WAWOTA, Sask. — As John Husband popped popcorn for a winter evening snack recently, he tossed a few kernels of hulless barley into the hot oil just to see what would happen.
He ended up with tasty, crunchy kernels that he and his wife Carol are wondering if they should market.
Whether it’s new crops in the field or new concoctions in the kitchen, the experimentation never stops on this family farm in southeastern Saskatchewan.
Over the past five years, the Husbands have transformed a conventional mixed cattle and grain operation into a vertically integrated, organic food factory with customers in countries as far away as Korea.
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Each year the Husbands grow between 15 and 30 crops ranging from herbs to specialty beans to wheat. They process and package much of their own production, making it as consumer-ready, as possible. Then they sell at the farmgate, at trade shows and through international food brokers.
Their specialities include bags of Swedish Brown Beans, propagated from a handful of seeds handed from generation to generation since the Swedes first settled in Saskatchewan.
And there is Moose Mountain Soup Mix — a rich combination of beans, lentils and herbs — blends of herbs for soup, or herbal teas for sipping. The list seems endless because it is always evolving.
“There’s so many different herbs … I start blending and it’s wonderful,” said Carol, who develops her own recipes.
It all started when they decided to sell their registered Polled Hereford herd five years ago to cut down on the workload.
“What a joke,” laughs Carol.
The couple had always practised low-input agriculture, using a pasture and crop land rotation to keep their fertilizer and herbicide needs minimal.
While that went against the conventional wisdom of maximizing yields, “I wasn’t interested in the growth line, I was interested in the bottom line,” John said.
Soon after getting out of cattle, they decided to switch the farm entirely to organic production, citing economic, environmental and health concerns. That prompted a fundamental shift in how they approached the business of farming.
“Before, I guess I never really thought about marketing,” John said. “Basically, you just hauled the grain to the elevator and took what they offered you.
“Now we have to hustle and look for markets.”
That regularly brings them face to face with the users of their products. It’s a process they’ve found enlightening.
“We’re not trying to educate the consumer, we are looking at the consumer and trying to educate ourselves,” said John.
As a result, the end-use characteristics of the products they grow are now just as important as production factors such as early maturity: “For us, it’s not the yield test, it’s the taste test,” Carol said.
They’ve found consumers are showing a keen interest in organic products. But it’s not only because they are chemical free.
Under standards approved by Organic Crop Improvement Association — a certifying agency recognized in 14 countries — organic foods must be traceable to the grower. That gives the consumer a direct link to the farm, rekindling the connection many miss after generations of urban living.
Carol believes that is an important reason for farmers to become directly involved in value-added processing. It also pays better.
“People say they only get four cents from a loaf of bread — well, turn that around,” she said. There are 96 cents waiting for farmers to tap.
The Husbands have taken lentils, worth 20 cents a pound at the peak of the mass market, and sold them for five times that price by putting them in a plastic bag as part of a soup mix.
Their big-gest frustration is trying to work within the confines of the marketing and support structures already in place. They haven’t joined crop insurance or the Gross Revenue Insurance Plan, although they did sign up for the Net Income Stabilization Account.
“We are trying to be as independent as possible,” John said.
As much as their crop rotations will allow, they avoid grains they have to sell through the Canadian Wheat Board.
“It was at one time designed to have equal opportunity,” said Carol. “Now it is designed to have equality, and there’s a difference.”
As producers of the product, the Husbands believe they are the ones who can sell it best.
