The Farms of Hastings

One of the first things a settler had to do on his new land in Hastings County was clear it of trees. It was a matter of survival. Along with constructing a shelter in the form of a small house or crude cabin, the settler had to clear the land to grow food to feed himself and his family.

Clearing the land was a daunting task anywhere but at least in southern Hastings it was rewarded with good farmland. Not so in the north. Except for patches of arable land in the northernmost townships of Hastings, much of the land north of Highway 7 is unsuitable for farming. There have been no plowing matches north of 7, for good reason. Granite is tough on plowshares.

Although the government tried to encourage settlement of north Hastings through its colonization road scheme, the plan was largely doomed to failure. Thin soil on solid rock did not make for good farming. Surveyor C.F. Aylsworth in 1925 described the Hastings Road as "one long trail of abandoned farms, adversity, blasted hopes, broken hearts, and exhausted ambition. And the mute evidence of all is empty, dilapidated and abandoned houses and barns, orchards, wells, old broken down stone and wooden fences, root cellars and many other similar evidence of having given up the ghost."

But in the south, richer soil and lack of surface rock allowed generations of farmers to make a reasonable living on the land. The dairy farms of Hastings provided milk for the county's famous cheddars which were internationally renowned. Hastings was known as the cheddar capital of Ontario. But times change. While there are still fine dairy farms, today beef farms outnumber dairyfarms by more than two to one.