SOUTHPORT, Man. – The Connery family likes being too busy.
It is a family tradition that brothers Doug and Jeff Connery and their wives Paulette and Beth have continued as they have built up their fourth-generation vegetable business.
“You’re constantly working,” said Doug during a busy harvest day as the carrot bagger clattered and the rich smell of legumes filled the air.
“Vegetables have never been easy. They take your constant attention. Whenever you turn your back is when something goes wrong. You’re babysitting them all the time.”
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But on top of helping run their farm, which has 650 acres of vegetable production, a workforce that varies seasonally from 20 people to 120, and 55,000 sq. feet of packaging and warehouse space, Doug keeps himself busy with a number of vegetable grower associations.
His wife, Paulette, is a regional bank manager in nearby Portage la Prairie, overseeing four branches.
His brother Jeff races to stay atop of the flood of crops that begin maturing in late April, like asparagus, and need constant care and attention through the growing months. Then he and the permanent workers spend their winter maintaining and fixing the machinery that washes, bags and preserves the fruits of the field.
Beth helps administer the farm, which pumps $1.5 million into the local economy. Office shelves groan under the weight of file holders that contain financial and production records.
Beth likes the busy pace.
“It’s great to do this before you’re too tired to do what you should be doing, while you still want to be doing it,” she said while working on the computer.
The Connery family farm is the product of decades of experimenting with growing vegetables on the Prairies. Doug and Jeff’s great-grandfather emigrated from Ireland at the turn of the century and set up a mixed farm just northeast of Winnipeg. His son had a farm just south of Winnipeg, along the Red River.
He and Doug and Jeff’s father, Ed, brought in Manitoba’s first carrot harvester in 1959. Unfortunately their first crop was hit by rain at harvest, was unpickable, then froze and was destroyed.
After that Ed began seriously exploring how to profitably grow vegetables in Manitoba. In 1961 he began buying land south of Portage la Prairie, where the Connery operation now sits.
As he and other farmers learned how to grow vegetables , Ed also helped set up Peak Of The Market, the co-operative vegetable powerhouse that dominates the eastern Prairies.
“It was our family that co-signed the loan to buy the original buildings,” said Doug with pride. Ed is now semi-retired.
“Our family always believed in being involved, because if you don’t, you’re always fighting against one another,” said Doug.
“It becomes neighbour against neighbour. This (co-op) makes sure everyone gets a fair share.”
Doug and Jeff were always heavily involved in the business. While in Grade 12 Doug was so involved that he didn’t attend school until November, didn’t pass mathematics and never graduated.
It’s an educational gap that he has tried to make up with winter management courses and lots of experience. The lack of formal education keeps him from being a know-it-all.
“My job is to analyze problems,” he said. “I don’t need to know how to do everything around here. But I need to design the short cuts to allow others to do it faster.”
Doug manages the farm’s marketing and business sides. Jeff is in charge of field production. They help out when the other one is overwhelmed, but rely on each other’s judgment in their appointed areas, Doug said.
There have been many changes in the vegetable industry since the Connerys started farming in Manitoba. Some of that is reflected in their workers.
In their grandfather’s day, vegetable growers would drive into downtown Winnipeg to pick up truckloads of eastern European immigrants who would work the fields. During the Second World War, the work was done by prisoners of war.
“He never had to worry about them because they didn’t want to go anyplace else,” said Doug.
As immigrants integrated and found more settled work, the workforce began to include aboriginal people, who were the main workers when Doug was young.
Now, much of the work in peak periods is done by foreign workers brought in from the Caribbean and Mexico.
Doug said changes on the retail side of the industry have been happening much faster, forcing growers to expand and become better organized in order to stay alive.
Grocery stores used to do a lot of their ordering locally from local suppliers. Now ordering is often done by national and international offices, forcing growers like the Connerys to be able to supply huge amounts of produce year-round if they want to keep being suppliers.
Doug said that means vegetable farms will have to continue growing, become more mechanized and cut production costs.
“It’s not always what you want, but it’s what you have to do.”
Doug thinks only the top producers will be able to survive all the pressures that are coming as the industry changes, and he hopes to be one of them.
His 19-year-old son is working at the farm and seems interested in a farming career. His daughter also works at the farm in the summer. He said it would be nice to be able to offer them a farming future if either wants it.
But to be a top producer means keeping aware of everything happening in the industry, in Canada and in the United States. That means holidays aren’t always restful.
“My holidays are always business holidays,” said Doug. The family often vacations in Palm Springs, from which “the fields are only 10 minutes away.”
The same goes for Jeff’s and Beth’s holidays.
“We rarely don’t hit a field,” said Beth with a wry grin.
Peak of the Market has fewer than 70 growers, but they dominate the provincial vegetable trade.
It’s a different style of farming, but Beth, who grew up on a local mixed farm, said she quickly got used to the never-ending race to keep up with the vegetables. Sometimes it seems much like harvest time on a grain farm all year long.
“This just intensified it,” she said.
