COALDALE, Alta. – The yellow dog paws, then crunches into a potato laying outside the bungalow-sized storage bin.
“We eat a lot of potatoes,” admits Ann-Marie Sera. That goes for the three dogs as well as the humans on this southern Alberta potato farm run by Sera and her brother, Ian McGillivray.
Harvest is over and the nine storage bins are gorged with tonnes of tubers. Temperature and humidity controls abound in the arena-like sheds to keep the potatoes in good shape before the Maple Leaf plant in Lethbridge calls for them to be delivered. Then the year’s effort on the farm – 9,000 tonnes – will be chopped into french fries or potato patties, frozen and shipped to Japan and Korea, as well as across Canada.
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In the white trailer that serves as the farm office there is a can of homemade cookies. They’re good, chewy with crushed bits of Score candy bar, but Sera is as modest about the baking as she is with her work on the farm. She praises her former husband, once a partner on the farm, for helping her learn the business. The two are now divorced. She also credits her brother for his common sense and the farm’s success.
Her two daughters persuaded her to do the interview.
“They told me there might be other women out there thinking they can’t do it and by telling my story they might learn they can.”
Sera’s brother, father and ex-spouse started a partnership in 1975. Then Sera and her brother became active partners in 1994, buying 900 acres. They are the third generation on land their grandfather bought from CP Rail in 1923.
Sera and her brother contracted this year with Maple Leaf to take all their potatoes.
McGillivray worked with the Potato Growers of Alberta bargaining group this spring to set prices with the company. Next year Sera and her brother plan to sell 1,000 tonnes of their potatoes to another company, Lamb Weston, that is building a processing plant farther east in Taber, Alta. Sera hopes the competition pushes potato prices higher.
Sera and McGillivray support the growers association and McGill-ivray is a former PGA chair.
The contracting companies send field workers out to visit contracted farmers and check potato quality. They test for a spud that colors up lightly when fried and doesn’t turn dark. They also like potatoes with less water and more meat.
In past years, the Coaldale farm has grown many varieties since it sold potatoes for chips, as well as french fries. But this summer only Russet Burbank was planted.
All 520 acres they plant to potatoes are irrigated. They also grow 75 acres of freezer peas and get in crop rotations by renting land to neighbors who grow wheat, barley and beans.
It’s hauling season from October to August, which is one of Sera’s jobs. Two days after getting her truck licence she was driving.
They buy seed potatoes from Spruce Grove, Alta., each March and Sera cuts them into smaller pieces and warms them to ground temperature for the two weeks of planting in late April.
McGillivray checks the irrigation pivots twice a day and works with agrologists to check the need for nitrogen fertilizer and spraying for weeds, bugs and disease. In September they spray to kill the tops of the plants and let the tubers mature. About two weeks later they dig.
Sera says the ideal tuber is large and smooth with no knobs. The potatoes must also be cool. Harvest starts early in the morning and quits when the afternoon temperature rises. If the tubers are too hot when they go into storage, they might rot.
The farm hires a dozen people to help at harvest, sorting and piling the potatoes. Sera, who is in charge of the bookwork and personnel, says they have had the same harvest crew for 15 years. Sera’s 19 and 24-year-old daughters and their cousins also help out.
“When I say ‘let’s spend quality family time together,’ they roll their eyes.”
Working with a brother has not been a problem, says Sera, since the siblings both liked farming from their early days and the farm produces a steady income. Brothers are also easier to tell off than husbands, she says with a smile.
Sera eased into the farm operations, helping only at harvest when the girls were little. But later her role hit home one harvest when the crew was waiting for the first load to come from the fields.
“People were looking around and then I realized someone had to be in charge.”
