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magazine / so07
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September/October 2007 issue |
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FEATURE
Vineland
Wagonloads of fruit are still harvested from farms around Leamington, Ont.,
but increasingly, producers are covering their fields with greenhouses
to produce perfect, profitable tomatoes
By Jodi Di Menna with photography by Vincenzo Pietropaolo
It doesn't take long to notice a pattern in the landscape along
the Lake Erie shore when you drive along old Highway 18 between
Leamington and Kingsville in southern Ontario. Every few hundred
metres, between the tomato fields and the million-dollar lakefront mansions,
clusters of greenhouses glint in the sun. Some date back 40 to
50 years, their peeling white wooden frames holding murky panes.
Many others have sprung up more recently, their silver steel frames
stretching back from the road over the length of several fields.
I've driven this route a thousand times. These are the same promising
fields of black soil my Italian grandparents immigrated to in the
late 1940s, the same small community I couldn't wait to leave as a
teenager. But even as a restless and rebellious 18-year-old a decade ago,
I felt the buzz of something big happening in Leamington, a farming
town of almost 30,000 southeast of Windsor.
Enormous greenhouse complexes appeared along every highway heading
out of town in the 1990s, and money seemed to grow on vines. The
industry was so lucrative, it appeared invulnerable. Kids of greenhouse
owners showed up at high school driving new Jeeps, and cathedralesque
homes went up next to yesteryear's modest wooden farmhouses.
For the rest of this story, visit your local newsstand or go to our store to buy this issue.
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