CORONATION, Alta. – Herman Schwenk took his first volunteer job at age 11 as secretary of his local Boys and Girls Farm Club – what later became 4-H.
Sixty-six years later, the farmer from Coronation, Alta., still spends hundreds of hours a year volunteering his time on agricultural and community boards across the province.
While few people have the same public service stamina as Schwenk, guiding the direction of rural electricity associations, gas co-ops and local community organizations has been a labour of love for the 77-year-old farmer.
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Schwenk has sat on boards for his local community centre and helped establish a local seed cleaning plant, grocery co-op and co-op implement dealership.
That work led to time on the Federated Co-operatives board and Alberta Wheat Pool. He also sat on the local and provincial rural electrification associations and rural gas co-op boards and was a board member for Unifarm.
He was appointed to an advisory council to help develop policy for public lands and was the agricultural representative on a clean air council.
He first became a director of his local gas co-op in 1976 and is still on the board.
“I doubt if I could go to a meeting in a rural community without someone knowing who I was,” Schwenk said.
“I probably had a natural craving for a little public attention.”
In 2004, he was inducted into the Alberta Agriculture Hall of Fame for his leadership in rural organizations.
It was through the time spent on boards that Schwenk learned about the importance of parliamentary procedure, working with the whole board, financial statements and policy development.
A two-week rural leadership course in Banff and a second follow-up course gave Schwenk a solid foundation in community service and leadership training.
“That gave me a lot of basic training.”
Early in his volunteer career, Schwenk developed a philosophy to not become frustrated with the slow pace of government and bureaucratic change.
“Things just happen real slow. It’s not revolution, it’s evolution,” Schwenk said.
“Just work one step at a time and you do make progress. You’ve simply got to be patient.”
That patience has paid off with changes that allow rural electrification associations to service their customers without having to rely on large utilities. It was also patience that convinced government to establish the network of rural gas co-ops as autonomous utilities.
“There’s no other system like it in the world,” he said.
Schwenk doesn’t know if his time on boards has been a benefit to his farming operation that grew from a half section of rented land to more than 6,500 acres, a 300-head cow-calf operation and a 1,000 head feedlot.
“In some ways it probably helped and in some ways it probably hindered it,” he said.
“I do know much of the time my farm subsidized what I was doing. If my ambition was to see how much money I could make, I never would have been involved in these events.”
Passing the hat
Schwenk is worried about who will step into volunteer positions once his generation is no longer able to travel to meetings.
“It’s been a concern of mine for quite some time. It’s getting harder and harder to get people to take on these kinds of responsibilities.”
Schwenk wants one of his two farming sons to take over his position on the local gas co-op but knows they don’t have the time.
“The whole economic structure of farming today is altogether different.”
Instead of hired men and rudimentary equipment, modern farmers operate high-priced equipment that requires experienced operators.
“They do it all themselves. They’re doing the work of three people.”
Schwenk said he’s not about to hang up his volunteer hat yet. He just let his name stand for another three year term on the local rural electrification association and he’ll likely sign up for another three years on the gas co-op.
