Still is, though women today are operating more farms in Canada than before.

Janet never planned to be among that five per cent who are female operators. (Women accounted for only 3.5 per cent of farmers when she joined the ranks.) She was looking for a job in agri-business, after graduating with honours. But her father at the age of 49 was stricken with rheumatoid arthritis and the hired man quit suddenly. She filled in and stayed, and married an Ottawa firefighter, and had two children. "I never left," she said, without a smidgen of regret.

Why does she stay? "I love to milk cows, I really like it," she says. She milks about 65 cows in a tie stall set-up and has 150 cows altogether. "I like handling cows; we have automatic take-off on the milkers and the work is a lot easier than when I was growing up" she says. Her father helps with the field work but no longer milks. She has outstanding help in Ian Payne, a graduate of Kemptville college.

She begins to milk at 6 a.m. and her one regret is that she doesn’t get back to the house in time to see her two children, ages 10 and 8, off to school. Her husband does that most times. She gets to a hockey or ringette game as often as she can. "I take off one day a week, Sunday," she said.

The herd is registered Holstein and the herd is classified. "We’re not fancy. We try to get good legs and udders and meet our quota," she says. "I’m happy if we get a couple of cows classified Very Good." Very Good is the equivalent of a B+ on an essay.

But fewer young women are making the choice Janet did. Census Canada 2001 reports that the number of women under 35 who operate farms is fewer than a decade ago. The median age of a female operator is 49, three years older than a decade ago, and a year younger than the average farm operator’s age (includes men and women).

Women operators seem to find British Columbia to their liking. The number of women operating farms there is double the national average, though few women are operating high producing dairy operations.

Farms operated by women tend to have lower incomes, often with farm receipts under $50,000. Across the country, sole female operators represent more than 10 per cent of horse and goat farms, and greenhouse operations. And women tend to go organic. Thirty-one per cent of the operators reporting certified organic were women.

Women on average worked fewer hours on the farm than men. Thirty per cent worked more than 40 hours compared to 54 per cent for men. Forty per cent of the women worked fewer than 20 hours compared to 21 per cent for men.