William McCurdy
Born in 1937 in Old Barns, Bill McCurdy attended local schools, and other than a short stint in construction and doing TB testing, has been a dairy farmer ever since, first with his father and then his sons.
From the time Bill took over the home farm, now known as Bidalosy Farm Limited, in the 1950s, he has always been looking for new and better ways to do things. Bill has exemplified leadership in the local farming community by adopting new ideas, including using new varieties of forages, harvesting forages as haylage, growing corn and harvesting corn silage and later high moisture ear corn, feeding Total Mixed Rations, using free stall barns, and adopting no-till cropping practices. All these ideas are considered common place today but many of them were close to revolutionary at the time Bill introduced them on his farm. In fact, the farmers of the day when Bill began farming often questioned what he was doing.
Bill has been very active in farm organizations. He has been director of Scotsburn Co-operative Services Ltd. and the Nova Scotia Dairy Commission. He represented Nova Scotia on the Canadian Supply Management Committee, was director and president of Nova Scotia Milk Producers Association, director of East Coast Commodities, director of Canadian Soil Conservation Council and active in the Central Nova Soil and Crop Association and Canadian Forage Council.
Bill has held many leadership positions in the local and county Federations of Agriculture. He was a member of Nova Scotia Federation Committee that reviewed the NSFA and recommended the structure that was adopted in 1987 and under which it operates today.
Bill is also a community minded person and has held many leadership positions in the Old Barns United Church over the years, including being a member of the choir for over 50 years. He is a founding member of the Cobequid Fire Brigade and served on the board of the Colchester Regional Hospital Foundation as well as the Cobequid Salmon Association and the Clifton Acres Investment Co-operative, a senior’s housing facility in the community.
Bill’s greatest contribution has been his willingness to share his abilities. While Bill had always dabbled in custom work, this took on a whole new significance through the 1980s and early 1990s. The fact that you could get someone to fill your silo with haylage, and plant and harvest your corn, meant that many farms were able to change their feeding and cropping systems and gain efficiency faster by making use of Bill’s equipment.
Whether it is singing in the Old Barns Church Choir, adapting a no-till corn planter, or championing or challenging an idea at a farm meeting, Bill has always found ways to better himself, his farm and his community.
Bill is married to the former Sybil Patterson and together they raised four children, Lori, David, Andrew and Tim.
Nominated by the Scotsburn Co-operative Services Ltd. to acknowledge his lifetime contribution to agriculture and the rural community, William D. McCurdy is indeed a worthy inductee into the Atlantic Agricultural Hall of Fame.