As we are all aware, there is an ongoing battle on the Saanich Peninsula with the residents in subdivisions
and the farmers on the Peninsula. This is nothing new. Over the years, the farmers have done one thing: that is to provide “us”, the residents of the Saanich Peninsula with food, fresh vegetables, milk and yes, compost for our vegetable and flower gardens.
How do the residents repay the farmers? They get upset over the occasional odour that may come from their farms and try and shut them down. At one point in time, there were over 100 dairy farms. Now there are two. There were small family vegetable, fruit and berry farms. Now, not many are left. When you can’t afford to feed your family or there is no food in the grocery stores, you will be saying “Where have all the farmers gone?” Be careful what you wish for.
Take a trip down memory lane back 100 years, long before there was a Tanner Ridge, Island View, Oldfield, Keating and the Saanichton areas on the Peninsula. Most of this area was one of two types of property – agricultural or First Nations and I know that the home I live in was not here then.
To the people in the Tanner Ridge area that are complaining, you should take a step back and look at where you are now living.
Most of, if not all the area, at one time was orchards of fruit trees and berry farms. How do you justify in your minds building homes on what once was prime agricultural land?
You are no different than the people that move close to the airports then start complaining about the noise from the airplanes.
We all have to try and live together. Watch the TV and see all the trouble and violence in the other areas of the world and be thankful that you do not live there. You have the freedom to move if you do not like where you are living or being told how to live.
Bill Walters
Central Saanich