DELISLE, Sask. – When Brian Beznoska was a boy, 50 kilometres was the farthest his minor hockey team had to travel to play another town.
Today, his nine-year-old son Riley sometimes has to travel more than an hour to find a team to play.
There just aren’t as many children in the countryside as there used to be. For Beznoska and his wife Jackie, this reflects what’s happening in agriculture.
Another example is the number of school buses that service their area. It used to be three, now it’s two.
Read Also
Agriculture ministers agree to AgriStability changes
federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
“We’ve still got exactly the same neighbours we had when we moved out here, but our numbers on the bus (are down,)” Jackie said.
“Everyone has their own seat, that’s for sure.”
Added Brian: “I’m 40 and there might be a handful of guys younger than I am that are still farming.”
The Beznoskas may be adding to this problem in a few years. They are raising three children – Victoria, 12, Megan, 10 and Riley, 9 – on their 1,300 acre grain farm 10 kilometres northeast of Delisle and 50 km east of Saskatoon. But Brian and Jackie aren’t sure they will encourage their children to stay home and farm when they grow up.
“Personally, I don’t know if I really want my kids to go into farming the way agriculture is today,” Brian said, “because it is a struggle, and you look around and you see other people who seem to be doing quite well and not having to put themselves through the stress with Mother Nature and dealing with so many uncontrollable things.”
It’s obvious that Brian and Jackie don’t regret their decision to stay on the farm instead of moving to the city.
Brian was raised just south of where he lives now, growing up on the farm that his great-grandfather homesteaded in 1903. His father died when he was 16 and he and a brother took over the farm.
Jackie’s grandfather homesteaded in the Vanscoy area east of Delisle. She and Brian met in high school and were married in 1982. That was also the year they built a home in the yard where Brian’s great-uncle farmed.
Brian’s brother stopped farming in 1991 and Brian and Jackie have been on their own ever since.
She has a full-time job with the Royal Bank in Delisle and watching Brian farm on his own is one of the things that bothers her most about their lifestyle.
“Brian is home all day by himself when I’m at work, and if he needs equipment moved, he has to figure out how to do it himself, and if I phone him and there’s no answer, of course you’re worrying, until you can finally get a hold of him, that he’s not laying beside the swather or something.”
For Brian, this is all he ever wanted to do. He grew up on a mixed farm, and while some of his siblings enjoyed working with the animals, he preferred the machinery and the crops.
It’s not a surprise, then, to drive into a tidy farmyard that doesn’t have corrals, manure piles or haystacks.
This year he’s growing canaryseed, canola, lentils, peas and hard red spring wheat. He takes pride in his work. The yard is neat with equipment tucked into the machine shed.
He used to farm 50-50 crop-summerfallow. That eventually became
1/3-2/3 and in 1996 he began continuous cropping and direct seeding.
It’s his way of expanding without buying more land.
He has no regrets.
“I don’t feel like I wish I had done something else,” he said.
“You go out there and you’re doing the best job you possibly can to get the best yields and everything else, and it’s just the way farmers are. You try to better yourself, better your production, and that gets you satisfaction.”
But Brian and Jackie don’t pretend everything is perfect.
Brian wishes they didn’t have to live what he calls two lifestyles. Jackie has her job in town and Brian services and installs neon signs in Saskatoon in the winter.
“We’d be farming a lot better if we didn’t have to have two or three jobs.”
He said he also can’t help feeling that Canada is turning its back on farmers.
“You feel like you’re not being appreciated. We’re producing food and it just seems like there’s not any support there.”
Jackie said the optimism that accompanied them when they started farming is beginning to fade.
“Brian would tell me every year that he thinks farming is going to get better. Every year,” she said.
“And this year, he said, ‘I don’t think it’s going to change.’ “
But Brian is determined to remain optimistic as long as he can.
“You want to try to look and find some bright spots. You keep reading the doom and gloom stories and eventually it brings you down, too, so you have to look at the bright side.”
For the Beznoskas, the bright side is enjoying what they do.
Jackie said: “I was leaving for work and he was going to check the crops and he said, ‘That’s what I enjoy the most, is watching it grow.’ So you get your enjoyment out of it that way, I guess.”
Brian added: “It is a great life. But when you think about the investment you have with the machinery and the land, and what the return is at the end of the year, it’s not very great.”
Both of them realize that someday they might not be able to do this any more.
“Knowing when to get out is the big thing,” Brian said. “Hopefully, you could get out before things got bad.”
But even if their life comes to that, they know they would stay in the countryside where they have built a sense of community.
Jackie sits on the Delisle Figure Skating Club executive and on the local Roman Catholic church parish council.
Brian is on Delisle’s minor hockey board and local school board and has managed Riley’s hockey team. The children spend their winters in Delisle’s rink.
They’ve both lived in the city and didn’t like it.
“We’d stay out here and have our jobs,” Brian said. And then, as if he can’t help himself, he added: “And farm.”
