HARRIS, Sask. – On one of their first dates, Grant McFarlane challenged city girl Sandy to prove she could handle farm life. She took a day off work and spread manure in the fields. Within 10 months they were married.
After their marriage in 1991, Grant and Sandy became the third generation to farm the dryland near the Bear Hills in west-central Saskatchewan. Grant’s grandfather and great-uncle had come to this spot from Ireland in 1905. His father got the land in the 1940s and expanded to five quarters, which he farmed first with Grant’s uncles and then with his sons until he died in a farm accident last May.
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Grant, his mother and wife now run the mixed farm which has grown to 12 quarters.
“Our operation is hinged on renting from a lot of people, but it’s a really good unit,” said Grant. He chose to add more land through renting rather than buying because machinery costs squeeze their bottom line enough without adding a mortgage. Even though grain prices are higher, machinery prices followed them up, he said.
“We make a tremendous amount of cash but we’re doling it out.”
Grant adds to his cash flow by custom collecting grain chaff for area farmers for two months each fall.
“We throw away in this province a couple of billion dollars worth of feed in the chaff. But no one has worked on the economics of small scale collection.”
His side operation is in addition to the 65 mainly Simmental cows calved out each year and crops of wheat, canola, peas, oats and barley. They tried lentils but shy away from them as low yielding and too hard on the machinery because the plants are so short. The cattle provide manure for their land and with the loss of the Crow Benefit, the McFarlanes say it makes more sense to use the grain on the farm by feeding it to cattle.
The crop variety is also selected to help the land. A continuous cropping rotation holds the soil down and avoids the patches of black snow evident this spring in the area.
“Farming is a really great life if you didn’t have to worry about the money …” said Grant.
“Or make a living,” added Sandy.
She is a 20-year employee of Canadian Airlines originally from New Brunswick. After she transferred to Saskatoon, she became involved in Toastmasters and union activities where she met Grant, an activist in the National Farmers Union.
For two years after they married she continued to work at the airline cargo department. They lived in her house in the city or out on the farm, depending on the season or work to be done.
“There were many challenges – trying to keep two houses up, cleaning and then the baby came and there were child-care challenges, shift work challenges.”
Two years ago the airline closed the section Sandy worked in. While the union negotiated a chance for her to continue working in another city, Sandy refused, but the offer remains open for another three years.
“I’d married the man who’d married the farm before me,” she said.
Sandy stayed on the farm, and five months ago had another baby, a sister for their 21Ú2-year-old daughter.
The McFarlanes may yet move to the city for Sandy’s work if they find in the next three years that the farm can’t support them. Sandy is also looking at starting a business using her expertise in handling paperwork for transporting goods.
Isolation difficult
Both Grant and Sandy acknowledge the isolation on the farm and the difficulties in being new parents. With the kids, they are unable to drive an hour into the city for meetings like they used to.
As well, it has been a rough year with the death of Grant’s dad. Fortunately, Grant’s parents had worked out a plan to allow one of their four children to work the farm while the other three were to get cash. Grant points to his mother as an example that gender is no barrier to his girls if they choose to farm.
Sandy would like to farm as actively as her mother-in-law but her lack of farm experience and child care pose problems.
“It’s difficult for me to be any sort of equal partner in sharing the workload of the farm. … If he and I had worked the farm for several years before the kids, which is more economical to hire (farm labor or child care)? And that says volumes to me about the economic value put on child raising.”
The McFarlanes are members of the local co-op, the NFU, Saskat-chewan Wheat Pool and supporters of the Canadian Wheat Board. When asked about the current debate about the board, Grant said: “I’m embarrassed about my generation. They don’t see the benefits (of working together). They’re trying to go it alone and make a buck.”
He thinks there’s an irony in the fact the free marketers are pooling their energy and trucks in cross-border runs while rejecting the collective aspect of the wheat board.
But even he has had to moderate his politics and the farm economics. He used to sell exclusively to the Pool but, as Sandy says, “loyalty is a luxury you can’t afford.”
As familiar infrastructure disappears with the loss of elevators and rail lines, it’s harder to keep shopping at the co-op grocery store rather than an urban superstore or to haul to the Pool if it can’t match a competitor’s price.
