Dublin-area farm gracious hosts to Breakfast on the Farm event

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As a second-generation farmer, Frank Louwagie is trying to take his farm into the future while also continuing to honour the past.

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Louwagie’s Dublin-area farm, Hillmanor Holsteins, located on Line 32 in West Perth, has been in his family since 1960, when his dad, Joseph, bought the operation just a few short years after immigrating from Belgium with only $100 in his pocket.

“He looked around Ontario and he bought this in Perth County, and I’m really glad that he did,” Louwagie said of his father’s decision. “He had strength he was the right person to do the first stage of growth on this farm, and I have been the right person to take it to its next stages of where we are now.”

That next stage involves installing 100 kilowatts of solar panels on his newly built barn. While that provides about half the energy the barn needs, Louwagie is already preparing to install more panels if he gets the needed approval from Ontario Hydro.

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“We’ve been thinking about the future long before (sustainability) was a buzzword. We are always trying to leave the soil and farm a better place for future generations,” he said.

Louwagie is also working to dispel misconceptions that people have about the way farmers treat their animals. He decided to get involved in this type of advocacy about five years ago after seeing videos online about cows being mistreated.

“I’m not doubting that the video was real – it was not Photoshop – but it definitely doesn’t represent the industry,” he said. “It just irritates me that sometimes that’s what gets the headline, so I decided to get more involved and to give back to the industry that I have been a part of for all these years.”

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The Louwagie family has since created “a barn environment that (is) very open to the public and very defendable.” Additionally, the farm has opened its doors to events such as the Skeletons of Vivian Line in 2022 to allow people to get better look at operations.

“What we are doing there, as far as animal care, I challenge anybody any day to improve on that,” he said.

Although farmers are the face of agriculture, there are many other people he works with that help make the 150-cow operation an ongoing success, Louwagie said. This includes roughly six industry consultants, including feed and nutrient management experts.

“They all help me make decisions on what’s the best way forward – what’s the best science-based way forward – and behind them is another layer of university researchers and field testing. So agriculture is a giant piece of machinery, and we are trying to work on environmental solutions because we have to create more and more food of the same and less,” he said.

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The advancement of double-cropping, which allow for a few acres of his 1,500-acre operation being used for forage, makes Hillmanor Holsteins even more efficient, Louwagie noted.

On Sept. 14, Hillmanor Holsteins hosted Breakfast on the Farm in conjunction with Farm & Food Care Ontario, a coalition of industry members dedicated to building the public’s trust in food and farming in Ontario. The event, which ran from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., at 6668 32 Line, Dublin, was a sell out s 2,200 people were fed but many more from across the entire region attended to visit and tour the fully robotic dairy barn, and participate in interactive activities and exhibits throughout the farm while also enjoying breakfast.

One family called it a “mini Farm Show” and thanks to the help of an estimated 120 volunteers and glorious weather, was a huge success that ran as smooth as could be expected.

with files from Andy Bader

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