BELARUS MAYOR CAN'T BELIEVE IT
Dairy expansion includes full length manure pit

The mayor of a Belarus town in the former Soviet Union threw up his hands in disgust and walked out of the barn.

He had had enough of these lies coming from farm owners in eastern Ontario. He and a small group of seven people from his town had visited two eastern Ontario farms and could not believe that it didn't take at least 100 workers to get the job done. By the time he walked through the second farm he had seen enough.

"We bring them over and show them Canada and they don't believe us," said Karen Henderson, of Kenora Farms (See other story on this page), south of Kemptville. "They can't get past the mind set that you need a lot of manpower to do things."

The Henderson farm, headed by brothers Paul and Steven Henderson, is run by three full-time and three part-time people. But the Belarus mayor could not believe it. He also couldn't believe that two families could own so much land.

But when you go to Belarus you begin to see why it was so hard for the poor mayor to believe. A farmer in Belarus is only allowed to own one cow and up to five acres, although in most cases they don't earn enough to buy land, Steven's wife, Karen, said. They stayed with a host family last year, who worked for the state-run farm.

At state-run farms, those who feed the animals do not harvest. And those who harvest do not feed the animals and sometimes are underemployed a good part of the year. They are paid by weight of the harvest and often wet down the crop, Henderson said. Due to poor nutrition, "half the animals can't walk in the spring."

Their host family hadn't been paid in three months. But this was business as usual and is why everyone has a garden or access to one, Henderson said.

Each household has a large pile of potatoes and turnips in their backyards to get them through the winters. But most potatoes are only the size of golf balls, she said. One teacher, she was told, spent an entire day each Saturday going by bus to visit grandparents to get vegetables.

Even windows of government office buildings were filled with tomato plants. "Even at the war museum," she said.

The area the Hendersons visited suffers from heavy radiation, due to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. For several summers, two children from Belarus stayed at the Henderson farm and usually gained five to 10 pounds. You could physically see their health improve in a matter of weeks, she said.

Belarus farm practices are eye-widening. It is common for farmers to feed corn stalks, without ears and kernels, to their animals.

"You spend a lot of time shaking your head," she said.