BLAINE LAKE, Sask. – It is clear that Don and Brenda Chevaldayoff have good taste.
With its family-designed four-year-old pink stuccoed house set in professionally landscaped grounds, theirs is not a typical farmyard.
Nor did Brenda take a typical route to the farm. Although she was born in the district, her family lived in Saskatoon while their father farmed.
Brenda was a city gal who ran a modeling agency for seven years before meeting Don at a church event. They eventually married and moved to his grain farm, but it took Brenda four years to adjust.
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“I even wore high heels out here,” she said.
Today her blue denim shorts and tank top are proof that she has settled in.
“I said my nails would always be done and my makeup on. That’s not practical. I think blue jeans are a necessity on the farm.”
Brenda has become an advocate for farmers, often phoning a local
radio talk show.
Last year’s Christmas card is a photograph of the family with packed suitcases, ready to leave, with piles of grain in the background and signs protesting society’s disregard for who grows the food.
That drew lots of comments from relatives and friends who received the card, said Brenda, who adds that “all farms are in crisis. If grain prices are low, it affects everybody.”
For Dan, the farm has always been home. He took over from his dad in 1984 and now owns or rents 3,000 acres and custom farms another 1,500. The crops are late so swathing will start in late August, he said.
This year the Chevaldayoffs are growing hard red and prairie spring wheats and conventional canola. They’re also trying peas for the first time.
“I don’t do harvest. I do meals,” said Brenda. She does five or six dishwasher loads during harvest after cooking the meals from scratch. But her son Daris helps Dan in the fields along with the hired man.
Daris is going into Grade 12. After graduation he plans to attend university and study agriculture and science.
“We’re trying to gear (him) to a stable career,” said his mom. Then he will have options besides farming.
Brenda said that when she ran her agency, she was a busy single mom and missed seeing Daris’s younger years. She is not making the same mistake with daughter Clearisha, 7.
“I don’t want to work full time and miss the kid’s life. I don’t believe a woman should leave her child to go to work.”
Four years ago, when the Chevaldayoffs were planning their new house with its large open-concept rooms, Brenda designed a formal living room with white rug, walls and furniture.
However, she concedes it may not be practical because of the wood-burning fireplace and location off the kitchen.
Dan also thinks they should have made the bright, east-facing kitchen and office area bigger, since most visitors end up there.
That’s when they are not outside around the firepit or in the hot tub room surrounded by mementos of travels to Mexico and Hawaii.
The new home is quite a change from the original farmyard that is depicted in three photographs hanging on the wall and dating from 1960.
The modern farmyard has 1,500 trees planted in shelterbelts that were nonexistent 40 years ago.
The farmland is summerfallowed less, direct seeding is more common, and deer, coyotes and birds are more abundant than they were during Dan’s childhood.
“My dad had livestock but he got out of cattle before I got into it. We have no pasture land now.”
Dan follows prices through a satellite service and finds markets outside the Canadian Wheat Board for about half of his crops. He sells grain to Alberta feedlots and hauls to Cargill, Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, Pioneer and Louis Dreyfus.
In the past, he was a pool member and appreciated the personal service, but his local elevator is closing in two months and now he goes where the best prices and programs are offered.
Dan hopes prices increase soon because all farmers will have trouble if grain stays cheap for more than a couple of years. He is not a member of a farm lobby group but stays aware of the issues and plans to vote in the wheat board elections this fall.
He is a patient man, always finding yard work to do, machinery to fix, bins to check or grain to haul.
Out checking the blooming canola, Dan confesses he would never have been happy in Brenda’s original milieu. He prefers the privacy and serenity of the farm.
“In the city everyone knows what you do.”
