A tradition thousands of Ottawa families share almost didn’t survive.

You probably know Millers Farm, south of Manotick on Rideau Valley Drive.

The wagon rides. The pumpkins. The market stand that’s been a fall tradition for families across this region for decades.

What you might not know is what it just cost them to stay open.

Here’s how a farm like that actually works. It doesn’t pay its own bills. Almost none of them do anymore. So the Miller family built up other work, snow clearing, excavating, trucking, and used it to carry the farm.

That’s not a loophole. That’s how you keep a tradition alive when produce alone doesn’t add up.

I do the same thing in my own business. You let the part that earns carry the part that matters. Any business owner gets it in about four seconds.

City Hall didn’t.

In November, council voted 19 to 6 to reject a minor zoning change that would have let the family keep those businesses on fewer than 10 acres of a 480-acre farm, on the poorest ground they’ve got. The worry was that it might set a precedent. So an 81-year-old farmer got told the thing keeping his farm alive had to go.

There’s some good news here, and I want to be fair and say it plainly. After going to mediation, it looks like the two sides have reached an agreement. Millers should be okay.

But look at what it cost to get there. More than $300,000. Years of consultants, applications, and lawyers, all to defend work that had been running quietly for over a decade and never hurt anyone. One councillor I respect said there’s been “a lot of water in everyone’s wine.” Fair enough. It still never should have come to this.

A family should not have to spend $300,000 and years of their life fighting the city for the right to keep a farm open. Even though this ended well, the process itself was the punishment. And every other farm family in this region is watching, learning that if the city comes for you, just surviving it can cost you everything.

The fear underneath all of it is simple. Push a farm hard enough and eventually it sells. Not to another farmer, most can’t afford it, but to whoever can. Maybe someone with no interest in wagon rides or pumpkins, just cash crops or a line on a balance sheet.

That’s not where Millers is today. Let’s make sure it never is.

If you want to help right now, go support the farm. Visit this season, buy your produce there, bring your kids. Millers earned it. And remember what it took, because the next family the city leans on might not have the fight in them.

I need your help to get the word out.

If you can, chip in and help us reach more people like you: Donate

If you’ve got time instead of dollars, sign up here. We need doors knocked, signs put up, and neighbours talked to.

Either way, we need you.

We’ve got a lot of work to do.

Ottawa deserves better.

Alex