RYLEY, Alta. — Rising gas and electricity prices are hanging like a black cloud over most Alberta farms, but one farm couple has found the silver lining.
Don and Paula Bowal own a coal mine.
“Rising prices have made it boom,” said Paula, whose family has owned the 80-year-old Dodds Coal Mine since 1958.
The mine has been so busy the Dodds have sold their cattle and scaled back their grain farm.
Each day they have inquiries from farmers wanting to convert their greenhouses, hog barns or poultry barns to the less expensive coal.
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They have a steady stream of urban customers who want to add a coal stove or convert a gas furnace to coal to save money.
“Any kind of savings is a plus,” said Paula, who estimates coal costs one-quarter to half the price of natural gas.
Boilers have saved the domestic coal market, Don said.
Most people’s memories of coal are of their grandparent’s basements full of dusty coal lumps, ashes and dust. With modern boilers, the coal never enters the house. It is augured into an outside boiler, which heats water that runs through a series of pipes inside.
The coal mine wasn’t always a full-time business. Paula’s father decided to retire from the mine shortly after the couple moved back from the city to take over Don’s family farm.
“It was a happy coincidence,” Paula said.
She and Don, along with Paula’s sister and brother-in-law Dayna and Peter Kudrowich, took over the coal mine in 1984.
It had been a playground for the sisters when they were children.
“That’s where I played, running up and down the conveyor,” said Paula, pointing to the belt that took coal from the coal processing plant to the storage shed.
The mine was a perfect fit for an off-farm business. They sold about 6,000 tonnes of coal during a good winter. The mine was shut down for maintenance during the summer. This allowed the family to put in the crop and look after the cattle.
But each year their mine got busier, as more of Canada’s smaller coal mines closed, as natural gas prices slowly increased, and as new boilers were developed.
“It used to be seasonal,” Paula said.
“Now with poultry, hog and greenhouses needing heat year round, we have to be here more.”
Steady sales
They sold 30,000 tonnes of coal last year and expect to sell 40,000 tonnes this year.
The steady growth in business convinced them a few years ago that they needed to expand the mine, which was built in the 1930s.
“The bankers weren’t as convinced,” Don said.
They had to change banks and educate the new banker before starting the $500,000 expansion.
In 1996, they built a new tipple, added a larger scale to weigh the larger trucks, increased storage capacity and added a coal oiler.
“It was a good move,” Paula said.
“It’s kind of scary. It was the first permanent tipple to be built in Alberta since the ’50s of a domestic coal mine.”
They have the oldest operating coal tipple in Canada, which processes about 20 tonnes of coal per hour, and the newest tipple which processes about 80 tonnes per hour.
A wooden tipple built in the 1930s is still used to produce stove and nut coal. The new tipple produces stoker and oiled stoker coal.
With the increased demand for coal, the couple anticipates scaling back the farm even further.
With low grain prices it makes more sense to concentrate on the lucrative coal business and spend less time farming.
“It’s something you can always get back into,” Don said about farming.
“Or in a couple years we might rent the whole works.”
