Thistle Ha’

The Thistle Ha’ corn harvest is done. Despite a late planting due to a very wet spring, the corn yield was quite good.

I accompanied a 20-tonne load of corn to the local mill, and talked to the general manager. He surprised me when he said that they sell most of their corn as ethanol feedstock. Although Canada started promoting use of biomass (corn, wood products) to manufacture ethanol fuel in 2000 to combat global warming, he said the shift of corn sales from food to fuel has occurred just recently, after the U.S. government started subsidizing corn as a biofuel. This resulted in construction of numerous ethanol plants using corn as feedstock.

40% of the 2010 corn crop in the U. S. was converted to ethanol. This is past the “tipping point”; the U. S. corn crop is now insufficient to meet food needs. The wet spring in the U. S. mid-west and drought conditions in southern hemisphere corn growing regions has resulted in reduction of world-wide corn production in 2011, pushing corn to its highest price in recent memory. This has led to increased prices for other food crops such as soybeans and cereal grains. Although this trend has been beneficial to grain farmers and big agribusiness, increased feed prices have hit the poultry and hog industries hard. Cattle farmers are less affected since the corn mash byproduct from ethanol production is sold for cattle feed. More worrisome, some economists claim that the price of corn has started to track the price of crude oil. Has the U. S. policy to increase corn ethanol production in an effort to reduce the cost of imported crude oil to the American economy not only failed to reduce the cost of energy, but actually caused a permanent increase in global food prices?

Keith Tapscott planting corn at Thistle Ha'

The wettest spring in memory has delayed planting by at least three weeks. After a few dry days last week, farmers in the region were putting in long hours to get their crops in.

Sources: Past Years in Pickering by Rev. William R. Wood. Published by William Briggs, Toronto, 1911.
County of Ontario – Short Notes as to the Early Settlement and Progress of the County and Brief References to the Pioneers and Some Ontario County Men who have taken a Prominent Part in Provincial and Dominion Affairs by J. E. Farewell. Published by Whitby Gazette-Chronicle Press, 1907.
Pickering 1911 centennial medal from Thistle Ha’ private collection.

Pickering Township's Centennial Medal. Reverse side celebrated the coronation of King George V on June 22, 1911.

This is the bicentennial year of the municipality of Pickering.

In 1791, British parliament divided the province of Quebec into two provinces named Upper Canada [Ontario] and Lower Canada [Quebec], and a surveyor was hired to mark townships east of Toronto along the north shore of Lake Ontario, including ones named Edinburgh [Whitby] and Glasgow [Pickering]. There is a record of a meeting held in March 1803 to choose town officers for Whitby and Pickering. For Pickering township alone, its first meeting was held on March 4, 1811.

Pickering’s first elected municipal council met in 1850. John Miller/Thistle Ha’ was very active in Pickering politics. He was elected deputy-reeve of Pickering for the years 1868-1873, and was Pickering’s reeve for the years 1875-1876, 1878-1882, 1888, 1890. He served as warden of Ontario County in 1876. The number of municipal council meetings was far fewer than today; in his 1870 diary, John Miller recorded seven Pickering township council meetings, usually held on Saturdays. He also had two Ontario county council meetings. Given the traveling distances for some members, county council met for several days at a time in Whitby.

This year, Pickering has planned numerous bicentennial events. There will be a display featuring the Miller family in the main Pickering library during the month of June, and Thistle Ha’ will participate in Pickering’s inaugural Doors Open event on October 1.