HAZENMORE, Sask. – For Brian Haubrich, 2009 will mark the 47th consecutive year of harvesting a crop in southwestern Saskatchewan.
Haubrich, the eldest child in a family of seven siblings, planted his first field near Hazenmore as an 18-year-old, shortly after the death of his father.
Nearly five decades later, he has maintained his love of farming, his appreciation of rural living and a positive view of prairie agriculture.
And he is passing the family’s legacy on to another generation of Haubrichs.
In 2006, Brian, his son, BJ, and daughter-in-law, Sharon, entered a formal farming partnership, making BJ and Sharon the fourth generation of Haubrichs to grow crops in the area.
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BJ’s great-grandfather homesteaded in the Hodgeville, Sask., area, just a few miles away, in 1909.
“I’ve been a farmer all my life,” says Brian, who shares ownership of 22 quarter sections and rents another 12 within a 15-kilometre radius of the Haubrich farmyard.
“I walked with my dad every step of the way,” he says.
“Every turn he took, I was right beside him. Everything he could do, I learned to do as well.”
The Haubrich farm now has something many farm operations lack in Western Canada, youth and experience.
BJ, who completed a degree in agriculture, opted against a salaried career and chose to return to the Hazenmore area.
With financial help from his dad, BJ bought his first piece of farmland in 2002. That same year, Hazenmore received 61 centimetres of rain and reaped a bumper crop, a good beginning for a young couple, expecting their first child this fall.
“When I was young, Dad told me I had to get off the farm, get out of the house and go work for someone else and that way I’d figure out that he wasn’t such a bad guy to work with after all,” says BJ, who also works part-time as a contract agronomist with the South West Terminal.
“It (farming) can be stressful at times and a lot of things are out of your hands, but it’s great being your own boss.
“I like farming. It’s all I ever thought of when I was growing up.
“I thought we had a good thing going here and I liked working with Dad so that made the decision a bit easier.”
This year, spring moisture was sufficient, germination was good and despite unusually cool temperatures throughout April and May, the crops are off to a promising start.
The Haubrichs stuck to a proven cropping strategy that has served them well over the past decade or two.
They avoided barley and spring wheat, opting instead to sow durum, peas, lentils, chickpeas, canola and mustard.
In the past, durum has carried the farm through difficult times.
In dry years, it yields well compared to other cereals and grain quality is consistently high.
Because the Hazenmore area normally has an early planting season and hot dry conditions in July and August, durum is a good fit.
“Back in the ’70s, we used to grow quite a bit of (spring) wheat but now, for the past 25 years or so, I don’t think I’ve grown hardly any wheat because durum has always yielded a bit better,” Brian says.
“I think a lot of farmers in other parts of the province have tried to grow durum but they can’t because of disease problems and moisture problems,” he continues.
“It’s more of a dry season crop so further north, they don’t seem to have much luck with it. A lot of the time, they’ll end up with No. 5 durum but if they grow spring wheat, they can get it into the bin as No. 1.”
Recently, the most prevalent production challenge facing farmers in the area has been gophers.
Over the past three years, many producers have lost entire crops to the pests, which can strip a field bare of new growth in a couple of weeks.
BJ says producers in the area had been achieving good control with Rozol Plus, but the product was taken off the market by the Pest Management Regulatory Agency.
Without it, some fields are completely overrun.
“We have a gopher problem on every acre of our land,” says BJ, who spends as much as 100 hours each spring maintaining bait stations on his land.
“Until you see the populations that we’re dealing with and the damage that they’re causing, it’s really hard to believe.
“If we can get past this gopher nightmare, then we’ll be laughing.”
Despite the economic hardships caused by gophers, weather, grasshoppers, fluctuating grain prices and rising input costs, Brian has never questioned his decision to farm.
“I’ve always been a career farmer,” he says.
“I’ve got some neighbours who say it’s a form of child abuse getting your kids into farming, but I’ve never felt that way.
“As far as I’m concerned, I’m a very rich man, in my lifestyle and in what I have accumulated. And the richest thing that has ever happened to me is being able to farm with BJ, with my son.”
