LUMSDEN, Sask. – Wayne and Rebecca Gienow probably inherited everything about their market garden except the garden itself – that they had to work for.
What the 30-something couple from Lumsden, Sask., inherited from their families was a love of growing vegetables for a living. Both sets of parents ran market gardens in the district and the couple met while working on a produce patch owned by Wayne’s uncle.
What they worked hard to build was the thriving Lincoln Gardens, today the largest market garden in the Lumsden portion of the Qu’Appelle Valley northwest of Regina.
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But it didn’t start out that way.
In 1987, when Wayne was 20 and Rebecca was 22, they made a grown-up decision, leasing the store of a deteriorating market garden and renting four fields from neighboring farms, including Wayne’s father.
“I know when we first got started, people thought we were crazy, that we would never do it,” said Wayne.
There were probably days when they thought so, too.
“Those first few years were hard because we didn’t have the equipment we needed,” said Rebecca.
“We were moving pipe all the time. Everything was difficult.”
Because they only had two sets of irrigation pipes for four fields, they were constantly dismantling pipe, loading the pieces onto a trailer, hauling them down the road to the next field and putting the entire apparatus back together.
The drought summer of 1988 was the worst, when searing heat and cloudless skies forced them to move pipe night after night, sometimes until two in the morning.
“We just went constant. We had no pipe. It was just awful,” said Wayne. “That was the year we said, ‘enough of this. We have to get a better irrigation system.’ “
Over the next decade they gradually made their life less stressful, increasing their pipe supply from 1,200 metres to 24 kilometres.
But at the same time they began acquiring more fields, buying 26 acres – including the farm on which their store is located – and leasing another 100. The fields sprawl eight km away from their farm to the east and another eight to the west.
“It’s a lot of running around, but the benefit of that is that if you ever have a hailstorm, you aren’t going to get totally wiped out,” Wayne said.
“It would be next to impossible.”
The Gienows grow about every vegetable one could imagine, and some fruit as well.
“Start from beans and go right up to watermelon,” Wayne said. “From B to W. Everything but pineapples and mangoes.”
The amount that they grow is staggering.
It takes 10 people picking every day during cucumber season to keep up with demand, eventually plucking 18 tonnes of dill cukes out of the fields.
The farm sells 113 tonnes of pumpkins in a season and transplants 200,000 cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli plants into the fields every spring.
Some of this bounty is sold to people who place orders ahead of time, but most is sold at their store, which is a bustling place in the summer.
It opens in early July and doesn’t close until the end of October.
“When the last pumpkin is sold, we quit,” Wayne said.
From the end of July to after the Labor Day weekend in September, the busiest day is Sunday, with three tills running nonstop from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
While the store and the Regina Farmers Market keep Rebecca hopping, Wayne is busy supervising the field work.
Once the crops are either direct seeded or transplanted from the Gienows’ 465 sq. metres of greenhouses, there are weeds to battle. Some of the crops can be cultivated, but others need an old-fashioned approach.
“If you’re doing carrots, onions, beets, you’re on your hands and knees picking them (weeds) out one at a time,” said Wayne. “There’s gazillions of them.”
It takes 10 people three weeks to make two passes through the fields doing this back-breaking job.
There are also flea beetles to spray and irrigation to watch. Wayne hires two people to take care of the water alone, which is the lifeblood of the operation. It’s pumped out of the Qu’Appelle River, which snakes through the valley.
Lots of labor
The farm uses four seeders, six tractors and six irrigation pumps. Last August there were 45 people on the payroll. The couple has also received help from their families, especially their parents.
This busy life seems to suit them, but Wayne said, “the one thing I don’t like is that you can’t take summer holidays. You can’t go camping or go up north. You can only take holidays in the winter.”
That’s their only complaint. They enjoy the variety of jobs and especially the opportunity to work with customers. Wayne said he wouldn’t want to do this job if he was growing vegetables strictly for wholesalers.
“It’s almost more like we’re in the service industry than running a farm.”
They are managing to get away from the farm more these days. This past year Rebecca spent the winter in Quebec visiting friends and learning the language.
After living in trailers for the first few years, they renovated the little house that came with the farm. Today, it is a cheery, open home with lots of plants, music and light. A dog and a cat wander in and out.
The Gienows never stop thinking about the future. There are always more fields to buy and irrigation pipe to lay. Rebecca would like to eventually expand the store, maybe putting in a juice bar, or sell pizza with fresh fruit.
“There’s endless ideas, but it takes time,” Wayne said. “There’s only so much you can do yourself.”
