BALZAC, Alta.- James Jones paid $1,500 for his quarter-section homestead near Calgary in 1903.
Included in the deal were four loads of hay and a cook stove.
Today, that same quarter, located less than 15 minutes northeast of the Calgary city limits, is farmed by the fourth generation of the Jones family. To mark its centennial, the family is celebrating at a reunion this summer with 300 direct descendants of James and Alice Jones.
The couple emigrated from England and settled at Elkhorn, Man., in 1884. Eventually 10 children were born, but after a teenaged son died in a blizzard, they moved to the Alberta district of the Northwest Territories. They heard the climate was more forgiving, with its frequent chinook winds warming the open ranges.
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By 1905, the family registered its first purebred cattle with the Canadian Hereford Association and has remained loyal to the breed.
At its height, Jones Hereford Ranches grew to about 800 cows and horses on six sections of land at Balzac and Priddis, south of Calgary.
James didn’t want too many homesteaders settling there because he wanted the free range to stay open. He lied to settlers passing through, telling them the land was poor.
However, neighbours moved in anyway and started putting up fences.
” It wasn’t to keep their cattle in, it was to keep the Jones’ cattle out,” said his great-grandson Allen Jones, who now runs the place with wife, Shanna, and mother, Gladys.
Today, the ranch consists of 150 purebred Hereford cows and a commercial operation. The Joneses crop more than 3,000 acres of land, much of it bought before the First World War.
James’s grandsons Dwaine and Doug split the operation in 1977. Doug died in a farm accident in 1978 and Dwaine died in 1983.
Doug’s widow Joanne eventually married a Jones cousin and fellow Hereford breeder, Jim Hole. Dwaine’s wife, Gladys, and their three children carried on with the Balzac ranch.
“It’s the cattle that kept the family together,” said Susan Groeneveld, Allen’s sister.
Over the years, the Jones name gained an international reputation for producing and selling quality Hereford cattle.
“Herefords took us around the world,” Gladys said.
She and Dwaine traveled to Mexico, France, Great Britain and Australia to view and judge cattle. They were among the first Canadians to ship Herefords back to England.
Purebreds remain the base of the Jones operation. Allen’s grandfather, Charles Jones, claimed the cattle would get them through any crisis.
“Grandpa Charlie said if you ever get into trouble or worry about the future, just grab an old Hereford cow by the tail and she’ll pull you through.”
Today the biggest threat to the farm family is high priced land and encroaching urban development.
“Survival physically was maybe a tougher thing and the work was a lot harder, but I think nowadays surviving financially is a lot harder,” Allen said.
His uncle Ronnie Jones agreed.
“You could buy land and it didn’t take that many years before it was paid off. Everything was cheaper.”
In this area, a quarter section sells for $500,000, making expansion nearly impossible as urban sprawl pressures century-old farms to sell out for country residences.
Their costs of production on the cropland and the cattle have soared, but in Allen’s opinion, the Hereford cows pay for themselves because they can be maintained for about $1 a day.
The pressures do not end there.
Besides escalating costs and tighter margins, they have to watch the trends within the packing and retail industries so that they provide the kind of beef consumers want from one year to the next.
Allen and his family believe the farm will be there for the next generation.
“If you love what you do, it doesn’t matter what business you are in, you will find a way to make it fit. If you don’t love what you do, you’ll say to hell with it and try something else.”
