BradfordToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected] or via our website. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following poem, Giving: Thanks to Our Farmers, was submitted by Bradford resident Walter Prokopchuk.
They be the Bradford’s stalwarts, who’ve, been charged by fate to farm
Their crops aligned in perfect rows, livestock raised in their barns,
Painstakingly supplying us, with nutrition we all need;
To earn their daily bread, ably, persistently they’d feed.
Not just in our Town’s neighbourhoods, but the masses everywhere,
They ship fruits — of their endeavours — ’cross land, and seas, to share
With them who’ve not ability, nor soils arable
To produce the varied foods: be meat, milk, vegetables.
Arriving here from Britain, too — Italy, Holland,
And Hungary, Japan, Ukraine, Slovakia, Poland,
From Vietnam and Korea, our hunger, they’d appease,
Plying their trade, so well armed with, sharply honed expertise:
One would be Coutts, whose dairy herd, from pastures to barn’s stalls,
That does provide the liquid — white — when crying infants call
For mommy’s milk, for her newborn’s meals, from her oft-depleted teats,
With supplemented bottled milk, so babe’s meals be complete.
As well, the Williams dynasty, besides their milking herd,
Added llamas, and miniature sheep, whose bleats be clearly heard.
And Hambly, Jack, passed torch to John, at Gwillimdale’s lands
Diversified from livestock to, root crops to so expand.
And many more — present and passed — who’d pioneered their lands,
Like Munshaws and, the Batemans, too, on muck, and loam-filled sands;
’Twere — Culbert’s Bus, Faris’s Murray — also was Clarence Baynes,
Who’d cultivate corn-laden fields, and other varied grains.
And so we shall, pay homage to, those recently arrived,
As well those who tend family farms, o’er generations, strived
To grace our tables, where we dine, with finest Quality
Of sustenance that we enjoy, with bounty’s Quantity;
For they be justly recognized, for talents they’ve arranged,
To compete in our globe’s Markets, adapt to Climate’s Change,
Whose storms and droughts, diseases all, would try to spoil their fare;
That’s why this rhyme was written, so, we need be made aware.
Walter Prokopchuk
Bradford
