EAST SELKIRK, Man. – Patti Chorney didn’t know much about the big steel that her husband-to-be showed her in 1988, before they got married.
“She called the auger ‘the pencil,’ and didn’t know how anything worked,” said Murray, fondly remembering his return to the farm.
“It was a breath of fresh air to bring someone who was so non-agricultural to the farm. It raised my own interest in it, showing it to her and seeing her own interest in how everything worked.”
Patti was a legal secretary in Winnipeg who knew little about farming before meeting Murray.
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“The only experience she had with farmers was shaking her fist at them when trying to pass their machinery on the road out to her cottage,” he said with a smile.
She happily adapted to farm and rural life, and the two have made a productive life in the East Selkirk area northeast of Winnipeg. She continued to work in Winnipeg, but not for long.
“She liked the country,” said Murray. “She didn’t like commuting.”
They now have three children and Murray farms full-time.
“If both my sons want to farm, I don’t think I’ll have enough acres,” said Murray about Brad, 17, and Cameron, 15. His daughter, Lana, is 13.
The Chorney family is a big presence in the cold, wet and bushy part of the Prairies. Not only is a lot of local land farmed by Murray and his male cousins, but all three are prominent in farm organizations, making the Chorney name well known in eastern Manitoba.
Brian is the president of the Can-adian Canola Growers Association, Doug is chair of Keystone Agricultural Producers’ rural development committee and Murray joined the Manitoba Pulse Growers board last year.
Murray once worked as a chemical company representative. As he expanded his farming and took over land from his father, he found off-farm distractions challenging.
“I wonder how much longer? How much longer? I’m doing a rotten job of both, especially at harvest and seeding. When I should be doing chem repping, I’m on the field. During spring I’m out chem repping when I should be out on the field.”
By 2000, Murray became a full time farmer.
A challenge for him was expanding his role in farming and managing the farm while his father was still involved. Both were hard working, committed farmers who often pulled in different directions.
“The farm wasn’t big enough for the two of us,” said Murray of his father’s original 700 acres. “Both of us wanted to be boss. We got along, but I wanted to take over and he didn’t want to let go. It was a tough five or eight years.”
In time, Murray took over pieces of his father’s land and bought other land, and his father reduced his involvement.
Murray laughs about how his kids get annoyed at him for imposing chores on them when he looks back on his father’s farming career, which began with breaking land with a team of horses.
Murray’s father died last year, drawing to a close a farming career that went from horse-drawn plows to global positioning systems and automation.
“He had a ride in a sprayer that steered by itself and that must have been mind-blowing after all the changes he’d seen in his life,” he said.
Buy, share, save
The Chorney cousins each farm their own land, but also work together, something that Murray thinks has allowed them to survive.
“We work closely together. We’re all 1,500-acre farms and there’s no way we could all afford a highboy sprayer or things like that. We group-bought those things and we share them.”
This is cold land on the fringe of the farming zone near the Canadian Shield so crops are limited to canola, oats, winter wheat and flax.
In 2000, Chorney was among the first to try soybeans, a good money-earner for the farm.
“We had some wrecks, but it kind of turned the farm around.”
This day, the farm is quiet with Patti in Selkirk working and the three children in school. That leaves Murray to work on a cracked hose on his seeder while his new pup keeps an aging Rottweiler company.
Murray hopes he and his cousins can keep working co-operatively to remain sustainable and avoid expanding too dramatically to make narrow margins provide a living.
He is optimistic that keeping an eye on production, costs and marketing will allow him to farm his land profitably.
“I always wanted to have 2,000 acres, but I don’t think it’s going to happen,” said the 50-year-old.
