2020 WHAM Hall of Fame co-winners modeled benefits of full farm partnerships during their nationally-recognized purebred swine genetics career

By Diane Baltaz

Marburg community activist and veteran purebred swine breeder Mary Field and her husband, Jim, married in the days when farm women were seen as “farm wives” who publicly went by their husbands’ first names.

But Mary and Jim believed in women’s rights and full partnerships, particularly where women work side-by-side with their husbands in developing a viable farm enterprise. Thus, after marrying in 1958, the couple modeled the benefits of full partnerships at Ja-Mar Farm – a contraction of their names -- located on Lynn Valley Road, Port Dover.

This full partnership established Ja-Mar Farm as having top management practices with their swineherd being recognized as one of the top 10 in Ontario. They also were selected as a University of Guelph veterinarian training farm.

Moreover, Ja-Mar Farm specialized in breeding purebred swine. Over 30-plus years, they created bloodlines which sold across Canada, and the world, until the herd’s dispersal in 2005.

In 2020, the Norfolk County Agricultural Hall of Fame added them to their wall, located at the Waterford Heritage & Agricultural Museum (WHAM), four years after Jim’s death.

The plaque WHAM erected in the Hall of Fame outlines the couple’s rural leadership and their contributions to swine genetics. To date the Fields are the only partnered entry in the Hall of Fame, located at the Waterford Heritage & Agricultural Museum (WHAM).

“I believe that our partnership worked well,” understated Field, 87.

Field still lives on the home farm, in a residence that partially consists of part of a condemned lakeshore schoolhouse which her grandfather bought and moved to the Lynn Valley Road in 1921. Its other portion forms the kitchen of the Marburg Community Hall, another place where Field remains active. Field is writing anecdotes about her family and past adventures in the context of Woodhouse Township’s rural history and farm culture. She uses original documents that the family retained, as well as memories of growing up in Marburg, when outdoor privies and threshing gangs prevailed.

Both Field and her husband grew up on farms on the Lynn Valley Road on opposite sides of Cockshutt Road. Mary’s Scottish ancestors – the Jamiesons – first settled nearby at Dog’s Nest around 1850 because they understood that “it was worth leaving the heather for Norfolk,” recounted Field.

Her childhood was generally happy, although she needed to learn to walk again after a lengthy bout of polio confined her to Brantford General Hospital.

“I had a therapy horse I called Pony whom I used to help me walk to the end of the lane… Pony was a mustang – mustangs were popular with farmers then.”

Field’s first display of public advocacy occurred in her high school French class when she got kicked out for standing up for another girl whom Field believed was being picked on.

“So, I dropped French and took a typing credit in business school instead – it helps me today with my writing.”

The couple met at elementary school (“Marburg SS Number 8”) , dated in high school and worked off farm after graduation, with Jim as a Class A mechanic and Mary as a teacher. In 1969, they bought a farm in Townsend, initially beginning in dairy before switching to pigs. They returned to Lynn Valley Road when a farm beside Field’s childhood home became available.

The 102-acre farm focused on farrow-to-finish hogs, cash crop corn, wheat and soybeans. The couple grew and milled all of their feed, bringing in supplements. They began raising purebred Duroc, Landrace and Yorkshire and Hampshire boars, sows and bred gilts. They also raised three daughters, Debby, Cathy and Margie; the latter eventually assumed running the farm with husband, Ed Vander Nelson.

The couple divided their labour, with Jim usually feeding the market hogs and tending the crops while Mary concentrated on the farrowing barn and the purebreds. Field maintained the pedigrees with the Canadian Swine Breeders Association (CSBA) herd book in Ottawa, studying Records of Performance (ROP), selecting the herd lines to develop or cull.

“That’s how Ja-Mar Farm got its name,” said Field. “We had an equal partnership in things farm, but I was always doing the pedigrees, so I chose the herd prefix. I wanted to keep it simple; therefore I used the first parts of our names.”

Field worked hard at improving the pedigree.

“I spent hours and hours studying pedigrees to look for defects and cull bloodlines, even if they were high-testing pigs (at Agriculture Canada’s former New Dundee ROP test station). We tested for other things such as halothane-reacting pigs (a recessive gene that helps leanness but could cause Porcine Stress Syndrome and pale, soft exudative meat); if they didn’t have high vitamin E in their blood they could die on the road to the market.

“It meant always being on lookout for better stock. For example, our first plane trip together was to Kansas State University to buy a Duroc boar called Mag. Subsequent sires came from Sweden, Ireland, the United States and various provinces.”

In 1987, the Fields switched their herd to a closed “high health” farm with an aim to produce the highest level of excellence achievable in purebred swine. This status required strict health protocols, including caesarean section for selected bred sows and gilts in separate facilities. The new-born piglets went to son-in-law Ed Vander Nelson’s barn after the C-sections, instead of the main barn.

Testing for high status maintenance involved sending a test head with attached lungs to DeKonig Butchers for inspection and a 10 to 12-day wait for the results.

“We never lost our status,” said Field. “We had two pickup trucks on the go: one for the c-sections or to send out the selected gilt for A.I. (artificial insemination), the other for market or for trading sows.”

These efforts paid off: Ja-Mar Farm exported pigs across Canada, and to South Korea, Japan, China, Australia, Holland, the USA, Russia, Malaysia and parts of South America.

WHAM’s Hall of Fame lists the organizations in which the couple gained leadership roles. While Jim specialized in pork, local farm and provincial marketing initiatives, Mary focused on swine genetics, often as some groups’ first female director.

Field’s portfolio includes: director and president of the Ontario Swine Breeders Association (1970s -1980s); director, CSBA (1980s); and National ROP (Record of Performance) for swine (1984-1989). She also sat on the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture Food and Rural Affairs’ Appeals Tribunal in the early 2000s, and was vice-president of the Ontario Farm Implement Board. Local groups such as the Marburg Community Centre and St. John’s Anglican Church also benefited from Field’s energy.

Field was also instrumental in helping Bill Knowles, M.P., get the Capital Gains exemption for farmers.

In 1989, Field’s peers selected her to chair Canada’s first trade commission to the USA --the World Swine Expo in Iowa. Her team consisted of one purebred breeder from each province. Together they discussed everything from breed and line availability, herd health status, transportation and genetic quality with many of the estimated 59,000 people visiting the Canada booth.

Their efforts boosted Canadian purebred exports. Adds Field, “There were many conversations on how much feed costs in various countries!”

A 1980 issue of Canadian Swine, the CSBA’s official organ, described Mary’s pig-love and public relations talents: “It was not such an unnatural move to pigs on their part when you discover that Mary’s uncle was Ford Jamieson, who was one of the original breeders of Landrace pigs….Mary is prepared to accept the fact that there are two sides to every question and is quite willing to listen to the other side. She tackles controversial subjects in a very rational way and presents her side quite clearly and concisely.”

Regionally, the Simcoe Reformer deemed Field as Haldimand-Norfolk’s 1992 “Newsmaker of the Year” when she became the president and designated spokesperson for the Norfolk chapter of Ontario Taxpayers’ Association. The Norfolk coalition had 2,000 members by 1991, who Field said protested rising property taxes and called for “accountability and accessibility at all levels of government.”

Field joined the coalition over rising farm taxation, uniting with what she called “salt of the earth people.” She called them “open minded” residents with different expertise, from accountancy and investigative skills including the submission of Freedom of Information requests.

Their work resulted in one Haldimand-Norfolk official being fired for financial abuse.

Field’s coordination of the Norfolk Rural Women from 1985 to 1990 used different skills. The Norfolk group formed part of the larger rural advocacy group, the Ontario Farm Women’s Network.

“We were a support group for those women with bad experiences, such as a sudden death of a spouse or a husband abandoning his wife to chase another skirt. In one case, the husband took the bank account with him. That was a time when women weren’t fully recognized as farm partners to qualify for a credit rating,” she said. “Remember that I was married at a time when I was not Mrs. Mary Field, but I was Mrs. James Field.”

With Field’s help, Norfolk Rural Women found funding to pay younger farm women to document farmwomen’s stress – and advocate on these women’s distress when possible.

“The survey takers found very sad stories when they went into the homes. There were -a lot of suicides in the tobacco area, for example.”

Although the Ja-Mar barn still has a wooden swine silhouette above its door, the farm is now a cash crop operated by the Vander Nelsons: “Ed and Margie are dedicated to growing a good crop.”

Field is grateful for her experiences, and appreciates the strong support that the provincial government provided for improving swine genetics. She knew most of the purebred swine breeders across Canada, who then numbered by the dozens and maintained an active national herd book.

“Today there are few individual breeders. They tend to be large, corporate companies that produce their own line such as the PIC pig; or there’s a few who specialize in unusual or heritage breeds like the Tamworth.”

Field fingers her Lynn Valley Road upbringing for shaping her agricultural success.

“Marburg made me – and my mom and dad!” she said, laughing. 