Quiet Acres, our farm name, precedes us. When my ambitious father bought the farm in 1968, the name was established and somewhat apropos. In those days, and in the years preceding the purchase, Lakeshore Road in Niagara-on-the-Lake was a quiet road. Quiet, even isolated.

With a creek running through it, pastures, old orchards scattered about, an immense old animal barn with giant rafters and spacious haylofts, Quiet Acres was the quintessential farm. It was the sort of idyllic setting where children grow up in books or movies; it was the farm where my sisters and I were born.

When Bruce began running it, Quiet Acres was primarily a hog farm. The fruit orchards that supplied the fruit stand, though important, were secondary to the pigs.

Pork markets haven't changed a lot since the late 1960's and early 1970's. Then, as now, prices fluctuated severely in risky boom and bust cycles. In the late 1960's, pork production methods were trending towards the practices we see at enormous mechanised operations today. To continue competitively in pork, the immense old barn would have had to have been replaced, requiring a substantial capital investment in new buildings and equipment. Farmers, groups of farmers, and corporations were investing in pork production; but very little of that investment was happening in our area.

Supporting infrastructure for cash crops and livestock husbandry began to shift out to the more marginal areas. Land values in Niagara-on-the-Lake began to climb. Concomitant with these climbing land values was the pressure to realise commensurate return on investment. The entire industry was shifting towards specialised fruit production, which promised these higher returns. Co-operative and centralised marketing mechanisms were strengthened as regional fruit production increased.

Like in other types of farming, the trend in Niagara's fruit farms was towards bigger, specialised operations focusing only on one or two crops. Unlike in other types of farming, there was also a counter-trend towards smaller farms. These smaller farms (under 4 hectares) were typically run by part-time growers with full-time off-the-farm jobs and were very often, like the large farms, specialised in one or two crops. Centralised marketing increased the viability of such specialised production, as it provided a guaranteed outlet.

When the refocusing towards tender fruit production began, fruit prices were relatively high. As all the new young orchards in the region began entering peak production years and improved transportation heralded the global market, prices bottomed out. (One stark example can bring this to light. In 1968, wholesale sour cherry prices were at least double the late 1990 prices -in nominal terms!) The response was that some farms continued expanding in an attempt to realise economies of scale and many of the small farms were rented out to larger growers. There was also a trend towards niche marketing, and increased crop diversification in an attempt to protect against commodity-like price swings for specific crops.

In the early 1970's my parents were faced with the choice of expanding the pork operation, or moving towards increased tender fruit production. Either choice would require a large capital investment in new barns and equipment. In the case of fruit, the choice would also require substantial investment in rootstock and entail a lengthy wait before production peaked. Given the trend towards fruit production in Niagara, the pressures to increase return on investment with rising land values, and the diminishing supporting infrastructure for pork production, the choice was natural.

The result at Quiet Acres was a gradual shift towards increased fruit production over several years. For a time, our farm mirrored the trend towards larger operations. By 1982 our total land area had increased from 12 to 18 hectares, much of it planted in young orchards. By 1984 we had built a modern barn to serve as a packing shed and a cold-storage facility for our fruit.

Though our operation was growing and our plantings increasing, my parents never wavered in their support of the fruit stand and the retail concept. This is partially the reason why, unlike many of the growers in our area, our shift towards increased tender fruit production did not involve specialisation in one or two crops. Our customers were accustomed to a wide selection, and it appeared that if we wanted to continue retailing, diversification would be essential. But we could never hope to sell all our production at the fruit stand, so the wholesale market was very important.

About the time the majority of our orchards entered peak production years, wholesale fruit prices were on the way down and many growers were buying or renting more land, or getting out of the business. We responded by diversifying our crops even more, and refocusing on the retail market. While we continued to wholesale quality fruit in large volumes, the best fruit was always sold at our market. This helped to solidify our reputation and stabilise income.