Here we are in gracefield, quebec!
-[cheering & applauding] -yes!
Woohoo!
In the heart of the gatineau valley,
Among the gatineau hills, this area-
I've been before- I want to say I love it.
But I don't want to move too fast.
Maybe we should take our time and
"gatineau" each other better.
[laughing]
Agriculture has been the backbone and the
Livelihood for folks here in gracefield.
But, the terrain is not the friendliest.
Like, between the streams, and the rocks,
And the lakes, and the hills, you're farming...
Between the streams, and the rocks,
And the lakes, and the hills.
[laughing]
There were decades where across this country,
Small, family-run farms were being bought out by big ag,
Big agriculture, right?
Corporate profit -driven companies.
But did they come into gracefield and
Buy out the family farms? No. Why not?
They didn't want to. It's too hard to farm here.
[laughing]
Can you imagine one of their big, huge,
Million-dollar combine threshers in your fields?
That'd be like a roomba trying to
Vacuum the staircase.
[laughing]
When you go up in a small town in newfoundland,
You see that people have a sense of humour
About hard times.
Check, check.
I turned that into a career, and hit the road.
[mc] mr. Jonny harris!
Now I'm on a mission to find the funny in the places
You'd least expect it,
Canada's struggling small towns...
Towns that are against the ropes, but hanging in there.
Still laughing in the face of adversity.
This is gracefield, quebec.
♪
Gracefield was doing small scale farming
Before it was cool. Here, it was always cool.
But it was always hard. It was always tricky here.
At least one good thing is you'll never get the
Cranky old timers giving you a speech.
Cranky old timers of gracefield sound
A bit different, right? They're like,
"back in my day, farming around here was so hard...
That I know what you're going through.
Hang in there."
[laughing]
♪
I talked to a guy who has managed to
Put down deep roots here.
He's a fourth-generation farmer of gracefield-
Rick brown.
[cheering & applauding]
He talked a lot about the challenges that are
Brought on by the terrain here.
We're farming in between the hills, the rivers, the lakes.
It almost seems like you would just have to
Sort of fit your crops where you could.
Well, that's about it.
I think his attitude is, well, of course,
You're going to encounter ups and downs farming
On the gatineau hills. They're hills.
[laughing]
And the ground changes so drastically.
If this fields were- if they were ploughed,
You'd see the sand colour, the grey clay,
And then the black of the earth.
It's a canvas painting- it's beautiful, it's beautiful.
-But random for growing. -It's tricky.
It's not just one field of clay or one field of sand.
It varies.
It's not great consistency for growing the crops.
And he said you can see it when the crops grow.
They'll grow at different lengths,
And some soil is better than others.
It won't grow at all in some places.
The whole thing sounds a bit like
When I tried to grow a beard.
[laughing]
And I had patches of brown and patches of gray.
There was patches that were longer than-
And, and patches that didn't grow at all.
But again, like he says, "beautiful."
[laughing]
Rick said, you know, going back generations,
People always worked extra jobs to bring in cash.
My wife and I commuted for 37 years, day and night,
In ottawa, with a small farm.
And when we were working in the city, and commuting,
We're still getting up at 3 o'clock in the morning,
Do a walk around, drive around, check,
Check to make sure everything was good with the cattle.
He said one winter night he was up four times
Through the night to go out to the barn.
He said the wind chill was minus 52.
And he had to keep going to the barn to check on the cows
To make sure they weren't calving.
If the calves were born in that temperature,
You'd have to bring them into the basement and
Keep them warm.
Fortunately, at that time, we didn't have any,
But that's what we've done in the past.
I've been kept awake all night by my calves.
I think it's because I did too many of these exercises.
[laughing]
Rick said his family has always worked extra jobs
To bring in cash.
Back in the day, in his father's day,
In his grandfather's day, it was logging.
Every farm has a good supply of timber
On their, on their land.
So, they would harvest the forest and,
A lot of that was done during the winter months.
Farmers would cut down the pine and the spruce,
And drag them by tractor or, back in the day,
By horse teams to the gatineau river.
And I've seen pictures of that river just
Absolutely filled with logs,
Like, you can't see any water.
I got a feeling if you had a buddy on the
Other side of the river, you could send him
A case of beer across the top of the logs,
Like the rollers, like at the beer store.
-"zh!" [whooshing] -[laughing]
A lot of things have changed over the years.
Working on the farm here today,
Most farmers are working...
Two, maybe three jobs off the farm.
He said, you know, a lot of these hardships with farming
Is why sometimes kids aren't as interested anymore
In taking over the family farm.
It's not an occupation, it's a vocation.
There's not too many knocking on the door,
Saying, "I want to do your job."
-Yeah, I bet. -[laughing]
He said that's one of the reasons that farmers
Genuinely are getting older in this area now.
The average age of a farmer now is
55 years old. I'm 65.
But you know what? What the hell?
If you consider the terrain in this area,
Farmers were always over the hill.
[laughing]
♪
We were driving around, he was pointing out
Different things around town.
This is where I went to school.
It was in this one-room schoolhouse.
My parents went to this one-room schoolhouse.
In fact, my grandfather was sitting in there...
-Was hit by lightning. -What?
Yeah, not the schoolhouse.
His grandfather, inside the schoolhouse,
Got struck by lightning.
I don't know why he specifically
Got hit by lightning.
I think he was, he was trying to write with his left hand.
And god was like, "psh!" [thunder]
[laughing]
But of course back then, when you got in trouble
At school, you'd be in twice as much trouble
When you got back home. And so was he.
-He got grounded. -[laughing]
[cheering & applauding]
♪
Next, I went, and I had a chat with a local folklorist,
Who, it seems,
Has become something of a local legend himself.
This guy will get your feet stomping
'til your toes tap out.
Lord of mercy, louis mercier.
[cheering & applauding]
Louis, I understand you're sort of an ambassador of...
French canadian culture in this area.
I learned that from my mum.
When I was young, about five years old,
My mum was peeling potatoes at the table,
And toe dancing.
[singing & tapping] da, ti, ti, li...
I said, "mom, what is that song?"
And she showed me the, the real-
[humming] ca, di, di, la, di, da, da, li, li.
I like that, that song, it's fun, and that's why I...
I feel like it's me.
Louis's expertise is french canadian folklore.
He knows over 100 traditional dances.
I teach them since during 29 years now, I teach.
I'm a teacher of mathematic,
And I do show in the school to make people have fun,
To enjoy life.
Something like 200 songs, endless folktales.
He said these traditions were born out of necessity.
A lot of song talk about...
Drinking, ah...
Being not well about the girl,
Because the religion was so tight on them,
That's the only place they can free them.
That's where all the song talk about those stuff.
Romance, drinking, adventure,
Fantastical stories that the priests wouldn't allow.
They'd be like, "ah, stop it with that french folklore.
Those stories are nonsense. Now where was I?
Right. That's when the burning bush began to talk."
[laughing]
My mother, when she was young, she liked to dance.
And, the priest said no dance, not supposed to dance,
And she have to cross the river,
And have dance with irish people, the other one.
And they have fun all night,
And they come back in the night.
The irish were allowed to do traditional dances,
At least from the waist down, I think.
[laughing]
Toe dancing, louis told me about.
♪ [singing in french]
♪ jonny, I'm so happy to be with, you dear jonny. ♪
♪ maybe you're gonna learn to play with your feet. ♪
It's like complex tapping of just the feet.
And I know it sounds sort of traditional and old-timey,
But actually toe dancing...
Is digital.
[laughing]
Then we were joined by a third performer.
Who's this?
His name is jonny boy.
Yeehoo!
♪ [humming]
Yah-ha!
And jonny dances.
♪ [humming]
When he gets going, it really looks like
The irish sort of step dance.
Like, I thought he was going to be more wooden.
[laughing]
♪ [singing in french]
Oh, my god, we played the spoons there.
♪ [singing in french]
He said back in the logging camps,
They only ate with spoons.
People would play them as instruments,
And we sang an old folk song called,
"j'entends le moulin".
♪ [singing in french continues] ♪
♪
And I tried my best to keep up with louis,
But it sort of speeds up as it goes,
And I was trying to play the spoons,
And I just learned the words.
Like, learned how to say them.
I still don't know what they mean.
[laughing]
♪ [singing in french continues] ♪
♪
-Hey! -Hey! Bravo, jonny!
-[laughing] -very good.
[laughing]
Louis's an excellent teacher, great energy.
When I'm good enough, we're gonna start a band.
We're gonna call it borscht, which I know borscht is
Ukrainian, not french canadian,
But I'm telling you you've never had such tasty
Beats on the spoon.
[laughing]
♪
Okay, I'm gonna butcher this next one.
But I'm not trying to roast anybody,
Just do some light ribbing.
I went over to boucherie o'max,
And I talked to sylvain and nancy.
[cheering & applauding]
It's funny how they came to buy the shop here.
The butchery here went out of business.
They came- they were gonna buy some of the equipment.
This is what I was after.
This is display here. It's hard to move.
-And way too big for... -Exactly.
Some of the equipment was so big,
It wouldn't fit through the door...
So they bought the whole shop.
[laughing]
Sometimes you got to take chances.
Life is short, deli counters are long.
[laughing]
Sylvain, as a butcher, he does both
Farm animals and wild game.
He's the only guy in the province to have
Both of those licenses.
And the way he did it was interesting.
I kind of separate my store in two part.
I've got the part in the back,
We could do wild animal, could be farmers' animal.
All the retails takes place here...
-In front. -All the retail in front.
Yeah, I've got a butcher in front,
And I've got seven butcher in the back.
No cross contamination, right?
Because when he tried to get both licenses,
Agriculture said to him, "no, no, no,
You can only do these two things in separate buildings."
I say no.
They say two location, and therefore,
They kind of have no choice to give me my license.
Which is pretty shrewd.
I wouldn't want to argue with sylvain.
[laughing]
Like, he, he's a butcher.
He'll cut the legs out from under you.
[laughing]
The funny thing is sylvain's background was in computers.
I was the highest rank you could get in computers.
Cio, chief information officer.
I said, "well, how did you learn how to become a butcher?"
The former owner here showed sylvain how to...
Like the basic of butchering.
And then, sylvain would go on youtube and learn.
You can learn anything on youtube.
Exactly, oh, yeah.
That's the way a lot of people learn
A lot of things right now, right?
But it's got to be bit harder when you're
Up to your elbows in animal parts.
Do you know what I mean?
You're watching the video, like...
Oh, what did he say there? What am I supposed to do?
-Oh... -[laughing]
To me, meat is, bring the people together, enjoy.
You want to give them the best,
Like it's my own way of doing it.
And I sell a lot.
They had laid out some of the meat there, and I tried it.
It was delicious.
And some of the sausage I tried.
Sylvain really prides himself on the quality.
He said when he makes sausages...
Typically, what I would do,
I would put about 70 to 80% of meat-
20, 30- 30% of fat only, and that's why we
End up with sausage that's actually tasty.
He said most sausages you'll buy at the store,
It's about 50%.
And the really cheap sausages, well,
You know what's in those, right?
Lips and arseholes.
[laughing]
Although, putting lips and arseholes together,
Talk about making ends meet.
[laughing]
♪
Next, I met a couple from montreal
Who may be new to this area,
But they're getting into the old tradition of
Small-scale farming, from big city grind to
Grinding gracefield garlic, rod and luc.
[cheering & applauding]
For years, they ran a very popular restaurant that
Served some of the most sought-after dishes in
Montreal, including a lot of meat dishes.
We did a shift in our, in our...
Alimentation, in our food.
We decided to become vegan, in fact.
They decided they wanted to leave the city
To become farmers.
Was an old dream of ours when even we met that
We were going to live someday on a farm.
I think every weekend I was grabbing rod to say,
"okay, let's go see this place or that place," you know.
They looked at several properties,
But when they arrived at the place
They have here in gracefield...
As soon as we arrived, I knew I wanted the place.
Luc wasn't as sure until...
There was a horse here.
Memphis was the mistress of the place, you know.
The horse was checking us out to make sure that
We were the right fit.
And she came up, and she came close to me.
And then, memphis put her head on luc's...
Like that, as if the horse was saying,
"please come and rescue me."
That's why they bought the place.
He was convinced by this tired, old horse,
Who didn't even nag.
[laughing]
Of course, we wanted to...
Serve and eat as much as organic, and direct,
And local food as possible.
They're living here in gracefield,
Trying to figure out what they'd like to grow.
And I discovered that garlic,
We have the best product in quebec.
And it's the easiest thing you can grow.
Garlic was part of his signature style,
Part of his signature taste.
Garlic, I can actually plant,
And go away for winter and come back to it.
-Yeah, low maintenance. -Yeah.
It sounds a bit like my online dating bio.
[laughing]
"pretty low maintenance,
Doesn't mind being left alone for a year,
But performs well in a crowded bed."
[laughing]
Rod whipped up some, some garlic dressing
While I was there, simple ingredients:
Garlic, olive oil, canola, lemon juice,
Salt and pepper, and cilantro.
When somebody goes to me, "I don't like cilantro,"
Then I'm going to make this vinaigrette.
-Right? -Yeah.
And then, I'm going to let you try it.
And you're going to go, "oh my god, what is it?"
-Well, do you like it? -[laughing]
Yes, I love it. What's in there?
And then I'm gonna tell you.
This is like a trick our moms do with us
When we're kids, right?
They're like, "oh, you like that, do you?
Well, you'll never guess what's in it."
[laughing]
We are vegan.
Moving to a small town...
With no expectation.
We joined the market, I started cooking.
And people were lining up for it.
Some of the stuff they've brought to the farmers'
Market is so popular, they have a...
A waiting list for cooking lessons out of their home.
There is a waiting list, a year and a half.
People are waiting to take cooking classes
In a small town.
Now, to me, who's going to wait a year and a half
For a cooking class?
Depends how bad you need them, I suppose.
But if you really were desperate, you know...
I mean, I'm just saying you got options.
I don't want to be that guy, but like,
Sylvain became a butcher watching youtube.
[laughing]
[cheering & applauding]
♪
It's been a long time since the horses hauled logs
To the river here,
But they're still a big part of life in gracefield.
When I found out there was a sport called barrel racing,
I fancied my chances.
I figured I could race a barrel even without a horse.
[laughing]
But I got to talk to a young woman
Who not only teaches riding,
She has won several barrel racing championships.
Call her the "reining" champ, sabrina moreau.
[cheering & applauding]
Sabrina said if you win one of these
Barrel racing championships, you get...
A buckle, so like this one.
Oh, wow.
She keeps it in this blue velvet case.
And when I saw it, I realized why you'd keep it in a case.
It's a beautiful belt buckle.
It's way too cool to go on any belt, even my belt,
Which is pretty cool.
It's black on one side, brown on the other and
This part flips around so you can do it-
It's, it's a cool belt, it's a cool belt.
[laughing]
♪
First of all, I guess tell me, what is barrel racing?
So, you have three barrel,
You have to go around each of them,
And then go back to the start line.
And just do it the faster you can.
Barrel racing is a popular sport in gracefield,
And quebec seems to be dominating the sport.
Not only that, more specifically,
The girls of quebec.
-[cheering & applauding] -yeah.
[applauding]
I decided to give it a go.
Sabrina is an excellent coach and trainer.
Slow him down a little.
Yeah, you can slow him down a little.
It will help you to follow more his rhythm.
And there was like ten people,
And anything anybody was doing wrong,
She was monitoring and she would tell you right away.
Perfect, put your hands down, cece.
So, put your shoulder back, and sit down in your saddle.
Oui, parfait.
[speaking french]
At one point, I had- I was holding the reins,
My pinky fingers were outside the reins.
She noticed.
Keep all your fingers in the reins. Yes!
And I was embarrassed, I was like, oh, I don't...
Sometimes I mix up horseback riding and tea sipping.
[laughing]
I wish I could have a life coach like that
Who would just come around with me 24/7,
And just look at me and be like, 'yeah, okay.
Yeah, don't lay your keys there.
You're gonna forget 'em. Yeah, pick 'em up.
Okay, yeah, good.
Tuck in your shirt, tuck in your shirt.
There you go. Peanut butter,
You got some peanut butter right there, see?"
[laughing]
♪
The farming here has always been tough,
As hauling logs to the river is indeed.
The only cutting corners people do around here is
Rounding barrels on horseback at speed.
Garlic's homegrown, make your dressing your own.
Maybe sneak some cilantro inside there.
And you're in for a treat if you're into your meats.
There's a boucherie here that's to die for.
♪
Fields that look like paintings.
Songs that weave a tale.
Like the river weaved its way to the mills,
Life here in gracefield is full of ups and downs,
As are the fields of the rolling gatineau hills.
Thanks for coming out, everybody!
You've been great! Thank you!
[cheering & applauding]
I feel full of love.
He was really funny.
♪
It was real nice. I love the pinky joke.
[laughing]
♪
Jonny, you're welcome home.
You can spoon with me, jigging puppet with me,
And have fun with me anytime.
♪
All the things that jonny said tonight is
The reason why we came here so,
I feel really part of this community now,
That's for sure.
♪
No beef with jonny.
♪