the best quality of life until their eventual fate as meat animals. For example, she does not keep them confined or use gestation or farrowing crates for sows.
“The pigs are far more comfortable without them and no more piglets are crushed than when crates are used,” she notes.
Even with some procedures that inevitably cause pain to the animals, such as fixing identification tags and castrating piglets, she tries to be “gentle and quick and make it as humane as possible,” she says. She has also purchased a small abattoir close to her farm. This means that lengthy transportation for animals destined for slaughter is avoided.
“The abattoir is 10 minutes from the farm and we have people who are experienced, accurate and humane to ensure that the animal is dispatched very quickly,” says Schaefer. “One of my goals is for this to become the first certified humane slaughterhouse in Canada.”
In the marketing area of the business, Schaefer has established a branch known as Community Shared Agriculture. “The CSA is modelled on the vegetable box,” explains Schaefer, who sells meat directly to the public at various farmers’ markets. “I created it as a marketing tool to sell pork. When people started asking for chicken and beef, I started raising meat birds and working with a cattle farmer who raises heritage cattle. People love it. I sell out every year.”