LEROY, Sask. — Logan Stockbrugger lines up two-week-old kittens outside a red dog house as he talks about scouting, snowmobiling, camping and his older brother, Landon.
The answer comes quickly when later asked where he prefers to live: town or country.
“I would rather like to live here,” the seven-year-old said about the east-central Saskatchewan farm where he moved with his parents, Lance and Marie, four years ago.
Marie agreed.
“I wouldn’t want to raise a family anywhere else,” she said.
“It’s a lifestyle. I couldn’t imagine not being on the farm.
Read Also
Stock dogs show off herding skills at Ag in Motion
Stock dogs draw a crowd at Ag in Motion. Border collies and other herding breeds are well known for the work they do on the farm.
A nearby trailer serves as a temporary home for her brother-in-law, Lane, who takes holidays from Farm Credit Canada to help with seeding.
“I’ve got the best of both worlds,” Lane said, smiling as he compares cutting a few metres of grass in Regina with spraying thousands of acres here.
“The size and scale of my two lives is interesting,” he mused.
Lane said one is a good break from the other.
“It helps me appreciate the other more.”
This day, Marie is transporting lunch to the brothers, who planted wheat, oats, canola and peas on 4,000 acres.
Lance said the family’s seeding plans depend on markets, profitability and what’s manageable.
They have dropped barley, feeling maltsters are taking advantage of farmers since the change to open marketing.
“They’re scaring people into signing production contracts without seeing the crop,” he said.
“The price we locked in was discounted due to quality issues. I like a nice cold beer on an afternoon but I’m not willing grow the barley.”
The family believes in sustainable growth and making the most of what they’ve got. Expansion is on the horizon if Lane joins the operation full-time in the coming decade.
They chose a corporate partnership for the farm, which includes rented land from sister Vanessa.
“I didn’t want to keep track of it all separately. I wanted it to be pooled together,” said Lance, who left work as an accountant to farm.
“We felt it was the most efficient way of operating it.”
Lance thinks the pair’s different personalities work well together, citing his analytical nature and Lane’s more creative bent.
“It works quite well once you realize that you can make that work to your benefit,” he said.
Added Marie: “It pulls in different strengths.”
Lane said the perspectives they bring are often surprising.
“We look at answers differently and weigh them out differently,” he said.
Vanessa’s husband, an accountant in the oil industry, provides another point of view.
“He’ll bring something we wouldn’t have considered,” said Lane.
The brothers meet regularly, making agendas and taking minutes. They also host annual family meetings to discuss financial results, planning, equipment purchases and debt repayments.
“Rainy days are a good thing because we can sit and talk and regroup,” said Marie.
Lance said his accounting work has benefited the farm and his farming gives him credibility when doing consulting and speaking engagements with other farmers.
“I liked to see what made a good farm better,” he said.
That includes controlling, analyzing and scrutinizing costs, being profitable without having to work himself to death and incorporating efficiencies.
“There are some efficiencies with getting larger, but they’re small and you’re taking a lot more risks.”
The brothers are trying sectional control on their seeding drill this year to minimize fertilizer application overlap.
“As a section goes over, the GPS tells it it has already received fertilizer and shuts off the valve,” Lance said.
“So far, there’s a four percent efficiency. We’re going to have excess fertilizer at the end.”
Lance said they generally embrace technology.
“We like to make sure they are tried and true. That’s the accountant in me being very cautious.”
The Stockbruggers have two helpers, and family members pitch in, including their sister Melissa’s husband, a heavy-duty mechanic.
Off the farm, Lance is involved with the Canaryseed Development Commission of Saskatchewan and CMI Limited, a grain terminal near Spalding, Sask.
Lance and Lane credit their mother, Shirley, with retaining the family farm, established by German immigrant Henry Stockbrugger in the early 1900s. Shirley sold the equipment after her husband died but kept the land. She continues to support the farm as the “No. 1 parts runner” from her home in Humboldt, Sask.
“Our pride in farming, the heritage of the Stockbrugger farm … that runs deep through us and our sisters, it’s always our common ground that we come back to,” said Lance.
“If ever in a tight spot, that’s the thing that brings us back.”
Added Lane: “I can’t imagine not being involved in the farm.… Farming is so much more than that job, the thing that you do.”
Family time with his wife, Carie, and their preschoolers is also important to Lane, who lost his father as a child.
Farm safety is key to farm operations.
“It is absolutely fundamental,” he said. “We are not invincible, just human, and we need to keep it going at a manageable level.”
The brothers split the workload, with Lane working ahead of Lance at seeding time by spraying and preparing the land. That reverses at harvest, with Lane doing the combining and Lance supporting him.
“Without each other, we couldn’t do as many acres and it wouldn’t be as much fun,” said Lane.
Marie said the reward of farming is in seeing a crop emerge.
“That’s the excitement of it.”
