As a newly minted university graduate with an agribusiness degree, Lynden Butler is living life at a fast pace.
He and his father, Lowell, recently doubled the size of their farm, and Lynden has taken a four month contract job with Bayer Crop Science. As well, he has volunteered for another term as chair of the Saskatchewan Young Ag-Entrepreneurs.
To complicate matters, the Butlers’ new farm is 150 kilometres from the original one near Marcelin, Sask.
That all adds up to a lot of traveling this summer.
Read Also
Restaurant blends zero waste, ancient farming
A Mexico City restaurant has become a draw for its zero-waste kitchen, which means that every scrap of food and leftovers is reused for other purposes.
The decision to expand came as Lynden joined the farming operation with his father. His mother and sister are not actively involved.
“Most of my life I’ve lived on a small farm of 700 acres. We had hogs, only 60 sows, and the crops were mostly feed wheat, feed barley and peas,” he said.
Lynden said he always knew he would farm, even though he took a few years off after high school before studying agriculture at the University of Saskatchewan.
“I liked driving the tractor and being outside in the field.”
The Butlers are farming 1,500 acres near Colonsay, Sask. The younger Butler bought three quarters and they are renting the rest. They will grow canola, sunflowers, oats and barley in their southern operation and canola, oats and triticale in the Marcelin area.
The distance will work in their favour when it comes to seeding and harvest because the southern land will be ready before the northern one. Lowell is handy with repairing machinery so they will use “big equipment but not shiny,” Lynden said.
“My dad doesn’t believe in buying machinery, but building it,” he told SYA members at their spring annual meeting.
The family, in a case of good timing, got out of the hog business a year ago, which means it can focus on the two cropping arrangements. Lynden said they wanted to buy land closer to Marcelin but there is lots of competition for it there.
“For someone like me who is starting, to have to pay for new machinery as well as land, the interest is unaffordable.”
The land was top priority because their machinery is big enough to cover twice as much land as they are now farming.
The summer job with Bayer will bring him cash and allow him to get experience and see what’s happening with other farms.
Some of that knowledge will come from meetings with the board of the young farmers’ group that he helped found. The young people are optimistic about farming.
“Now, the better it looks the more you have to hold yourself in check,” he said.
“We’re only halfway through seeding and we don’t know what the weather will bring.”
