Help Hoe Hay Harvest for Victory. Much like the Soldiers of the Soil in WWI, “The Farm Commando Brigade of the Ontario Farm Service Force is composed of all those men and women who offer their services to those engaged in producing and processing food (farmers and canners). The work they offer to do starts from early spring seeding (tractor, force drawn or hand sown) through hoeing, haying, harvesting, canning, threshing, silo filing, etc.”

During WWII my father was too young to enlist so he joined the Farm Commando Brigade of the Ontario Farm Service Force and worked on a farm in southern Ontario, Canada. He was born and raised in the city of Toronto, but he really came of age on the farm. The lessons he learned about farmers, large animals, raising crops from the soil, and the farming community stayed with him his entire life. More importantly, he learned about hard, physical labor – the value of honest toil – and he passed these on to his children. I carry these with me today, long after his service on the farm ended.