Larry Davis brings ingenuity to farming

Innovation has been the cornerstone of Larry Davis’ approach to farming. One example of this is the experimentation he’s done to investigate various uses of miscanthus, particularly when it comes to soil improvements.

By Tamara Botting

When Ag Day returned to Hagersville on June 6 as part of the town’s 150th anniversary celebrations, Larry Davis was there for the opening ceremonies, giving the official proclamation as town crier.

It’s just one of the many roles he’s taken on over the years to give back – on both the small and larger scale.

Davis is the third generation of his family to farm at the current location on Bishopsgate Road in Brant.

“We moved here from another farm in the county. The farmstead before our generation was on Tutela Heights Road, just down the road from Alexander Graham Bell. So, I tell people my grandfather and Alexander would have been buddies,” Davis said with a chuckle.

“Dad said that farm was so hilly that sometimes they would upset the wagon and the horses on the hills. So, they were looking for another farm and settled here. It’s still quite hilly, but it’s not as bad as it is over on Tutela Heights.”

Davis primarily farms hay, as well as miscanthus.

The latter has been an outlet for a lot of creative ingenuity and experimentation for Davis.

“When the government wanted to get rid of coal burning systems in Ontario, some farmers said, we can grow a crop for you that you can burn, and it’s renewable – every year, we’ll have a new crop,” Davis said, adding that miscanthus is sustainable and good for the environment, as it’s carbon sequestering – it absorbs carbon dioxide.

While it looked promising at first, the government ultimately changed course in its approach, and the idea of using miscanthus as an alternative fuel source largely fell to the wayside. There are, however, some companies in the United States that have been using the plant to make pellets for fire; it’s also being looked at as a possible fibre filler for pet food.

“So, we were left with this crop, and we’ve looked for other uses for it,” Davis said.

The main use he and his wife, Sally Davis, have found for it is as garden bedding.

“It makes an excellent mulch around trees, rather than using wood chips or tree bark,” he said.

Sally said anecdotally, they’ve noticed that, “There’s something in it that prevents things from germinating in it. When you put down a wood or bark mulch, or any kind of mulch, the helicopters (seeds) will land in it, or dandelions seed will land in it; they’ll germinate and grow. It doesn’t seem to do that in miscanthus. And there’s no seeds in it, like there is in wheat straw or rye straw.”

In Davis’ experience, it’s also a good additive for soil, helping to better strike that elusive balance of good drainage and moisture retention. He said it even works on clay-heavy soil.

A few years ago, he was hired to manage a marijuana farm. The soil was so hard that he and the workers couldn’t put a stake in it to hold the plants; he had to use an electric drill to put holes in the soil, and even then, “we were burning out the drills.”

The following year, Davis said, “I put down a layer – and I mean a layer – of miscanthus around the marijuana plants; that soil completely changed, just like that.”

He said the rain would soak into the soil instead of running off, and “We didn’t have to irrigate.”

Davis said this experimental approach is nothing new for him.

“I’ve always been innovative like that,” he said, always “trying to find new ways to farm.”

While it’s a hot topic today, back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, soil erosion wasn’t on the radar for as many people in the agricultural industry, Davis said. It was an issue he had to contend with regularly, though.

“This farm was highly erodible, because it’s sandy,” Davis said. The soil would “blow away in the winds and wash away when it rained. And that wasn’t good. … If it rained, we’d have big washouts, and I would rent an earth mover to drag the soil back up on the hills. And we left a lot of grass in the waterways.”

At the time, they were using a moldboard plow, because that’s what everyone was using.

“But there was something wrong with that,” Davis said.

When he heard about Glencoe soil savers, which only worked up a narrow strip of soil, he decided to give that a try instead. After he found one to buy in Dunnville and brought it home, “We started using that, and the soil started to change almost immediately.”

The shift from conventional till to minimal till, and now no-till in some areas “has helped build the soil here immensely. It has changed so much since the 1970s.”

Armed with first-hand experience, Davis tries to advocate for better farming practices, and does what he can to educate other farmers about things like minimal and no-till farming, as well as the benefits of miscanthus.

He does a lot of this work through the Brant Soil and Crop Improvement Association, where he’s a board member and past president; he’s also currently a board member of the Golden Horseshoe Soil and Crop Improvement Association, which encompasses Niagara, Haldimand, Norfolk, Brant, etc. He’s been named a champion hay grower in both associations several times, lending credence to the wealth of knowledge he’s built up over the years.

He still likes to explore new options, too.

Recently, the family had some hives put on their property in partnership with Hammer Hives.

“I’m looking to grow that partnership with them, to where I’ll own some of the bees,” Davis said, noting that their daughter, Melissa, was quite interested in bees, “and I’ve always been interested in them because I had a cousin who was one of the largest beekeepers in Ontario.”

As much as there’s benefit in following in the footsteps of others, Davis also knows that a key component in innovation is being willing to sacrifice tradition, and not falling into the trap of doing things a certain way because that’s how they’ve always been done.

When Davis first took over the family farm, there was a dairy operation. Almost immediately, he looked for ways to optimize resources.

Sally noted, “We were collecting all the paper and cardboard from the community and using it as bedding, so we saved it from the landfill.”

That wasn’t the only environmentally friendly practice that was implemented at that time, she noted.

Davis set up a system where the water was recycled four times before it went out to the land.

Sally explained, “We used the water to cool the milk, and that water was then used to water the cows and clean the milkers. The water used to clean the milkers went into another tank, which was used to clean the floor of the (milking) parlor, and then that water went into another tank, which got mixed in with manure to make liquid manure.”

Davis noted, “I even got an innovation award for that.”

More gratifying, though, was seeing a number of other farmers adopting similar systems in their own milking parlours.

Eventually, they had to give up the dairy operation because there was tingle voltage on the farm, and it was impacting the cows’ production.

But even though they don’t have the cows now, Davis can and does still share the knowledge he’s gained over his lifetime of working in agriculture.

He’s been involved with Bite of Brant for many years, and has been a guest speaker at the school where his daughter teaches.

After his most recent visit, “He came home and said the Grade 3/ 4 class didn’t know that McDonald’s hamburgers came from cows,” Sally said.

That’s why Davis sees his role as an agricultural educator as so important.

“They don’t realize the connection between food and agriculture, and between food and our soils,” he said.

It’s not just kids, either; far too many adults have lost the sense that “Everything connects to the soil,” Davis said. “There are so many aspects of agriculture that the consumer does not understand; they have no conception.”

There are some bright spots of hope, though.

Davis is involved with Farm and Food Care Ontario, and one of big things the group is focusing on now is equipping farmers and others in the agriculture sector on how to give an ‘elevator pitch’ – an engaging speech that’s under a minute – on the importance of agriculture and why farmland needs to be protected.

On top of the other associations he’s a part of, Davis has been a board director for the Ontario Federation of Agriculture for many years, and with the group, has done a lot of work to lobby for good policies for agriculture in Ontario. Davis was just re-elected to that position. At all levels of government in Canada, he has seen that there are politicians who either come from an agricultural background, or have an awareness of the industry.

It can be slow work, but Davis, like any other farmer, knows that sometimes it takes time for things to grow.

If he ever needs a reminder, he can look to the trees.

“I have planted thousands of trees,” Davis said. These were planted primarily as windbreaks, intended to stop the spread of ‘snoil’ – snow that’s mixed with soil as it’s blown across the fields. When he stands on his front lawn, almost all of the trees he can see when he looks in any direction are ones he planted.

Besides that, “I have a nice forest that I maintain,” Davis said. The woodlot is just over 100 acres, and he uses the dead trees as firewood to heat everything on the farm.

The woodlot is home to several species at risk, including Blanding’s turtles, Canada warblers, and eastern wood pewees.

Davis has also worked with the American Chestnut Foundation to help reintroduce the natural American chestnut to Ontario.

“That’s another species at risk that I have naturally in my forest,” he said.

Initially, there was just one, but after Davis contacted the University of Guelph, they brought a dozen more, which were all planted near the existing one. While two had suffered a bit of damage from deer eating at them, “the rest are thriving.”

Hopefully, with help from dedicated advocates like Davis, the Ontario agricultural industry will follow suit. 