Following a small farmer from seeding to harvest: A Land & Sea archival special

Bernard Tucker had to work for his farmland, back of Marklandon the Avalon Peninsula. He converted it all from forest hard work that meant cutting down trees, hauling up stumps and picking out rocks from the soil.

"All this land was right out of the woods," Tucker said.

"We never had a square foot here."

Tucker's farm was the subject of a 1989 episode of Land & Sea, which we present for you here.

The hard work was different once the land was ready for farming but it didn't stop for Tucker and his family, who grew vegetables like potatoes, turnips, broccoli and cauliflower on 60 cultivated acres.

From May to early November, Tucker was busy on the land, doing much of the work by hand to produce fresh Newfoundland-grown produce.

Fighting for profit

Getting from the point of putting the seeds in the ground to hauling up the harvest involvedfighting off everything from gulls and moose to bugs and weeds.

A moose ate the tops off some of Tucker's turnip plants, for example. It wasn't damage that would kill the plants entirely, but having the greens eaten off would make it harder for the turnips to grow, he said, and eventually the moose would gnaw down far enough to start eating the turnip itself.

"When we see damage like that we'll have to destroy the moose pretty soon," he said.

"Give him a couple of days here and he'd have a quarter of the field hauled out."

Bugs were another challenge, as were weeds. Tucker's youngest daughter Liza Ann and her friend helped with the latter, hauling up weeds and thinning plants for extra cash.

It's no surprise, perhaps, that rocks were an issue as well. Keeping the soil free of rocks was key to getting the well-formed vegetables that consumers want -- especially important for potatoes, given the competition from large farms in the rest of Atlantic Canada.

"It's a hard job to make money on potatoes because they're mass produced everywhere else," he said.

"A small farmer now can't compete with them at all."

Harvest time

One area where Tucker could compete was as an employer. Come harvest time, he had people calling from as far away as Whitbourne looking for work.

Much of his harvesting crew werefishermen looking for some extra work but he got a variety of people on the farm to help out, including a great-grandmother who comes back for a few days each year.

"We've got here everybody now, from a Placentia Bay fisherman to Mother Teresa."

For more archivalLand & Seaepisodes, visit theCBCNewfoundland and LabradorYouTubepage.

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