{"id":41,"date":"2020-04-29T20:56:06","date_gmt":"2020-04-29T20:56:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grad.journalism.torontomu.ca\/sabinaseyidova\/?page_id=41"},"modified":"2020-05-06T00:08:05","modified_gmt":"2020-05-06T00:08:05","slug":"sally-shearman-sharon-creek-farm","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/grad.journalism.torontomu.ca\/sabinaseyidova\/sally-shearman-sharon-creek-farm\/","title":{"rendered":"Early Days & Life as a Women Farmer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BORN AND RAISED IN ENGLAND, <\/strong>near a village called Allhallows in Kent, Shearman became acquainted with farming from a young age. Her father, a farmer himself, had a business with his dad. When she was a teenager, 19, her grandmother passed away and left her shares on the farm to her uncle and aunt who weren\u2019t farmers, she says. So, her father decided to sell the farm and come to Canada. He immigrated as a farm labourer as that was the only way to enter the country in the early 1970s. Once Shearman arrived, she began living on a cattle and horse farm. \u201cI thought it was awesome because I could ride, I was a horse rider and enjoyed horses,\u201d she says. This is where Shearman\u2019s journey began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cI always wanted to go into farming,\u201d says Shearman. \u201cI would have liked to take over the family farm. But I actually excelled in school and everybody said that would be a waste of my brainpower and I need to go to university and be an academic.” Shearman ended up completing a bachelor\u2019s degree in French and German and worked a couple of years in advertising production. She later completed a three-year art college diploma in pottery and worked as a potter <\/strong>for eight years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From there, she went into teaching. \u201cI specialized actually in teaching children with dyslexia, severe reading disabilities, and that became my whole focus,\u201d she says. She did it for 25 years. Never forgetting her love for farming, Shearman simultaneously enrolled into University of Guelph to study horticulture and landscape design. With her degree in hand, she bought Sharon Creek Farm<\/em> in 2009 to continue to focus on that. Shearman became interested in growing fruit and after two years of researching and gathering information \u2013\u2013 consulting with other people, doing soil tests, looking to see what would grow \u2013\u2013 she decided what to plant, and her life as a farmer began. But dark times were ahead of her. Soon after she bought the property, her first husband, a professor of medicine, divorced her, after realizing farming was not for him. She was left alone to support herself, her farm and her growing business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n