Even the downsides of Noah MacMurchy’s summer job as a farmhand at the Pacific National Exhibition can’t really be considered as such, mostly because he gets to work with animals.
MacMurchy is 16 years old and is one of the many city kids who have the opportunity to experience the farm life of feeding, handling and cleaning creatures while educating people who come through the PNE’s livestock barn. Sure, some parts of the job aren’t too great such as making sure the pigs, who are naturally drawn to stink and muck, are kept clean. “The pigs are the hard part,” MacMurchy said with a grin. “They run around and knock you over, especially the mom.” But he added there’s no bad days when working with animals.
The Farm Country barn is staffed with Discovery Barn hosts, who guide families through a food and production maze to educate them about food origins; an agriculture crew of about 40 who tend to all the barn duties; about eight farmhands such as MacMurchy, identifiable by striped overalls; and other staff such as the Country Store vendors.
And they all took umbrage to long-time PNE media and public relations ruler Laura Ballance when she inadvertently caused a fuss when she was new to the fair during the early 1990s.
“A reporter had asked me — because they wanted to do a profile on jobs — about the best job, worst job, and maybe the top five jobs,” recalled Ballance. “So I said the best job would be a prize home vendor because those young people make base salary plus commission, so they earn the most… So I thought, well, sweeping up after animals, that’s probably the worst job and I arbitrarily put them at both ends of the spectrum. And the next day, I heard from all of these guys,” she said nodding in MacMurchy’s direction, “and I heard from Agriculture.”
The only time Ballance said she heard from the agriculture world even more was when the media team sent out a photograph of a “grand champion bull” when it was actually a steer.
“I realized how agriculturally-based British Columbia was when about 10,000 people called to claim we didn’t know the difference between a bull and a steer and it was clearly evident in that photo,” she said, laughing. “I must have said, ‘I know, I’m sorry,’ about 500 times!”
Hastings Park has been home to the PNE since 1910, when it was billed as the Industrial Exhibition as a showcase for British Columbia’s agricultural industry. While the fair, and people’s expectations, have long-since changed, the PNE still considers agricultural education to be a large part of its role, Ballance added.
“I think some people think of it as an old-fashioned petting zoo, which it isn’t. The PNE has an opportunity and obligation to continue to bridge that gap between urban and rural, as both are such big parts of our province.”
Interactions with people are never boring, said both MacMurchy and Farm Country agriculture coordinator Carrie Helter, who happens to own many of the animals on display.
“How old is the animal? That’s the number one question,” said MacMurchy, who has volunteered at New Westminster’s Queen’s Park Petting Zoo since he was 10. Added Helter: “A long time ago, one person said, ‘I’m so sad!’ They were asked why and they said, ‘The ducks have a pond but the chicks don’t, it’s so unfair!’ OK, let’s go back a bit — chicks don’t swim, and neither do chickens.”
And then there’s educating the deprived kids who evidently never saw a book about farm animals or who don’t know chocolate milk doesn’t actually come from brown cows. Or, even, being able to tell the difference between a horse and a cow.
“We meet a lot of different people from a lot of different walks of life,” said Helter. “But in the end, they have the same curiosity about the animals.”
