TISDALE, Sask. — Fay Boxall’s role in child care is as essential as running the machines and watching the markets on this family farm.
She has always supported the farm from home, and now, as a grandmother, she regularly cares for two preschoolers and prepares meals.
“It allows us to physically farm,” said the children’s father, Neil Anderson.
He, his wife Lia Boxall and her parents Fay and Jim Boxall, are partners in Sylvan Terra Farms, seeding 3,000 acres of wheat, barley, alfalfa and peas.
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“It’s really a family commitment,” Neil said.
“For us, the family allows us to be involved together.”
A farm transfer is already under way on the incorporated farm that Jim began operating in 1964. Half the operation is in the hands of Neil and Lia. The couple, in their mid-30s, cleared land this year for a new home just a few kilometres from Lia’s parents’ home.
Jim does less physical and management work each year and looks forward to spending more time down south with Fay during the winter.
“I golf and am aspiring to be better,” he joked.
They have consulted estate planning experts, keep their family apprised of their plans, and are leaving room should their four other adult children want to farm.
Both Lia and Neil have off-farm jobs for additional income, but also for a professional challenge. Neil does environmental consulting about groundwater and soil contamination and Lia takes unpaid leave from her nursing job during spring seeding.
Jim, 59, also works as a pharmacist at a drug store in the winter and farms in the growing season. Like Lia and Neil, Jim and Fay were also supported by family and a hired hand. Until 1996, they farmed with Jim’s brother, who now farms with his sons.
That partnership allowed the older couple time away and the new arrangement allows him hobbies like building wooden rocking horses.
Jim conceded it is stressful getting back up to speed each fall on the latest in pharmacy, bookkeeping and new computer programs.
“I like to do things right and if not, I’m not very happy.”
After university, Jim worked as a pharmacist for more than a year before getting bored and returning to the farm.
Lia also loves the land and returned after living in Calgary and Saskatoon. She always helped where needed, but didn’t find farming an easy or common choice for women.
“When I graduated from high school, hardly any women were involved,” she said.
“It was not a career choice readily accepted.”
Originally from Ontario, Neil brings to the farm a fresh perspective, viewing the farm like a private business. That is reflected in his interactions with suppliers and buyers.
Neil carefully reviews markets and looks for opportunities for better prices through contract growing and forward sales. The family’s other strategies include keeping close tabs on the costs of production and avoiding a large debt load.
The family discusses the budget and pencils in options based on what looks like the best each year.
“We try not to farm last year’s crop,” Neil said.
Through seed growers, they aggressively seek out growing contracts, where they have the opportunity to receive a guaranteed price and a premium for what they grow.
These choices mean extra work in record keeping for the family. They must keep numerous records on their three-year alfalfa rotations, on seeding, spraying, fertilizer and “anything that goes on the land.”
Meetings are called to divvy up tasks and projects, and to review options.
“Decisions have to be made, not necessarily what we want to do but what’s best for the farm,” Neil said.
Lia said communication is a key to their success as a family-run business.
Through the years, off-farm income has afforded the family investment opportunities beyond the farm, in areas like producer cars, hog barns and the dehydration plant down their dusty grid road.
“To stay in farming, we have to push the envelope and find ways of maintaining our integrity as a farming unit,” Neil said. “We do it because we really love farming.”
The dehy plant provides a local market for their alfalfa crop, which in turn is good for the soil, Neil said.
Jim, a director with Tisdale Alfalfa Dehydrating Ltd., said it has experienced some recent weak years.
It, like his own family farm, has responded by diversifying into investments in countertop and plastic businesses in Saskatoon.
Prices are low for alfalfa pellets, which cannot compete with subsidized European crops, he said.
“The quality of our product is better than in Europe, but they always want to talk price.”
Jim said significant overproduction has been lessened by the closure and consolidation of several similar facilities.
In hogs, the Andersons are hopeful a recent partnership with Quadra and the Premium Brands hog slaughter plant in Red Deer will improve the fortunes of the local 600-sow barn, hit hard by a depressed Asian marketplace. They invested because they saw it as a place to sell feed grain locally.
“You have to look at what’s going on in the community,” Neil said.
“Agriculture will always be a dynamic profession so we have to keep up with it.”
There has been a mix of good and bad years in farming, but Jim said people have to be committed for the long term.
“If you have a farm and care about it, you stay with it,” said Jim, whose grandparents settled here in 1904. The Boxalls still farm part of Henry and Mary’s original homestead.
Facing into the chill of a cold spring wind, Jim prophesied gloomily about the demise of family farms and its impact on rural communities.
“One day, the whole of Saskatchewan will end up being farmed by one guy,” he said.
He is pleasantly surprised that Lia will steer the farm through another generation for the Boxalls. Citing her two science degrees and Neil’s masters degree in hydrogeology, Jim knows they had plenty of other job options. Instead, they chose a future here in agriculture.
