BUFFALO, Alta. – Alberta’s dry spring isn’t bothering the Jaques family.
Arthur and Heather are pumping water from the nearby Red Deer River into a lake that sits in front of their unfinished dream house.
Water from “Jaques Lake” will help irrigate 1,400 acres of sunflowers, durum and perennial ryegrass this summer. They are also trying 60 acres of chickpeas this year at the suggestion of son Byron.
Byron received an agricultural degree at the University of Saskatchewan and will begin farming with his parents. Daughter Zoe graduated from the University of Calgary and is also at home for the summer.
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Seeding began the first week of May. To make it even busier, the Jaques are building two new homes – one for Arthur and Heather and one for Byron and his fiancee.
But life used to be more rushed.
“At one time we had Charolais cattle, leafcutter bees, plus all the irrigation. It was way too much,” Heather said.
On a day in early May, she was making lunch in the tin shack that the family calls the cabin. It serves as home during the house construction.
Heather works part-time at Oyen hospital, an hour’s drive north. It was that job that brought her from London, England, to east-central Alberta where she met Arthur, the bachelor farmer.
They began farming on Arthur’s parents’ land, but moved to their present location in the 1980s.
Bees led Arthur to start irrigating in 1987 so he could be assured of an alfalfa crop.
Water rationing won’t be a problem this year because they are not in an irrigation district.
However, their water turbines silted up twice the week before seeding.
“We just keep hoping the Red Deer River keeps flowing,” Heather said with a laugh.
Arthur added with wry humor, “Rain? How do you spell that?”
Most of their neighbors are ranchers, an isolation that works to their advantage because it keeps diseases and some weeds out of their sunflowers.
The sunflower seeds are sold under contract to the Alberta Sunflower Seeds company, which makes Spitz snacks for humans as well as birdseed.
The Jaques spray for sunflower beetles and watch for sclerotinia fungus, but have few other crop problems.
“You have to figure you feed the blackbirds,” Heather said of the other main crop pest.
Arthur said sunflowers have earned them an average of $450-$750 an acre since they started growing them in 1992. Expenses are between $250 and $300. They are paid 44 cents a kilogram for plump seeds and half that for small seeds destined to feed birds.
“It’s nice knowing the price through the contract,” Arthur said.
“Then you can sit back and concentrate on production.”
The machinery costs weren’t bad, ranging from $7,500 for a sunflower planter to $18,000 for a harvester that attaches to the combine.
But it’s more than the money. They grow sunflowers because of their good marketing relationship with Tom Droog of Alberta Sunflowers and because, as Arthur said, “It’s nice to grow a crop someone wants.”
They also appreciate their grass buyer, Scott Seeds, in Oregon. Having experienced a lawsuit with a company over a chemical that damaged one alfalfa crop, Arthur prefers businesses that treat them well.
He suggests farmers need a better business bureau to help sort out who is reliable.
The Jaques also like the good roads in their part of Alberta. It is 200 kilometres to the sunflower plant in Bow Island and they haul the seeds in their own Super B truck.
Wildlife is another benefit. They enjoy watching the waterfowl, pheasants, herons, deer and antelope. That is why they built a wall of windows into the new house overlooking their lake.
