What to do with items from Junior Farmers’ past? Throwing it out would be a crime. After all, the Junior Farmer program shaped lives and provided opportunities to Ontario’s youth that would never have been available. With many thousands of individuals from 1914 on partaking in Junior Farmer programs, events and competitions, the amount of physical history should be abundant.

Since 1996, a small group of past Junior Farmers have been accumulating the donations of private collections of provincial Junior Farmer items. Letters, magazines, photos, annual reports, speeches, ribbons, booklets, song sheets, tape cassettes, Provincial Director and Executive lists, minutes and newsletters are some of the items that have been collected. This memorabilia is processed and when a collection of similar items is large enough or complete enough, it is sent to the University of Guelph’s Archiving department in the McLaughlin Library for safe keeping.

The archiving of these items took on an additional direction in 2008 with the use of scanning them into electronic format. This allows memorabilia to be viewed from a computer screen without the need of handling the often delicate booklet or photo or viewing items that have already been sent to the University of Guelph. Digitizing also allows the item to be returned upon scanning if the owner does not want to part with it.

Do you have Junior Farmer history sitting in your basement or attic? Please search it out and share it with us