48 Like Us on Facebook: BetterFarmingON Better Farming | October 2024 FARMING MAGAZINES HAVE CHANGED And so has my career, as I explain in How It Works, Column 194! By Ralph Winfield Better Farming magazine has been published for 25 years, taking it back to the turn of the century. My neighbour, Don McInnis, recently dropped off a 1955 issue of the American magazine, Country Gentleman: The Magazine for Better Farming, published in Philadelphia, Pa. This issue was provided to Don by a man who said he knew me. Note the price of 15 cents! The old American magazine highlights women’s dressing, recipes, poultry feed, truck tires, spark plugs, and grain drying equipment. The articles and advertisements are very effectively presented and well illustrated. Flipping through the pages brought me back to yesteryear. There were many farm magazines in my youth, and it was typical to have articles and advertisements to appeal to farm women and men. Keep in mind that we didn’t have television or any other significant means of communication, except for the farm press. That was how rural families got farm equipment or home canning information. When I was a young farm boy in 1955 on a 100-acre farm in Waterloo County, I worked part-time in the local garage rebuilding tractor engines, doing valve jobs on all shapes and sizes of engines, and fixing flat tires. Not everyone had this opportunity, but I did, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was those life-changing experiences that caused me to seek a formal education to become a mechanical engineer. I hoped to design farm engines and machinery to extend their life and make them easier to be serviced or rebuilt when necessary. I spent six years in college and university – five years in Guelph and one in Toronto. Massey-Ferguson was the only significant Canadian farm equipment company at the time, based in downtown Toronto, and I got a chance to work in its testing lab for a summer. Working at any other major farm equipment company would have meant going to the United States and serving in the military for two years. Not an attractive option. I earned three engineering degrees, all from the University of Toronto. Guelph became a university the year I finished my third degree. During most summers, I worked with my brother operating Winfield How it Works FARM TOYS MEET MINISTER FLACK SOIL SENSORS FORAGE EXPO PROGRESSION & GROWTH VanQuaethem Farms FROM SEED TO FEED Your Best Silage #HARVEST24 PREPARATION Get Ready SEPTEMBER 2024 $9.50 CURTIS & JOE VANQUAETHEM Growing the Family Farm 30 14 20 38 The June 1955 issue of the Country Gentleman magazine. The September 2024 issue of Better Farming magazine. Ralph Winfield photo
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