LOVE, Sask. — Imagine vacuuming for 10 hours, clearing out every kernel and dust bunny from a three-level building chockfull of metal corkscrew parts, wire screens, wooden trays and velvet rollers.
That’s what Art Russell must do five times a winter at his custom seed cleaning plant near Love, Sask.
Before Art, his son Tim and hired hands switch to different seed varieties, they must work their way through a lengthy cleaning checklist. That includes a thorough flushing of the auger that brings the seed into the tall skinny red plant towering over the farmhouse.
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Between October and April, the plant services an area within 160 kilometres of their grain farm.
The cleaning process begins near the roof with the scalper that takes out the chaff and partial heads. Then the grain falls into an indent that separates by length and through a sieve machine, which separates by width and uses air suction to lift off the lighter stuff. Then it heads straight to the Carter discs, down to the precision grater for more width separation and finally, the end of the line, at the gravity table. Here seed is further separated by weight.
The Russells’s cleaning list is only one of numerous meticulously kept records they maintain. Art pulls out a book of maps charting what he grew on every quarter every year since he acquired the farm in 1975.
“You have to have a good paper trail,” he said.
Both Tim and Art are licensed operators, certified and accredited by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Their meticulousness paid off this past year, when they won numerous awards for their Hokuo timothy pedigreed seed at both Agribition in Regina and the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto.
“It makes me feel good,” Art said.
He acknowledged the exposure that comes with awards is good for his business, which relies on word-of-mouth, and for his supplier, Newfield Seeds of Nipawin, which entered the seed in competitions.
He and his wife Pat joked the $1,000 prize was more than they made from the crop.
Typically, the Russell day begins at 8 a.m. with a meeting around the coffee pot, planning the day’s work as the machines are turned on and warmed up. The plant office is heated but not the plant itself, with power costs hovering around $280 a month.
They keep the machines running through lunch, which Pat brings out each day. She also regularly runs seed
samples to a lab in Nipawin.
Like Art, she is meticulous about her sprawling home office off the kitchen, wiping away specks and concealing metres of paper files in cupboards draped in deep blue curtains.
With a certificate in accounting and a background in banking, she manages the books, while Tim and Art keep the seed and crop records that are critically important for crop rotations. The family also uses a lawyer and accountant.
The Russells get help from one or two hired hands in the winter, relying on their family the rest of the year.
They came here from Nipawin with Angela, now 28 and Tim, 26. They were looking for a quarter section and found a better deal on a farm.
“I don’t know if I could ever move back to town,” said Pat, originally from Watson, Sask.
A lack of water made cattle impossible. Art’s diploma in agriculture and previous work as a federal plant product inspector seemed a good fit with seed cleaning, which also gave them weekends off in the winters. The plant operates from 8 to 5 weekdays.
“He had a wife who didn’t want to be here 12 months of the year,” said Pat.
Holidays, however, are rare — maybe a day or two to take in farm shows.
They once farmed and shared machinery with Art’s brothers and father before they returned full time to their farms at Rosetown.
Competition comes from about a dozen area seed cleaners within 40 km and from non-licensed mobile services. The Russells charge 35 cents a bushel for cereals, based on gross weight, and 12.5 cents a pound for forages based on clean seed.
They shut the plant down in spring to concentrate on their 3,020 acres, where they
direct seed commercial and pedigreed wheat, peas and cereals and forages on contract.
The cleaning plant, worth a half million dollars to replace today, and a custom spraying business operated by Tim, were both created out of necessity.
“We expanded through the need to have more income. As things got tighter we had to take on different things to make ends meet,” said Art.
“We have to do all three businesses just to keep alive,” said Pat.
They find it’s cheaper to hire a truck than to haul themselves. They also forward-sell crops for the fall in order to get cash to cover spring input costs.
The Russells said their success comes from looking for untapped markets. They took on custom cleaning of alfalfa because no one else was doing that locally.
It also comes from determination and a willingness to change, with Art noting the switch to zero-till in the early 1990s.
A seed cleaner also has to like working with people and handle the hustle and bustle of as many as 10 trucks in the yard at once.
Their goal is to provide good service, said Tim: “If you keep them happy, you keep them coming back.”
Frustrations include the lack of government support of agriculture, the loss of rail lines and the cost of hauling 80 km away. Their closest elevator at Choiceland closed last year.
“We resent the United States, Europe sitting behind their farmers and our Canadian government isn’t putting the same amount forward,” said Art.
“We keep getting told to diversify. We have no more hours in the day.”
Tim hopes to make a life here with his fiancée, Wanda Maier, but is keeping his options open with a trucking licence, a pilot’s licence and the custom spraying business.
“I’m not tied down 100 percent to the farm,” he said. “You can shut the doors and walk away for the weekend.”
He also enjoys the slower pace in summer in a grain operation and “not being on the time schedule of a big corporation.” But there are also frustrations in being unable to set the price on their products.
“I don’t want a government handout, I want to get paid for the product I produce at a reasonable price.”
Tim plans to relocate from White Fox to his own home quarter one day, and hopes Art will stay involved in the family business for the foreseeable future.
“I’m getting to the age where I’m thinking he’s not so stupid any more, he knows a lot,” Tim said, grinning. “I don’t think it could be done without family input.”
