Burlington farmer looks back fondly on a busy, fulfilling life

Farmers don’t retire early so it’s no surprise that Richard Sovereign farmed in Halton well beyond retirement age.

He’s 82 now, and really only gave up farming a handful of years ago.

These days, he and wife Helen still enjoy driving around country roads through the seasons to watch planting, growing and harvesting on Ontario farms.

As the harvest gets into full swing this spring, Richard won’t be harvesting anything, a fact that took some time to get used to, considering his lengthy farming career.

Even when he retired he wasn’t ready to be put out to pasture; he always enjoyed the connections with other farmers.

“I put in my own personal crop with my own money in 1956, and sold the last farm in 2018,” he added.

But his success started many decades before it was time to call it quits. In fact, the crop he sewed first, when he was only 15 years old, was paid for with a paper route he and his brother shared.

His father, Earl Freeman Sovereign married Elanore Babb and they had three children: David, Richard and Evelyn. His dad farmed in Burlington with his own father until about 1950. He grew vegetables and had an orchard and raised hay and grains for the horses, cattle, pigs and chickens. 

The sale of 55 acres of the family farm in 1956, made way for the construction of Highway 403 Queen Elizabeth Highway interchange. The loss of the farm led him to operate a custom farm business.

Richard married Helen Ramshaw and they had two children, Elizabeth and Thomas. They purchased a farm in Nelson Township in 1963, growing grain crops, just above Lowville (where Escarpment Pet Retreat is, today). They farmed there for 43 years. In 2006, they purchased another farm in Nelson Township and moved there in the fall of 2006. The next spring, they sold the farm in Lowville.

He’s the seventh and last generation continuously farming in Halton county since 1812, noted Helen.

Richard and Helen Sovereign were best known in the community and beyond for Sovereign Grain Farms. Richard was named farmer of the year In Halton in 1983, receiving a pin and a display tractor with a plaque on it from the City of Burlington.

In 2017, Richard wrote a memoir on his family and farming (sic): “at this time in 2017, I am the only member of the Sovereign family to be still farming in the county of Halton.”

The Sovereign family farmed in Canada from 1793 to 2017, 224 years in Ontario, and farming in Halton County for 205 years.

With rented land, he farmed the home farm of 130 acres and rented 1,400 acres to grow wheat, oats, corn and soybeans. He ran a medium-sized grain drying system for the crops; corn and soybeans were stored on the farm and trucked to the grain mills during the winter.

In 1995, he gave up the land and sold all the farm machinery. Later he started working part-time off the farm for Halton Regional Tractor, delivering farm equipment. He continued this until 2010 since he enjoyed talking with the farmers he met and seeing the new farm practices in the area.

Richard served as member, president and past president of Halton Agricultural Society and the Ontario and Halton Association for Soil and Crops.

For his dedication to agriculture and to the community, he received the Canadian government's community contribution award.

He was president of the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association in the 1980s, leading a program with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food to implement soil improvement conservation practices and labour-saving devices.

“Mainly it was conservation practices because a lot of farmers didn’t know about safe handling of chemicals,” Helen explained. “It took a lot of hours.”

In 1991, the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association awarded him for his help in implementing the land stewardship programs to advance agriculture in Ontario.

In 2006, they sold their 6449 Guelph Line farm and purchased an 80-acre farm at 5610 Cedar Springs Rd. with 30 working acres they called a hobby farm.

He was almost 70 when he had that Burlington farm until they moved to Milton, where their daughter lives and works and has a small business. Their son, who didn’t pursue farming, found success with his own business in Campbellville. Sovereign Fusion is a welding and fabrication business providing service to the GTA.

“We found a little bungalow on a little piece of land, with hardly any front or backyard,” Richard said, adding “you can shake your neighbours’ hands off the front porch.”

County Atlas

The history of the Sovereign family is well-documented in the Halton County atlas of 1877. Helen said it speaks about the Sovereigns coming to Canada, arriving in Simcoe in 1794, and farming in the  Waterford area. Some of the family left that area in 1812, and went to Bronte.

Richard recalls helping his dad take produce to Aldershot, from the mixed  farm his father and grandfather had. There they grew tomatoes, cucumber, potato, strawberries, raspberries, grapes, cherries and they had live crops, a herd of cows, pigs, beef cattle in winter, and chickens. That existed where Maple Avenue and Plains Road is.

“It’s a completely different landscape; my brother and myself had a paper route in the early 1950s, riding their bicycles to deliver it.

Richard went to Maplehurst Public School and then Central High School in Burlington.

Farming was year round for Richard

And, despite farming being a predominantly seasonal job, Richard did all his repair work in the off season. 

“It wasn’t just a matter of being busy during crop time. We had storage on the property too and a drying operation on the farm; throughout the winter you’d repair the equipment,  improve it and deliver all the grains from the previous harvest and try to be done before spring. 

“Because of the acreage I had, time was really precious because when it was time to plant, it was time to plant,” Richard said.

A normal day was out of bed before 6 a.m., and in the really busy times, and since the farms were spread out, Helen would bring supper right to the field. The work wouldn’t end until late and some days, Richard wouldn’t get back home until close to 11 at night. “It was a way of life,” he said, but admits, he wouldn’t change it.

“The best thing about it was you worked outside in the open air and you worked for yourself,” he said. “As long as you had the ambition to get up in the morning and get going;, if you wanted to achieve you could achieve.”

As for difficulties, he said the weather was uncontrollable, and politics were among them. 

Overall, the Sovereigns said they feel lucky to have lived a life as fully as they have.

“Sure there’s always more things we would like to do, but we’ve enjoyed our life immensely,” Helen said. “We have two great children and three great grandchildren that mean the world to us.”