ALLIANCE, Alta. – The Miller family earned its century farm designation last year, but it almost didn’t happen.
The family’s future in farming looked grim when the head of the second generation died at age 49, leaving a widow and eight children.
But mom and the kids stuck together and kept farming and now one of those children, Alvin, farms most of the land with his son, Norman.
Alvin’s grandparents moved from North Dakota in 1907 to homestead near Alliance in central Alberta. When they arrived it was flat, empty and treeless. Today it is still flat, there are trees, but it is emptying out of people as farms get bigger.
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One of Alvin’s brothers, Glen, who is retired from farming, said besides cattle and grain, their parents had lots of animals including pigs, peacocks, geese, ducks and chickens.
Don’t forget dad’s baby skunks that he kept as a pet, Alvin added during a recent family get-together.
The brothers also remember a big garden and a smokehouse.
Today Alvin and Norman grow wheat, barley, oats and hay like their predecessors, and also canola. They also have cattle, but not the Herefords and Shorthorns of older generations. They now raise Limousins.
Alvin has custom fed beef cattle for a Kentucky company for four years, but that may not happen next year if country-of-origin labelling becomes reality in the United States.
He warned that beef consumers better fill their freezers now because it will become more expensive next winter once high-priced feed and low-priced meat force Canadian farmers to cull their herds.
Oil is a two-edged sword for farmers in the area. Glen joked that only the unlucky don’t have oil wells or pipelines on their land to earn rent, but the lure of oil industry wages has drained the area of its youth who don’t see a future in farming because of the high cost of land, machinery and inputs.
The Miller family owns about 40 quarters in the district, all mixed farms. Glen and Alvin’s mother remarried and still lives on a farm at the age of 91. She owned 16 quarters but recently turned eight of them over to her children.
Her sons say she is the main reason most of the family stuck around and kept farming. Family members own their land separately but farm together, sharing machinery and labour.
“It’s taken everybody to make this work,” Glen said.
Added Alvin: “You grew up together. It’s one way or no way.”
He started farming when he was 15, coming home from army cadet camp in British Columbia to harvest. Today he has farmed for 54 years.
Sheila Miller grew up on a farm 25 kilometres from Alliance but never met her husband until they attended a hard-times dance. Alvin was the one in the suit while everyone else was in patched, threadbare clothes. Alvin laughed at the memory, saying he thought it was a donation dance to raise money for an individual in hardship.
The Millers have a copy of their homestead document that shows it cost $250 to build a barn and granaries. Alvin noted he paid $20,000 two years ago to put up two bins. He added that with the way fuel prices are going, farmers might have to go back to hauling grain using horses.
He predicted that in the future more farmers will contract their production, whether it be beef, pigs, malting barley or canola. However, he said they must be careful to meet the specifications of the buyer or it won’t sell.
“Things are changing so fast (that) if you lock in for a year, you might regret it. There’s guys who locked in their canola for $8.50 (a bushel) for the year and now they’re talking $16.”
Glen and Alvin claim that the Canadian government’s cheap food policy has brought hard times to farmers. Even when commodity prices rose, so did the costs of production. Land in the Alliance area sells for $150,000 to $200,000 a quarter, which they regard as cheap when compared to $1 million a quarter near cities.
“It used to be you could make a living on 500 acres. Now what is it?” Glen said.
“Probably 4,000,” Sheila replied.
Alvin sums up the future this way: farms are only going to be as big as one person can handle on his own. Farmers can’t rely on hired workers, who are either scarce or expensive if they run a $500,000 combine into a slough.
He said even Hutterite colonies have trouble keeping their young men on the colony because of the lure of big oil patch wages.
That’s why the Millers stick together.
