​On the east lawn of the museum, you will find an interesting relic of early farming: a McCormick
Deering sickle-bar hay mower.

The model  #7  was “state of the art” technology in 1929 when it was put on the market. It was a big
improvement over the #6 model in that it was horse drawn and had oil bath enclosed gears. There were many
options for knives, sections, and guards.

Museum volunteer Bill Berry has made wooden covers for the blades to protect visitors from harm.

Page 26 - Wednesday, September 28, 1988
Mid-North Monitor

Edith McKinnon was married to Carl Emiry in 1931.

Edith moved to Massey from her family farm in Paisley, Ontario in 1924 for a teaching job. She had plans to stay only one year in the area.

Edit taught at Massey schools for 21 years.

Carl and Edith's sons, Mack and George, now run the farm.

Mack's and his wife Beth's 20 year old son, David, is planning on helping out after he finishes a degree in Agricultural Science at New Liskeard.

The dairy farm has grown in its 75 year existence to more than ten times its original size. It is now comprised of 1,900 acres, 600 of which are being farmed.  Over the past 30 years, the Emirys have purchased five other nearby farm properties.

"I don't know if it's a good trend," Mack Emiry told the Monitor, and added that larger farm operations are inevitable. Because of large farms, the agricultural community has shrunk. As there are fewer farmers in the Massey area, there are no farm machinery dealers or farm services in the town any longer.

Edith Emiry said the larger size of farms affect the community socially as well as economically.

She wrote, "In 1931, when we were married, there were more close neighbours than now. Gradually, over the war years, farms became larger, and neighbours fewer. This is an unhappy aspect of mechanical and technological growth."

Until the early 1940s much of the farm labour was done by man or horse power.

Cows were milked by hand, bottles were washed, filled with milk, sold and distributed by the Emirys. Milk was also sold through dairies such as Piquette's of Espanola an Palm Dairy of Sudbury.

"You wouldn't know it's the same business," said Edith. 

As well as selling milk, Edith can remember her mother-in-law making butter and selling it door to door with garden produce and eggs. Pigs, turkeys and potatoes were still raised and sold when George and Mack were growing up. Now the farm "is too busy with cows".

Turnips were grown for cattle feed which required that they be pulped twice a day.  Now grain and commercial mixes feed the cows.

Grain farming owes a lot to agricultural science said Edith. Because of the development of earlier maturing varieties, a farmer can harvest two or three cuts of a crop in one season with the use of fertilizer.

Harvesting of the fields has changed also according to Edith.  She writes, "In the 30s and earlier threshing machines moved onto your farm. Neighbours gathered to help. Often crews of 16 to 20. Neighbour women came to help prepare the food."

The 85 to 90 milk producing comes on the farm now supply a steady amount of milk to satisfy quotas set up by the marketing board.

Since 1965, the marketing board has the authorization to raise or lower the quota of milk required from each dairy farmer. Farmers now own the right to produce and market milk as opposed to previous local arrangements between dairies and farmers.

A milk truck comes every second day for milk - which usually gets sent to Espanola.

Mack says he has "seen lots of changes in my time". The operation is producing a lot more milk than 20 years ago never mind in the Depression when it was going for six cents a quart.

In 1975 a milking pipeline was installed in the barn complete with a tank which cools the milk to one or two degrees Celsius within 45 minutes. Feeding is also automated.

by Carl Emiry, circa 1970

In 1913, the year my father George Emiry left Manitoulin Island, there was no railway or highway to Little Current from the mainland as there is today. The only way you got off the Island in those days was by boat over to Cutler in the summer or over the ice with sleighs and teams of horses in the winter as soon as the ice was strong enough to carry a load.  In the summer, the boat from Gore Bay made daily trips to Cutler and Spanish Mills, where you could catch a train to other points.  This boat, called the Winona, was owned by James Purvis of Gore Bay.  In the winter, the "horse and stage" as they called it, made daily trips over the ice to Spanish, hauling passengers, mail and freight.  A large stable for the winter trips was owned by James Purvis as well.  The Burns was another outfit that travelled the ice in winter.

In June 1913, my father (George Emiry), purchased the 160 acre farm at Massey where we are living at the present time. At that time, there was a small dock on the Spanish River in Massey. It was located right where the new bridge over the river is now.  My father chartered a boat, the "John Hagart" to bring everything he and my mother owned to Massey from Gore Bay. Their belongings included more than twenty head of cattle, four horses, pigs, hens, and turkeys as well as all the farm machinery and household furniture. The boat my father chartered had been condemned for lack of sea-worthiness.  This fact caused my mother a good deal of concern.  It was a flat-bottomed boat, so it didn't need water as deep as other boats did.  There is a sand bar at the mouth of the Spanish River where it empties into Georgian Bay, so it was necessary to have a flat bottomed board to come over that.

Our farm on Manitoulin was five miles from Gore Bay.  It was a sizeable job getting everything down to the dock to load when the boat came in.  They started loading it in the late afternoon of October 12th. all the cattle, horses, and heavy machinery were put on the bottom deck.  Other things were piled higher. There was even a democrat ties to the die of the boat by ropes and chains.  It was quite a load! Dad had lots of good help from so many good neighbours, and some of them were pretty good on the bottle too.  There was lots of noise and drinking going on that night in Gore Bay.  One man, a neighbour, fell into the lake and they had to fish him out.  My mother was really worried. She got after my dad and wanted to know if the boat crew was drinking too. Some of the men worked hard and drank hard too.

At five o'clock in the morning of October 13th, 1913, the boat pulled away from the Gore Bay dock for the trip to Massey.  It was a perfect day with no wind, and we came over with no trouble at all.  One sow, though, chose to producer her litter of little pigs on the way across the water.

My mother, sisters, brothers and I travelled on the other boat to Cutler, and came down to Massey on the train.

When the boat arrived in Massey, it was unloaded and the cattle corralled in the pine trees there. We milked the cows and there for the night. The next morning they were driven out to our farm.

Believe it or not, all my father paid for that boat was $100.00 for the whole trip - but those were the prices of sixty years ago*!

*written circa 1970