LILLOOET, B.C. – For 18-year-old Jim Albietz, it’s a two-hour journey home from here by truck and boat.
Albietz boards in Lillooet Monday to Friday for high school, returning to the family’s remote ranch on weekends, where he’s greeted by a plethora of chores with the 170-head cow-calf operation and his 4-H beef project.
“I’ve walked it halfway five times; I’ve broke down quite a bit,” he said.
The 1,000-acre irrigated farm does not have telephone service, is an hour by logging road from the closest farm and must be accessed by crossing the Fraser River.
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Albietz has dyslexia so is used to doing things a little differently. To avoid reading problems associated with dyslexia, he asks a lot of questions and receives support from family and friends.
“I have a better memory than most of my friends,” he said. “I look at things more logically; instead of looking for a book, I have to ask.”
4-H’s motto of learning to do by doing has suited Albietz, who has reared and compared beef cattle in senior management projects.
For 4-H speeches, he shares a story from his own life about stabilizing balls in water tanks on steep roads rather than spending countless hours in research.
His parents, Rita and Kris Albietz, chose 4-H for their three boys to provide them with social and learning opportunities beyond the local one-room schoolhouse they all attended.
Albietz credits that school with teaching him good study habits, self-discipline and independent study skills.
Getting to that school required an hour’s traverse to the neighbour’s farm, where he met the school bus for another half hour trip to school.
It was also a long journey to regular 4-H meetings in his 10 years with the Clinton beef club.
Club leader Dimps Horn said Albietz is an active member who has shown cattle at the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto and made speeches to range managers in British Columbia.
“He’s keen to learn,” she said. “He sets his goals and works hard to meet them.”
Horn said senior management projects require a big investment of time and money in record keeping, marketing and raising three different animals. Albietz pays his 4-H expenses by working on the family farm.
That’s an important part of the learning, Horn said.
“You couldn’t just give cattle to the kids because then they don’t learn.”
Following graduation from Grade 12 this month, Albietz plans to fight fires in British Columbia or join his brother training reining horses in Australia, his father’s birthplace.
In the future, Albietz hopes to learn new skills through BC Hydro’s trades training program and a job that could one day support “the hobby of farming.”
