LEOVILLE, Sask. – The farm pushes the bush back just far enough to raise cattle and crop while allowing regular glimpses of the abundant wildlife in northwestern Saskatchewan.
It’s a comfortable setting for Ken McDaid, 44, who grew up nearby and enjoys the trapping, hunting and fishing the area offers him.
Ken is a member of the Fair Chase League and a vocal proponent for keeping hunting fair. He rails against baiting animals and fears congregating wild animals leads to an increased incidence of disease that could spill over to cattle herds.
Read Also
Rural emergency room closures continue to be vexing problem
Staffing issues are at the root of disruptions and closures in hospital emergency departments, both in rural and urban Canadian locations.
Supportive of his cause although not directly involved is his wife Leona, originally from Duck Lake, Sask.
She found the farm carved out of the lake country and sitting at the edge of the Chitek Lake First Nation reserve a little isolated.
“When I first came here, I thought it was the boonies,” she said.
Making it seem less distant was the close proximity of Ken’s large extended family, who farm and own land in the area.
He and his brother Ronald started the farm in 1980. Ronald, his wife also called Leona and their children live on the original family farm and Ken is on the site near Chitek Lake. The area was largely cleared when farmers moved north to avoid drought-plagued areas in the south.
The McDaids manage a 120 head commercial cow-calf herd and grow feed for the animals on 17 quarters of land, 12 of which are leased. They swath graze their animals when the hay fields are done for the season.
Good moisture last year helped produce more than 1,700 green feed hay bales, said Ken.
Anthrax spores, which surfaced after this past year’s flooding, were found as close as Canwood, but the McDaid farm managed to escape without incident.
A bear-sized dog keeps away wolves that might come too close to the farm and that have been blamed for at least one death in the herd.
After checking on cattle, Ken stops by to help out Ron, who is using a converted school bus and flatbed to move bales. A gentle nudge with the tractor helps Ron get out of the soft field and onto the grid road.
Leona said the brothers are a good fit.
“Ron is easy going and Ken is a hothead. Between the two of them, there is balance,” she said.
Ken handles the baling and mechanical work while Ron does welding. Both their wives work off-farm, although Leona finds time to manage the books when not working as a lab and X-ray technician.
Their three school-aged girls, Kelsey, Kylie and Lindsey, all help with chores at home and around the farm, especially when their mother must remain overnight in town on call for the regional health centre.
“We just get her done,” said Ken of the farm work that has to fit around off-farm work that includes Ron’s road construction business.
During the BSE crisis, the McDaids continued to calve out older animals and sold replacement heifers but watched their income drop by half.
“We sold everything to keep things going,” Ken said.
They have used their own sawmill to supply the wood to build and heat their house. They also grow a large garden each year.
“Any farm has to be self-sufficient. We can’t afford people to do this and that,” Ken said.
The brothers have picked up work over the years harvesting timber for a lumber company and look to future mechanical work with seismic crews.
The McDaids would like to increase the herd one day but for now they try to keep their debts manageable and supplement the farm with off-farm income.
“If you increase, you increase gradually,” said Ken.
The family enjoys the slower pace and the peace and quiet of their farm home. This day, the three sisters are playing in the snow near the long driveway leading up to their house.
Outfitting in the heavily wooded region is a major business, something Ken said is sustainable if properly managed.
He said the industry needs to take heed of the growing evidence of the dangers of congregating animals and avoid baiting practices.
“If anyone should be interested in (chronic wasting disease and tuberculosis), it should be the outfitters,” he said.
“No good comes out of baiting,” he said. “It’s a guaranteed shoot out here.”
Also, when outfitters haul in bait, they cut trails into the bush and that brings noxious weeds to the farmers, he said.
Ken believes one day the message of the Fair Chase League will be heard.
“You just keep pounding away and sooner or later there will be an MLA who says ‘enough is enough.’ “
