Ken young is a farmer, as well as a friend of the petroleum industry.
He says he works in the southeastern Saskatchewan oil patch “to support my farming habit.”
He’s done that for 23 years, sometimes making more money from farming and sometimes more from his off-farm job.
Young farms 12 quarters of land near Alameda with his brother, who also works in the oil industry. They follow in the footsteps of their father and uncle.
There have been oil wells on Young property for 44 years and the family has benefitted from both the surface lease and off-farm income.
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Giving up five or six acres out of 12 quarters is not a hardship, Young said.
“We’re compensated very well for what we’ve had to put up with in farming,” he said. “You get paid for the whole lease but you can farm it when it is reclaimed.”
Few acres have been left unproductive because of salt water or oil spills.
For Young, co-existence is a question of attitude.
As an oil field employee, he said good housekeeping and communication are key. “We’ve always found that if you look after your leases, you have a real good working relationship.”
Young works for 10 different companies as a contract battery operator. He spends six to seven hours each day at the job while his semi-retired father does the farm work that makes it possible for his son to work off-farm.
He said income from work in the oil industry has allowed many farmers to keep farming. Farmers who own their mineral rights are in a better situation because they earn both royalties and surface leases.
“When farming took a downturn in the Eighties, everybody wanted wells,” Young said. “People were jealous of their neighbors who had them.”
