Charlottetown to Vancouver, this couple is travelling across Canada to start a conversation about farming

If you were travelling Highway 13 on Thursday, Aug. 2, you might have seen something fairly common on an Alberta highway, a Massey Ferguson tractor heading west.
What isn’t common is a tractor pulling a hay trailer that has a wooden cabin built on it, complete with deck, flower boxes and a patio set.
The method of transportation, indeed the trip itself, is the project and brainchild of John Varty.

Varty says he has a vested interest in agriculture, especially Canadian agriculture, because his family are seventh-generation farmers.
Varty was working in India with farmers, and saw that nation’s lack of respect for and the exploitation of small, family farms was driving farmers there to suicide.
Seeing that crisis, Varty said he wanted to bring national attention to the state and condition of farming in Canada, bring more awareness of the roles farmers play to those who live in urban areas, and also document the state of the family farm in Canada.
Varty has a Ph.D. in History from Queen’s University, and he realized that the higher he rose in academia, and the more acclaim his writing achieved, probably also meant the fewer people he was actually reaching.

He came up with the idea of a cross-Canada trip interviewing farmers, politicians, rural and city residents, and people involved in the food industry, hoping to put together a documentary about the current state of agriculture and farming.
Most of all though, he wants to really start the conversation, and get people talking about farming.