It was a fine day for the 100th anniversary of Fosterholm Farms. It could not have been finer if Mr. Clifford himself had ordered up the weather. Come to think of it, Mr. Clifford might have custom ordered the whole 2024 growing season, knowing son Dean and grandson Rylan would need the help.

Mr. Clifford is Clifford Foster, who left this earth on June 3 this past summer. Looking around the lush fields on East Lake, fields the Foster family has tended since 1924, you can’t help but think one of the hardest working, most forward-thinking farmers who ever hoed a row in Prince Edward County is still present.

The hard corn is as high as an elephant’s eye. The wheat harvest was good, and the once emerald, waist-high soybeans are in transition, prodigious pods dancing in the breeze. The strawberry and sweet corn crops got steady rains, providing plenty of quality produce for the farm stand, as well as the stall at Belleville Farmers Market.

Suffice to say, if you were going to pick a growing season to celebrate Harold Foster coming to East Lake a century ago, never mind the legacy of the Foster offspring, who have developed a diversified agriculture empire, 2024 was it.

“I’ve been to a few different places in Ontario this summer and Prince Edward County looks as good as any of them,” a neighbouring farmer noted at Sunday’s celebration.

Mr. Clifford would not have had it any other way.

Early into my tenure at the Gazette, I felt down about my career choice. I’d flubbed the prices of soybeans and corn in a story. A week later, I was still obsessing over the mistake. Patti Stacey pulled me aside. In addition to being a member of the Prince Edward Federation of Agriculture, Patti was working the front desk at the paper.

She looked me up and down and told me to buck up.

“You are a member of the Prince Edward County Farming Family. We see what you are doing for us in the pages of the newspaper and we appreciate it.” I treasure those timely words and I think about them whenever I’m on what Jack Evans calls “The Dirt Beat.”

Through familial experience, I knew that farming coursed through bloodlines, that agriculture is the tie that binds. I recalled Patti’s words Sunday, looking out amongst the 350 friends who came to celebrate the Foster family achievement and remember Mr. Clifford. I thought about our shared experiences on the land. The joy and jubilation. The struggles and strife. How farming connects those who live it and unites us. Exactly like a family.

If you’ve ever shuffled to the barn at 5 o’clock on a January morning when it’s -35, wondering if the pipes that keep the herd watered are frozen, you’re part of the family.

If you’ve ever trudged through that unique mixture of snow and mud in the maple bush in March to collect sap buckets, you’re part of the family.

If you’ve sat on the back of a potato planter in late April and wondered if the big black cloud overhead was going to unleash rain or snow, you’re part of the family.

If you’ve ever sent up a silent prayer as you plant soybean seed, asking that this to be the year you can get caught up with the bills and put some money away, you’re part of this family.

If you’ve ever spent a perfectly good Friday night polishing tomatoes and packing a van for next day’s market, you’re part of the family.

If you’ve ever stood in a sweet corn field at 8 a.m. with the “humidex” already approaching 40 degrees and muttered to yourself, “she’s gonna be a hot one,” you are part of the family.

If you’ve ever made up a batch a sandwiches and a thermos of coffee and headed off to some field that’s described with a general direction off the main road and named after a farmer who cleared it in the mid-1800s, you are most definitely the back bone of the family.

You’ve kept the boil going at the sap house. You’ve suffered both hypothermia and a sunburn on the same day on the back of a transplanter. You’ve raised a gaggle of free labourers and kept them fed and on the straight and narrow. Your contribution of a sympathetic ear and positive reassurance in the hard times, never mind a warm embrace and smiles of joy during the good times are integral and can never be quantified.

I’ve written that last stanza with Clifford and Margaret Foster and their children Dean, Stewart and Roxanne in mind. They are the inspiration for this County take on Paul Harvey’s “So God Made a Farmer,” which played, fittingly, at Sunday’s celebration.

When the big book on Prince Edward County farming is written, there will be some prominent family names throughout the chapters. McFaul. Vader. VanClief. Walt. Hagerman. MacDonald. And yes, Ross Parks was about the finest Holstein cow man around. From East Lake, you could say Sills. Leavitt. Perry. Bigg. Martin. Harry Evans and Phil Dodds could write about all of them. And Ikey Fraser knew how to turn a wrench for any of them.

But there was one who stood out. One grower of produce. One syrup maker. One dairyman. One grain farmer and tomato picker, the one who could out-work men half his age. One man who never uttered a bad word against anyone. A person who would halt everything to go pull a stuck tractor out of a muck hole for a friend. (Remember that one, dad?!) A builder of family. An employer who cared deeply for his workers and never asked of them anything he wouldn’t do himself. A person revered throughout the area not only for his farming business, but for the honest, true, kind, and thorough way he conducted it. He is the patriarch of the Prince Edward County Farming Family.

He is, was and always will be Mr. Clifford.