GLADSTONE, Man. – Garth Jarvis wraps a generous beef roast with string as effortlessly as tying a shoelace.
He sets a quick pace, matched by Marjorie Jarvis and four staffers in the cutting room.
Together, they make short work of a side of beef, accompanied by the constant ring of the phone, an electronic bing-bong announcing customers at the door, and the whine of the breaking saw going through meat and bone.
For the past 15 years, Garth and Marjorie Jarvis have poured their lives into building up the butcher shop that bears their name on the main street of this busy farm town.
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Running a 70-cow herd and small feedlot on a section of land in nearby Firdale is something they do to relax.
“They say a change of pace is just as good a rest,” said Garth, 44.
A hired man keeps the farm running smoothly, but the Jarvises pitch in during calving, haying and weekends, doing about a third of the work.
“The farm is a real calming effect,” said Marjorie, 40.
After spending some time in their hectic shop, it’s not hard to see why farming seems relatively idyllic.
This bustling business has no room for slackers. This year, they will make steaks, chops, burgers, sausages and jerky from about 1,800 head of cattle, hogs, fallow deer and bison, estimated Marjorie.
And that doesn’t include the 30,000 pounds of wild game sausage she stuffed during the past two months, nor the wild boar, emu and ostrich brought in by customers.
At the shop, on the farm, and at home, Garth and Marjorie put in hard, long hours side by side.
“It has its trying times,” she admits.
Small-town grocery stores have always been a part of Garth’s life. As a boy in Carberry, Man., he delivered groceries on his bicycle for the local grocer and later stocked shelves.
Working the meat counter seemed like the next step, he recalled. In 1974, he took a butcher course at a Winnipeg college and used his training to work in other stores. Marjorie was a hairdresser.
“Then I decided I wanted something on my own,” said Garth.
They traveled through Manitoba and Saskatchewan to find the right meat shop. They liked the one in Gladstone off the bat, but waited five years to save money to buy it.
Marjorie thought she would do the books and work the front counter. But over time, she learned all facets of the business, aside from what goes on in the small abattoir on the outskirts of town.
“I’m sexist. That’s not women’s work,” she said.
At first, they focused on custom-processing for farmers, and selling some fresh meat in their store.
But they had trouble finding finished cattle for the retail end of their business. At the time, most cattle in the auction mart were sold as feeders.
That’s why they bought a farm. Today, about a third of the beef they sell in their store is their own. The rest comes from a couple of local farmers.
Controlling production from farmgate to plate adds risk to their butcher business, said Garth. Losing an animal or a hay crop adds expenses he can’t recover.
But there are also rewards.
“Anytime you can eliminate a middleman, you’re going to make more money yourself,” he said.
Over the past 15 years, the Jarvises have twice expanded as they diversified into different products. Sausages and jerky have been a big hit.
“We didn’t ever figure it would expand this big,” said Garth.
Name a sausage spice or ingredient and it’s probably found in Marjorie’s packed-to-the-rafters spice room.
Entrepreneurial spirit once led the Jarvises to put on a spread for 600 hunters at a big game trophy night in Winnipeg. Since then, from as far north as Thompson, hunters bring their deer, elk, moose, bear and geese to be made into sausage, jerky and other products.
Garth said wild game customers tend to be adventurous in their sausage tastes. “They’ll try anything once,” he said.
But all customers have changed their tastes in meat cuts over the past 15 years. Demand for large roasts has plummeted, while barbecues get fired up all year round.
Today, people don’t think twice about shopping far from home to catch a sale, said Marjorie. When she and Garth get out to larger towns, they always check out meat counters and frequently run into sheepish customers.
Everyday prices at Jarvis Meats are usually cheaper than at the big chain grocery stories, said Garth. But he can’t match loss-leaders or sales based on volume discounts.
Large grocery chains also tend to lure employees away with higher wages, said Garth. He’s proud of butchers he trained who now manage big operations.
Yet it’s frustrating to invest time in employees when the average stay is five years. And it’s harder and harder to find good staff like their current crew of nine who will work 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. during fall, the store’s peak season.
Children Kelsey, 15, and Ryan, 12, now help out at the store and on the farm. While the Jarvises try to get away with their kids one weekend a year, they wish they had more time to spend with them.
Yet, the Jarvises feel they are starting to be recognized for their hard work and business savvy.
Their meat and sausages have won accolades in several competitions. And Marjorie was named to the board of directors of the Food Development Centre in Portage la Prairie, Man., a provincial government agency.
This year, the original mortgage on the business gets retired. However, the Jarvises have reinvested much of their returns back into expansions and new, expensive equipment, like a sausage machine.
“It’s like buying a new combine on a farm,” said Garth.
What happens next to their business is hard to foretell. They are part of a group of small- to medium-sized meat processors trying to get the federal government to make changes to a proposed national meat inspection system.
Without changes, the Jarvises would have to build a new abattoir and make costly cosmetic upgrades to their shop.
To justify the changes, they would have to increase volumes, and perhaps get into marketing their own brand of meat across a much broader trading area.
Garth and Marjorie would likely have to spend less time doing hands-on work, and more time managing an even larger staff. They say they would prefer to ease themselves into the changes rather than being forced to adapt by a deadline. But rising above challenges are nothing new for Jarvis Meats.
“You have to have the desire to want to succeed,” said Garth. “You’ve got to ride the ups and downs.”
