KEEPHILLS, Alta. – The Engelhardts hope to leave their farm just the way they found it.
Provincial conservation farming winners in 1994, Maivis and Delmar, with his brother Glenn and wife Susan, grow forage and rotate crops. They also spread manure on their farmland near Keephills, Alta., and limit spraying.
“I don’t spray just because it’s spraying time. It’s got to justify itself,” said Delmar.
He practises reduced tillage and rotates alfalfa with cereals to enrich the soil with nitrogen.
“When we’re done with it, I’m hoping whoever farms it will find it just as productive or even more so,” said Delmar.
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Glenn also believes in working with nature, planting alfalfa, legumes and maintaining pasture because it’s best suited to this land.
“We don’t own this land, we just live here for 70 years and just use it and it has to be left better than I found it,” he said.
Glenn chose to farm here in 1970 after discovering he could buy 160 acres, a house and buildings for $25,000, the amount he would pay for a house in town. The brothers do not feel they do much different than their neighbours, many of whom also grow forages.
“Everybody has to find their own way and no one can point them the right way,” said Glenn.
“No two farms are alike. What you apply to your farm is not an absolute answer for the farm down the road.”
He credits a high school teacher’s focus on legumes and forage in an agriculture class with piquing his interest in agriculture. He once raised his own hogs from farrow to finish but now buys feeder pigs to raise through the summer and sell off by fall.
That leaves his winters free to travel with Susan and photograph exotic locales like Bali and indulge his interests in stocks, flying, welding and motorcycles. He hopes to buy a small sawmill to help him continue to heat his farm by wood and hot water.
The two couples share the work and the machinery used on their seven quarters but each runs their own operations, with an assortment of animals from chickens to pigs to cattle.
Delmar and Maivis have downsized since their three children moved away to work. Pressure from acreages in the district has made renting or adding land too expensive. Nearby reservation land and four coal plants also leave little room to expand, they say.
They are now raising animals and garden produce for farmgate sales. They have a stable market for their eggs that are candled, cleaned and graded in a space off their laundry room.
Glenn, who has three adult children and one grandchild, has cut back to raising about 400 pigs outside.
“We downsized because the barns were getting old and needed a major slug of money and at age 50-plus, we just decided not to borrow that kind of money,” said Glenn.
He is banking on a future in forage, not grain, and good cash flow from hay bound for acreage owners and rental properties in Stony Plain. The pigs keep cash flowing in and eat the grain he grows.
“I’d rather take a load of hogs down the road than grain,” said Glenn. “You can move more barley in a load of hogs easier than moving a load of barley with a big truck.”
A district director with Alberta Pork, Glenn sits on an environmental committee overseeing the manure and phosphate loads in soil. He is neutral on intensive livestock operations, saying only that governments must regulate such operations with a clear set of rules.
Like Glenn, both Delmar and Maivis have left their mark in a host of community groups from library boards to the church.
Maivis reflected on the fit between farming and serving God, pondering her role in raising animals for slaughter. Concluding that God gave them land and animals for their benefit, the couple strives to give them a comfortable life and humane death. They keep chickens on the ground instead of in cages, and pigs in barns and corrals, using straw and shavings in beds instead of pits.
“We raise them the best we can, as affordably as we can,” said Maivis.
They raise their 50 head of commercial cattle on traditional feeds like oats and hay, and handle animals only when necessary.
“We needle only when sick, not as a preventative,” she said.
They have considered certifying organic but decided against it due to the expense of the changeover.
Delmar recently plowed under a hay crop to make room for the long rows of vegetables he and Maivis grow with his sister Elaine’s family.
He modified a steel-wheeled cultivator to create an effective planter, saving them the $5,500 it might have cost to buy one for their two acres of potatoes.
“We try to keep up equipment without having to replace too much,” he said.
They are trying to edge their way out of farmers’ markets and into farmgate sales. They are well situated to take advantage of traffic en route to nearby lakes and power plants.
While Maivis sees farm sales as a way to work from home, Delmar expressed reservations, saying he “would rather not have people traipsing around the place.”
Both have worked off-farm to supplement their earnings, Delmar for a tile company and feedlot and Maivis at seasonal jobs. She hopes to return to teaching sewing from her home one day.
They plan to sustain the farm for at least 15 more years, the date their debts will all be paid. It’s been a hard pill to swallow but Maivis said the couple has had to accept living with debt as a part of farming today.
In the meantime, Delmar stays involved in the community, keeping abreast of coal mine issues like the dust that regularly settles on his farm and clouds the air. He is a member of the Keephills Power Project steering committee, which liaises with local power companies and government.
The couple has stepped back from many community activities to allow more time to help out “on a more spontaneous basis.
“You sometimes can be so overorganized, you can’t even have time to stop and have coffee with someone,” said Maivis.
The Engelhardts say farming has taught them patience, noting the family home they built 18 years ago and never completely finished, is now ready for refurbishing. They could not afford to pay for their children’s education directly, but are pleased they were able to co-sign for student loans.
Maivis and Delmar both want to see smaller family operations survive and take exception to negative messages from larger corporate operators billing themselves as bigger, cleaner and more efficient than smaller ones.
“Our farm is small scale, and sometimes it is hard to feel worthy when compared to the massive agriculture being promoted,” said Maivis.
Glenn and Susan say their children may never farm, but are prepared for the road ahead.
“They’re hard workers and their background here shows,” Glenn said.
