Landowner Leader Profiles

Ron Casier joined the Landowner Leaders program in February 2015. However, his efforts to practice good land stewardship on his 50-acre property near St. Thomas in Elgin County started many years ago. In his now 20-acre woodland, Ron provides habitat for woodpeckers by simply leaving a variety of dead standing trees (snags) and trees in declining health as is. He leaves all of the dead ash, beech and hickory trees to allow the woodpecker population to feed on the insects affecting these tree species.

My wife Marilyn and I were both raised on farms in southern Huron County. After lengthy teaching careers in Kent County, we decided to re-establish our rural roots and in 2006 purchased a 58-acre property in Dawn Euphemia Township, near Florence in southern Lambton County. It was named “Mulberry Meadows”! The property has 40 acres of fairly young Carolinian woodlands straddling Fansher Creek, near the junction with the Sydenham River.

From starting to farm in the early 80's and recognizing that I could not farm in Essex County without biology alongside, I began the yearly addition of landscape features (i.e. protection of forest, tree lines to hedgerows, wetlands, pollinator park, prairie grasslands, hibernacula, no-till farming, cover crops, the identification of existing species at risk, etc.)

Robert and Eleanor Ward have been farming since the 1950's and have been organic farmers since the 1970's. Their property has 72 acres devoted to raising their organic grass fed cattle and the remaining acreage is comprised of Carolinian Forest and wetlands. The 84 acre property is located south of St. Thomas near Union.