Westvale Farm Century Farm

St. John's (Goulds), NL

Century Farm

Description

NOTE: In 2005 the Agricultural History Society of Newfoundland and Labrador created the “Century Farm Award” to honour farm families across the province who had farmed their land continuously for one hundred years or more and were still actively farming. Heritage NL agreed to post these listings on our website. Please note that these farms are NOT designated by Heritage NL. The listings are commemorative only. All content and images © Agricultural History Society of Newfoundland and Labrador and used with the permission of award recipients. Information current as of 2006-2007.

Westvale Farm

At eighty-two years, Leonard Ruby tramps through the snow like a man half his age. Dressed in coveralls and rubber boots, he stomps from the kitchen door of his homestead, across the land to the root cellar. It’s the dead of an Avalon winter and the ground is hidden under metres of snow. But beneath the frozen ground, down frosted concrete steps, the final pounds of Mr. Ruby’s fall harvest are safely tucked away from the cold.

Plump, red-skinned potatoes cover the dirt floor of Westvale Farm’s root cellar. Mr. Ruby kneels, and begins stuffing handfuls of the tubers into clear plastic bags. He has an order to prepare for Bidgood’s grocery store. “We’re still selling,” he says proudly of last year’s crop. But his mind has already jumped ahead to April, when he’ll begin seeding for next year’s harvest.

On the Ruby Line, in Goulds, Westvale Farm sits on a pocket of protected agricultural land. The growing cities of the northeast Avalon Peninsula seep around the farmland, but here on the Ruby Line, it’s still country.

Westvale Farm received the Century Farm award from the Agricultural History Society of Newfoundland and Labrador in 2006. The farm has been operational for 157 years – since 1850, when William Ruby from Devon, England cleared some land and began growing vegetables. The farm has come full-circle since its modest beginning. Each successive generation of Rubys expanded the farm. At its peak in the mid-twentieth century, Westvale registered a large herd of 70 full-breed Holstein dairy cows and 150 acres, almost all under cultivation.

When William Ruby passed away, the land he had accumulated was left to his two sons, George and Samuel, who then tilled the land as two farms. George worked to expand Westvale and Samuel farmed Rubyvilla, to the south.

In the late 1800s, George Ruby worked hard to expand Westvale, buying land all over the area. He and his son, Allan, ran the farm into the first part of the twentieth century.

By 1930, when George passed away, Westvale was a thriving dairy farm employing 6 permanent hired men, 10 at the peak of the season, and selling cart-loads of milk to the Newfoundland Butter Company in St. John’s. “It was a large operation for back then,” Leonard Ruby says, “to maintain about 40 head of cattle, that was big in those days.”

But Westvale Farm would fall on hard times as well. In 1935, just five years after taking full ownership of the farm, Allan died at age 57, leaving a wife and young children behind. “A minor ailment, today it would be only a minor flu,” says Mr. Ruby of the illness that took his father, “In those days if you didn’t survive, that was it.”

Leonard and his two brothers were still children at the time, too young to take over the responsibility of the farm. Their mother, Janet, kept the boys in school and ran the farm herself, with help from an older nephew.

One year after Janet buried her husband and took on the role of proprietress, her farm was struck with a deadly outbreak of Bangs disease – an illness that cause cows to abort their calves at about five months. “It’s terrible, contagious. It would bring you to your knees in six months.” The Rubys brought in several cows from the mainland in 1936, one, or all of them, had the disease and it spread quickly. The plague almost eliminated the Ruby herd. Only six animals survived. “It could be used for beef, but if you had a good animal, producing five to six gallons of milk a day, and then had to sell it for beef, well…” Mr. Ruby trails off, “It took years to come back from that.” But they did come back. “We just started anew. That’s all we could do,” says Mr. Ruby. “We had to buy a full new stock from the mainland. It was hard for the family. If you weren’t financially strong enough, you wouldn’t survive it. There were no loans or grants then, the banks wouldn’t look at you. It was hard for my mother.”

When they were finished school, Janet’s three sons took over the family farm. Leonard, Cyril and Eric took Westvale Farm through more than 40 years of successful dairy production. They expanded the farm to 70 head of full-breed Holstein cattle, renovated the barns, and underwent agriculture technology upgrading. They also survived another outbreak of Bangs disease. Thankfully, animal testing had improved and it did not decimate the herd like the 1936 outbreak had.

The brothers no longer sold to the Newfoundland Butter Company. Instead they were part of Sunshine Dairy – a co-op production company owned by the dairy farmers of the St. John’s area. The co-op was later sold to a private company, and in the 1970s the Ruby dairy farm sold their milk to Central Dairies – their last customer. During his forty years of farming, Leonard remembers the introduction of bulk milk tanks as the greatest advancement of agriculture technology.

The Ruby Line, formerly called Heavy Tree Road, was a difficult place to access in the 1950s and 60s. “We were about the most hard pressed in the area,” Mr. Ruby says. “This road was closed from mid December to March. We would have to transport the milk from here to the main road just by horse and slide. Then we transferred it over to what ever other mode of transportation we had to pick up and bring it to the dairy. It was a full day’s work for two men.” The milk would be shipped in 5-gallon jugs, piled high on the slide. “You would probably have 60 to 70 gallons of milk in the winter, then in the summer, it would increase.”

In the early 1970s, life got a lot easier. The dairy would come collect the milk from the tanks at the farm. “When the bulk containers came in, all you would have to do was bring it into the dairy and they had instant cooling,” Mr. Ruby says. “It mixed up and it cooled almost immediately. That eliminated all the extra work. It was way easier.”

Cyril and Eric Ruby retired from farming in 1987, retaining their share of the Ruby land to lease out. Leonard, too, retired from dairy farming. The brothers sold their herd of Holsteins to a buyer from the mainland, and Leonard settled down on Westvale Farm. But he was far from retirement.

At home today in their dining room, Leonard and his wife Lena, pour over photos of the family farm throughout the years. In a new album, lovingly put together as a gift for her father, Leonard’s daughter has included photos of her parent’s vegetable stand – the last installment of the working Westvale Farm.

After his brothers retired, Leonard kept two acres of vegetables going and rents out the rest of his land for hay production. “I’ll grow 15 to 18 types of vegetables…well, ‘we’,” Mr. Ruby says with a nod and a grin to Lena, “she’s the seller.” “And the weeder,” Lena says with a laugh. The Rubys swear the staples are the big sellers – turnip, potato, carrot – although they’ve grown just about everything, including green onions and lettuce, which didn’t move. However, Lena has developed her own, unique style of marketing, to great success. “Zucchini have picked up over the past few years,” Lena says. “I have recipes for breads, jams and pickles, and I put the recipes right on the zucchini. Same with the pumpkin. When they’re not selling for Halloween, I sell them with the pickle recipe.”

This year, they’ll start around the first of April, ordering seed and planting in the green house. The Rubys use very little herbicide and pesticide. “Only what we’re compelled to,” he says. They stock their road side stand and sell the rest to local grocery stores. “There’s an unlimited demand for local vegetables,” Mr. Ruby says knowingly, “the quality is better.” When the snow is finally gone, the Rubys will be out at their road side stand, on the road that bears their name, selling their crops. “God willing,” he says.

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Location and History

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