Antique tractors still churn up dirt around Sam Loghrin’s Hastings County farmland. The price and quality of re-buildable antique equipment keeps his farm and life going. Loghrin laments the change in quality and design of much new farm equipment as it cannot be used, broken and rebuilt over and over as tractors and equipment once were designed to be.
A transplant from Stratford, Ont., Sam Loghrin found himself planted on a plot of farmland he and his wife bought in Hastings County in 1982. After graduating from University of Guelph with an engineering degree, Loghrin returned home and worked in Stratford doing construction.
A few years later, Loghrin and his wife moved up to Thunder Bay but decided to settle on a small plot of land just outside of Tweed, Ont. while travelling the back roads between Ottawa and Stratford. Tired with the pace of life in his chosen industry, Logrhin found himself drained and unfulfilled with what he called the everyday rat race and chose to relocate to the property he and his wife reside on now.
In the summer of 1982 faced with a wooded lot 40 minutes north of Belleville off of Highway 37 the pair started to clear their land into what became a woodlot and farm producing vegetables, poultry and meat.
Never intending to become a major producer. Loghrin chose to sell his vegetables locally and to the neighbors. He sells potatoes, still his largest crop, beets, carrots, tomatoes and others from a small farm stand and at local markets. Logrhin also sells meat; raising and selling beef and eggs and poultry. Recently on account of market changes and massive farming operations business has calmed down a lot for Loghrin.