Tradition continues on former Hamilton politician Robert Pasuta’s family farm with ‘Growing Broke’

A century and a half ago, in 1865, the winds of fate blew the seeds of the Pasuta family from Austria to Saskatchewan, where an orphaned teenage son grew up to become a horse trader.

Around that time, a farmhouse was built 30 km north of Hamilton, in Campbellville.

Out west, horse trader Pasuta won the hand of a Ukrainian woman from across the border in North Dakota (there may have been a horse involved), and they raised their family on a prairie farm.

Many seasons later, their grandson Mike moved east, setting roots in Hamilton, in a house on Hillyard Street on the harbour, near the International Harvester factory where he worked.

Mike and his wife, Stephanie, kept a chicken coop in their yard, but Mike felt the calling of higher, more fertile ground.

In 1948 he discovered that same farmhouse in Campbellville, up for sale along with 43 hectares.

He drove Stephanie up to see the place.

He said to her, Mom, this is home.' And she cried when she saw it. You go from hydro and a toilet, to nothing."

Robert Pasuta, Mike and Stephanie's son, smiles telling the story.

The charm of a farming life is one you feel in your bones, or you don't.

Pasuta and his wife Elaine, married 49 years, inherited that house, raised seven kids there, worked the land and raised pigs.

Pasuta's father, who raised beef cattle, worked to the end, in 2007.

He was on the big combine harvesting corn a few days before he passed away, at Thanksgiving. He was 88."

At a time when available farmland in Ontario is rapidly shrinking, the number of farms declining, and the average age of farm operators in Hamilton pushes 60, this is a snapshot of one farming family bucking the trend in some respects.

Pasuta, still going strong at 69, places his large hands - his ring size is 16 - on the horseshoe-shaped bar he bought awhile back for two hundred bucks. It is decorated with a few tipping coins glued to the surface, and a Harley-Davidson badge. (He was riding a motorcycle the day he met Elaine on a country road nearby: I thought I would keep him," she says.)

He calls their renovated garage rec-room the cottage." It hosts the family every Sunday for dinner, typically about 17 of them. A pew he acquired from St. James church in Waterdown serves as a bench where the kids sit.

He suggests that the days of the medium-sized farm are vanishing: you either go very big, or run a small niche farm, which is in a sense a throwback to an earlier time.

Between 2016 and 2021, on average the province lost 129 hectares per day of some of the country's most productive farmland, according to the Census of Agriculture - an increase from the 70 hectares lost per day between 2011 and 2016.

The census indicated Ontario has lost 1.2 million hectares of farmland over the last 35 years.

In Hamilton, while 79 per cent of the greater city's land area is classified rural, farmland shrunk 1.6 per cent between 2011 and 2016, from 52,847 hectares to 52,015 hectares, and the number of farms fell by 75 from 885 to 810, or eight per cent, continuing the trend from the last decade and a half.

Pasuta was heartened when city council voted this year to freeze the urban boundary, but the realist in him knows that policy can change, depending on the political winds municipally and provincially.

And once farmland is gone, it's gone," he says.

The immediate question in this outpost of Hamilton's territory, is what is the future of the Pasuta farm?

It seemed like none of their children had any interest becoming the third generation in the family farm tradition.

The parents understood. It's a hard life, Elaine would say. She worked in the barns as much as Robert over the years; hauling bags of fertilizer when she was pregnant, driving tractors. You are anchored to your land, especially when raising livestock.

One of their sons served in the military,other family occupations include nuclear engineer, graphic design, and diagnostic imaging.

Investors have offered Pasuta millions for their land, that rolls in the distance to the blue of the Mountsberg Conservation Area reservoir; hydro towers barely visible on the horizon mark the 401 Hwy.

It's not for sale, he kept saying, even as he would muse to Elaine about selling.

Pasuta stepped away from farming for the only time in his life in 2006, at 53, when he won a seat on Hamilton city council. He served 12 years and says it cost him upwards of $150,000 a year to forgo the farm business, he says.

I wanted to bring the country to the city, and help people, make a difference."

He kept up some of his cash crops, such as soybeans, but the animal barns were empty.

But then something new took root on the property.

Ben Pasuta, the sixth child, at 22, reconnected with Jessica Hamilton. The pair had dated at Waterdown high school.

Ben shares his dad's linebacker-like upper body and huge hands, but never had much interest in farming. Still, he liked the idea of being his own boss. Jessica grew up in the suburbs but loved animals and the idea of a farm life.

They fell back in love, got married in 2017, and moved into the 178-year old farmhouse next door to the farm. Ben had been looking after a few chickens. One thing led to another, and Jessica was all-in. Farming became their thing.

The first time I was in the pig pen, I'm wearing my Ugg boots, and shorts, saying look at me, I'm farming!'" says Jessica. Ben's mom (Elaine) showed me how to just kind of brace yourself, do it and just keep going ... I don't think it's something everyone would want to do, though."

Ben and Jessica farm pasture-raised chickens on the property through an artisanal chicken program - they will raise about 1,200 of them this year - as well as Berkshire pigs, owning about 300 at any given time; they also have a cow-calf" operation in which they breed cows and bulls in order to market their own grass-fed beef.

All of the chicken, beef and pork is processed at plants in Drayton, Alma, Elmira and Troy, all within about one hour of the farm.

Once packaged, they sell their own products at the farm.

About six years ago, over Sunday family dinner, talking about farming and the financial challenges ahead, Robert Pasuta quipped that the couple would end up growing broke." With that, they had a name for their business.

We have thought about changing Growing Broke,' but a social media guy told us it's catchy," says Ben.

And it's semi-accurate," says Jessica.

She left a job she had in administration with a plumbing company to work on the farm and raise their family: Rose, Abigail, and the youngest, red-haired Beau.

Ben does most of the work in the barns, I'm with the kids," she says.

Not quite, counters Robert Pasuta: I know lots of farmers whose wives never went to the barn. This one is different."

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, Jessica will get a text from Ben: a piglet being born is stuck in the birth canal and needs pulling. Ben's hands are too big for the job. She does it.

The animals are your livelihood, but you want to give them a good life before they go," she says. I've heard farmers say their goal is for the animals to have only one bad day in their lives."

The pandemic jump-started Growing Broke, with the spike in demand for locally-sourced food sold beyond crowded grocery stores. At the same time, their online operation grew more sophisticated.

Still, the challenges of running what qualifies as a small farm these days are considerable. Processing facilities for their animals are fewer and farther away than in the old days, and so are veterinarians you might need to call for the rare problematic birth of a calf, for example.

Other costs include renting land nearby at about $150 per acre to grow hay and corn for feed, and for their cattle to graze over the summer.

Lately it has cost more than $1,000 to fill one of the Pasuta tractors with gas. Ben and Jessica are working through the logistics of eventually offering home delivery; a refrigerated trailer costs $30,000.

Their advantage is the shared family land, and Robert Pasuta's expertise and support.

The notion of a young couple starting a Growing Broke-style farm from scratch, is hard to imagine.

To have to buy your own farm, build barns - like Rob did with his dad - that's huge, I don't know how you would do it," says Jessica. The price of land alone now makes me sick."

Perhaps the seed will take hold one day with a fourth generation of Pasutas.

That could be Ben and Jessica's kids, including Rose, 7, who does chores such as helping her mom move chicks from one patch of grass to another. That's what pasture raised" means, and in order to maintain that classification, you have to keep moving the chicks to fresh feeding locations.

Rose herds the waddling, chirping chicks with a plastic board that's about as tall as she is, moving them a few metres, while Jessica slowly pulls the chicken cage behind a tractor. Rose acts like she's done it countless times, because she has. She says it's fun.

Robert Pasuta takes a break one hot afternoon in the air-conditioned cottage, but only because he's sitting for an interview. He holds Beau, while Rose and Abigail nap on couches.

The room boasts a working keg tap, but Pasuta hasn't pulled on it today - not yet, anyway, not with a couple of hundred acres of soybean crops yet to spray, if the wind isn't blowing too hard.

He still works his land growing corn, soybeans, and winter wheat. It's not a job, he says, it's life.

Some nights when he's in the cottage alone, he thinks, reads, or watches TV. He's been following the tragedy of the Russian war on Ukraine. Sometimes he gets choked up, thinking about the family's roots, and loss.

Is he proud that Ben and Jessica are continuing the farm tradition?

It depends on the day," he says, and laughs. I think what they are doing is the right thing, and the right way to go, based on the fact that you either go big, or find a niche market, which they have found, and the internet, social media, creates awareness. It wouldn't work without it."

Growing Broke customers come from the far reaches of Hamilton and the GTA. After ordering online, they drive to the farm and walk into the store to pick up their prepared order, on the honour system.

When they make that pilgrimage, and pull their car off Campbellville Road, heading up the long unfinished Pasuta driveway, they feel and hear the gravel crunching under the tires.

Slow down/Free range farm kids at play" reads a sign. The gravel, the leisurely pace; you feel transported to another time, perhaps when you visited a farm long ago, or when you rode with your mom and dad up your grandparents' dirt laneway.

The old days are not coming back, and the land continues to shrink. Some things abide, though, so long as soil remains along with those who feel a calling to work it.

It's the smell in spring, when you open up the ground again from winter, and see the crop come out of nowhere," says Pasuta, describing the allure.

It's that reward. It's just: I did that. I did that with my own hands."

Jon Wells is a feature writer at The Spectator. jwells@thespec.com