John Oliver MacKenzie is generally credited with being the first pioneer of commercial potato growing in the Alliston area, a business that just grew and grew until Alliston has today become known as the Ontario potato capital.

It wasn't very long before other farmers followed his lead if they were fortunate enough to own the perfect sandy loam that is so plentiful in this part of Simcoe County. What a productive crop it has become.

Roderick MacKenzie and his wife were Scottish farmers in Mono Township in the old days and like most pioneers they were probably in mixed farming, growing oats, barley and wheat and if the land was suitable, probably a few potatoes for their own use.

Old records show that he was once a Justice of the Peace in Dufferin County. The MacKenzies raised several sons, John, Kenneth, Robert and George. No doubt the lads were accustomed to the hard manual labour from dawn till dusk on the old pioneer farm. There was land to work, stones to pick, manure to spread, crops to sow and harvest and thresh, but before they could get to the field work there were cows to milk and pigs and cattle and horses and poultry to care for. It was all a very labour intensive lifestyle down on the farm. In the old days, that's the way we were then.

Young John O. must have been particularly interested in potatoes for some reason. Perhaps he had read about the ancient Inca people who developed the tuber into their main staple food thousands of years ago. He might have known how the Irish had eventually made it their staple food too, until a sudden blight killed their crops overnight and causing that country's terrible potato famine in the 1800s.

Certainly, the lad must have had a dream of having his own potato farm and when both parents died in their 60s, he went seeking a sandy loam farm that would suit his needs. About 1918, just after the First World War, he found what he was looking for and history was about to be made.

The young farmer purchased a farm from George Wilson at Lot 7, Concession 14, just east of the little town of Alliston. No doubt he planted the traditional grain and hay crops for his cattle and hogs. Early in the spring he prepared 50 acres of deep worked seed bed and of course, all the farm neighbours were watching to see what he might plant there.

They were somewhere between shocked and disgusted when he planted all that 50 acres of good ground in potatoes. They were pretty sure he was crazy and Mr. Wilson said, "Well, that young fella doesn't know what he's doing and no doubt, I'll have the farm back before the year's out. Nobody plants that many taters." He couldn't have been more wrong.

John O. was a young man of deep Christian faith, like so many of the great men of bygone years. No doubt he prayed a lot that spring, that the Good Lord would bless his crops if he followed his own convictions when all around him thought he was crazy. In spite of his faith, even he must have been surprised when he harvested a bumper crop and then surprised again when the price of spuds climbed to an all-time high. No doubt he praised the Lord again and again.

Well, I guess the neighbours had to eat their words when the young potato man paid off his farm in only two years and probably had enough cash to buy some of the good Angus cattle and Yorkshire hog breeding stock to start his herds.

The next season, his brothers, Robert and Kenneth came to help him and learn the business and then bought their own potato land - Kenneth in Essa Township and Robert bought the old Kindler farm at Lot 10 Concession 14 in Tecumseth Township.

Generation after generation the MacKenzie family would be known as great potato growers as they added farm after farm of that wonderful sandy loam to their production acreage.

As a young man, accustomed to the rigorous life on the farm, John O. was physically fit and he played on the Elmgrove field lacrosse team. The sport was so rugged among those young work-hardened farmers that he recalled counting 68 cuts and bruises all over his body after one game.

There was, however, very little time for recreation as his farm production expanded. Even after the "taters" were harvested they had to be hauled by horse and wagon to the railway siding in Alliston so they could be sold in Toronto. At one time he had 16 heavy draft horses for farm work.

There was an advantage if the farmer could store the crop for winter sales when prices were higher. Farmers usually stored them in part of the barn where livestock kept the building warm but sometimes they froze. Some farmers buried them in an underground pit which had its' own problems so MacKenzie built a concrete, underground storage basement for 10,000 bags of potatoes under his machinery shed.

Even there he sometimes maintained a fire in a woodstove to prevent freezing. At first, all those tons of spuds had to be hoisted out by hand with a block and tackle until someone invented an elevator to carry them up to the waiting wagons. Farmers came from miles around to see this wonderful, innovative way of storing and handling the crop.

When farmers see something new that works well they like to take advantage of it. Pretty soon Nicol Wilson at the next farm planted his fields in potatoes too, as did John's brothers Robert and Kenneth and also J.T. Cassin, Milton Murphy, Robert English, George Drennan and eventually, even my father, J. Elmer Braden on the farm west of Alliston. After that, many other farmers jumped on the bandwagon until today when Alliston is the Ontario potato capital.

John O. Mackenzie the great potato pioneer and innovator was a busy man but he refused to work on Sunday and he was never heard to take the Lord's name in vain or to consume alcohol. He was a good father and his little son Bill spent a lot of hours riding with his Dad on the old International, steel wheel 10/20 tractor. Rocked to sleep to the steady "put put put" of the old engine, Billy slept soundly curled up at the feet of his father.

Raising the wee boy as a single father, he did his best but sometimes the meals he cooked were only potatoes so as soon as possible he hired a wonderful woman named Winifred Herron as a housekeeper. She and her daughter lived at the farm for many years and she was loved as a mother by the growing boy.

They made sure that he was at Sunday school every Sunday morning, remembering the Biblical words about raising the children as found in Deuteronomy Ch.11 v. 19 which talks about the Holy Words of God, telling us to..."Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up."

Throughout the years, great potato men found ways to increase the crops dramatically and more and more potato farmers became members of the 500 bushel club. Soon they far exceeded 500 as modern fertilizers and irrigation and new varieties were added to the mix.

Pretty soon J.O. MacKenzie parked the old one row planter and sold his fine horses. With the arrival of the mechanical potato picker, it was no longer necessary to close the local school to hire the children for 17 cents per day to pick up the "taddies." New pesticides finally put an end to the Colorado potato beetle and farms grew bigger and bigger.

John O. got old all too soon as busy men do and no doubt he shook his head and said, "Where did the years go, so fast?." Finally, he took a little recreation time for himself, playing occasional games of pool with his old friends and neighbours on Saturday night at Jack Robison's pool room in town.

Bill said, "They were not good players but they sure enjoyed it anyway." One by one the old potato buyers like Joe Footi were replaced by new ones and new generations of modern agriculturalists worked the good soil. The oldtimers may have spent a little time on the verandah rocking chair but pretty soon they couldn't resist going into the fields or storages just to check things out.

When John Oliver MacKenzie was 76 years old he passed away on Aug. 14 1961 and a long line of mourners followed him to the cemetery and bowed in silent prayer as his body was committed to the sandy loam that he knew so well.

Some of his original potato implements were donated to Alliston's Boyne Museum by his beloved son, Bill MacKenzie. Looking at his portrait in the Agricultural Hall of Fame in the Simcoe County Museum, one sees the face of a great farmer.

*With information supplied by Bill MacKenzie.

For more stories about our yesteryears see next Tuesday's edition of The Alliston Herald. The 2008 stories are currently being published as a book entitled The Way We Were Then, Book 1, which will be available very soon.