YORKTON, Sask. – Rural Saskatchewan has given Steve Sanders opportunities he never could have realized in the big city.
The Burlington, Ont., native is now growing Prairie Dome elite seed potatoes and operating a 10-acre U-pick strawberry and saskatoon patch with several partners, including his wife Catrina, her sister Tonia Vermette and their parents Elwyn and Marie Vermette. Other partners include Tonia’s mate Kirk Flaman and Vaughn Cross.
After completing university degrees and travelling, the Sanders, now both age 33, took a hard look at farming south of Yorkton as a viable career choice.
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“We recognized a good thing when we saw it,” said Steve.
He came into the family business with just one summer in a gardening centre as his related job experience. Today he is president of the Saskatchewan Seed Potato Growers Association.
The couple’s years spent living in the East showed them the difficulty in affording a comfortable home and lifestyle.
By contrast, Steve said Saskatchewan offers them room to grow crops over five quarters of land, to be their own boss without punching a time clock and to learn new things.
Steve can expose his two children to the family’s livelihood daily and enjoy a richly landscaped yard a five-minute walk from the potato sheds. Their land is full of the fruits and vegetables they grow for themselves as well as sell to others.
An added bonus is their unique multi-level geodesic dome home built in the 1970s by the Vermettes, who now live in a lakefront home in Saltcoats, Sask.
Tonia, an artist, and Kirk, a former teacher, are building a similar home on the family farm. Cross lives in Yorkton.
Steve helps out with the fruit operation where needed but does not play as active a role as the Vermettes.
“It’s not really my calling,” he said.
He expects Catrina’s role to increase there once their youngest daughter enters school this fall.
Catrina manages the office, does the books, handles orders and works in the U-pick wherever needed.
Marie oversees management of the labour intensive patch. She launched the orchards to put her children through university and today applies the same strategy to the handful of workers they hire at busy times.
The orchards use chicken manure from barns across the highway and grass is grown between the saskatoon bushes to create a park-like setting for pickers. They hand pick weeds to avoid the use of chemicals and fence the orchard to keep wildlife out. Mulch is used for winter cover and to keep the fruit clean and the ground moist.
They maintain links with the industry through involvement with the Prairie Fruit Growers Association, said Catrina, who noted their next foray could be sour cherries this fall.
An irrigation project is also in the works for the potatoes, as is a move into grain farming.
The family rents out potato fields not in production but Steve would like to capitalize on opportunities for high yielding grain crops in the nutrient-rich fields.
Last year’s grain harvest yielded 54 bushels per acre, with just 50 millimetres of rain. The potatoes are also periodically used in a rotation with strawberries.
“We don’t want to grow any bigger, so we’re looking at diversification,” Catrina said.
Making connections with buyers, growers and brokers, and attending trade shows are important to Steve and are reasons for being involved in various potato grower groups.
“The potato industry is like the Wild West for open markets. Every connection you can make makes it that much easier.”
Representing Saskatchewan in Ottawa, Steve makes sure medium-sized potato growers are not overlooked and their voice is heard.
Steve was encouraged to join by Elwyn, who served on a committee of the Saskatchewan Vegetable Growers that spawned the SSPGA.
“Somebody has to do something,” Elwyn said.
“You can’t just produce a commodity and say ‘come and get it.’ You have to organize an industry to succeed and sustain the viability and credibility of the industry.”
Markets and prices are poor for seed potatoes due to excess production last year in North America. Potatoes that sold as high as $350 per ton in previous years are now selling for $200 a ton. Russets are at $60 a ton but were up to $300 last year.
Their markets are mainly in Manitoba and the United States, where the tubers are shipped by the semi load. They also sell seed potatoes by the bag to stores and customers coming to the farm and by mail order. Culled potatoes are sold to wild boar farms.
Steve’s production was down last year due to dry conditions. That was a blessing in disguise for their business, said Steve, who noted strong potato yields in North America led to overproduction.
“Ten percent overproduction leads to 50 percent price reduction,” he said.
In addition to fluctuating prices, Steve said seed potato growers also face risks in crop establishment years. They buy about 25,000 tissue cultures or starter potatoes from a grower near Saskatoon. They are grown out in a field, harvested, then replanted the next year to become the elite grade potatoes they market.
“It’s a real risk,” said Steve, who noted there is no insurance for the establishment year.
Growing high-end elite potatoes a distance from growers and markets actually helps lessen that risk, he said.
“We are so isolated, we have to be offering something worth coming to get,” he said.
Producing numerous varieties also spreads the risk around, so that there will always be some types that produce well.
Sharing the workload among all partners is also central to Prairie Dome’s continued success, said Steve.
Cross, a mechanic, helped design the potato sorting and bagging equipment he works on with Steve and Kirk this day, while Tonia, Elwyn and Marie plant new strawberry plants in an adjacent field.
Elwyn and Marie are pleased to share their expertise with the younger farmers and pass along the business.
“If we sell it, it’s just gone,” Marie said.
Steve credited his in-laws with enabling the younger partners to learn the ropes under their guidance while letting them take on more of the responsibility at the same time.
“If we didn’t have that, it wouldn’t happen,” he said.
This gradual transfer has also allowed the partners to avoid capital gains tax, maintain their reputation as longtime potato growers and sustain a lifestyle in rural Saskatchewan.
“We aren’t looking to expand and not looking to become millionaires, but just to keep it simple,” said Steve.
“There’s always someone who cares that is doing the work,” he said. “We get dirty; that gives us the competitive edge with the final product that we put out.”
