BOWMANVILLE, Ont. – It is a delicate issue but Anna Bragg wanted a visitor to know so he would not think he was seeing a farm run by a husband and wife team.
It would be a farm run by business partners Barry, Anna and Mark Bragg, she said.
Last year, Barry and Anna separated after 22 years of marriage. She moved to town.
“But we keep working together because we like and respect each other and because I don’t want to do anything that would mean Barry would lose the farm,” said Anna, 48, president of the Ontario Corn Producers’ Association.
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Later, she fretted that talking openly about the end of the marriage could be hurtful to 44-year-old Barry and son Mark, 21, and could give a wrong impression about family discord.
She need not have worried.
An interview with Anna about the eastern Ontario farm that has been in the Bragg family for more than 150 years is a family affair.
Bruce and Mark are on hand to talk about their commitment to survive, their diversification efforts to reduce dependence on low-priced corn and the decision to work together to keep the farm in the family.
They talk about other farms in the neighborhood that had to be sold
after bitter divorces.
“Could you have paid me off?” Anna asked Barry.
“You couldn’t do it.”
“We’d make it work,” chimed in Mark, who became the seventh-generation Bragg involved in the farm when he was given a 20 percent share of Fosten Farms last year after returning home from the University of Guelph.
“We put our differences aside when we work here and we respect one another,” added Anna.
She also recalled the day in 1984 when they were taking over the farm and Barry’s parents wanted her to sign a pre-marriage contract to make sure the farm was not part of any
future break-up package. Barry rejected the idea.
“He trusted me then,” she said, smiling at her business partner and former husband.
Not many years ago, the Braggs
operated a typical Ontario corn farm and kept a herd of cattle. They sold the cattle and raised pigs but then decided to move out of livestock altogether.
As they headed into the 1990s, the farm still was largely dependent on bulk sales of corn, with its volatile price.
“We were selling corn and they were taking it, cleaning it, bagging it and making money,” said Barry.
Added Anna: “Meanwhile, we couldn’t pay our bills.”
So the family began to cut out the middleman, to clean, bag and sell some of their own grain.
They also created the Bragg Wild Bird Seed business that makes a variety of bird seed products. What they cannot grow, they buy, including up to 125 tonnes of grain each year from the Prairies.
On their own land – 136 acres owned and 544 rented an hour’s drive east of Toronto – annual seeding plans can include hard spring wheat, barley, peas, soybeans, sunflowers, corn and whatever else they decide to try.
What isn’t sold as commercial corn is mixed and rolled into bird seed.
“Right now, I’d say the seed business is carrying the farm,” said Mark.
The Braggs are nothing if not inventive in promoting their bird seed. They sponsor locals sports teams, run photo contests and various promotions. But the most amazing promotion is the annual homing pigeon race.
Every spring, they take in homing pigeons from across North America as boarders and hire a pigeon trainer. Owners can have their birds filmed during summer training and then view the video on the internet.
On Labor Day weekend, the owners are invited to a barbecue at the Bragg farm to collect their birds. Overnight, the birds are driven 457 kilometres east at St. Jerome, Que., where they are released at 7 a.m. for the flight back to Bowmanville.
The first birds appear in the eastern sky nine to 10 hours later.
The owner of the first bird to return wins $10,000 from the proceeds of the fees paid by owners for their birds’ housing and training over the summer. Second place wins $2,500.
“Last year, there was just one second between the first and second birds,” said Barry. “It was amazing.”
The Braggs also work off-farm to supplement on-farm income. They do custom seeding and harvesting on neighboring farms and Anna maintains a private practice as a nurse, offering alternatives such as reflexology and touch therapy.
Barry sells eggs from a small flock of chickens he keeps as a hobby and he always is on the lookout for lucrative new crops: “Right now, I’m looking at a soybean identity-preserved system that offers a premium for product.”
Anna operates the computers that keep track of farm inventories, sales and accounts.
On top of all that, she has found more time being devoted to farm politics through the corn producers’ association, the Canada Grains Council and other coalitions.
“For all of us, this is a seven-day-a-week job,” she said.
Talk of her role as leader of the corn producers’ lobby leads her to raise the perception Ontario farmers are hostile to prairie farm aid.
“We are very sympathetic to the problems on the Prairies but we also believe Ontario farmers have problems and we have not been getting our fair share of government help,” she said.
“I am in no way anti-West or unsympathetic, but I also have to defend the interests of my farmers. As you can see, we work hard here for what we have too.”
