GARRICK, Sask. – In some ways the MacGregor farm may be unrecognizable from when it was first settled in the 1930s.
In other ways, little has changed.
The original farmhouse still sits on the property, along with a collection of other dilapidated buildings from that era. Robert MacGregor can’t bring himself to knock them down despite repeated pleas from his wife Julie.
“There is one or two days where the old house still has that grandpa and grandma smell that you can remember,” he said.
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There is a similar sense of nostalgia in the way the land is farmed.
As a recent organic convert, MacGregor grows crops like wheat and alfalfa using the same low-input methods employed by his father and grandfather in the early years on the farm.
But that’s where the similarities end.
Robert is forging a new path for the farm by growing crops the elder MacGregors never considered such as borage, spelt and hemp.
And instead of marketing the crops as food or feed, he is harvesting them for the seed market.
He may be the first of the MacGregor clan to implement such dramatic changes but he’s not the first to have thought about it as evidenced by a front-page story on diversification in a 1961 issue of the Family Herald newspaper he recently stumbled upon in the old farmhouse.
“We’ve been getting this message for a long time I guess,” said MacGregor, who seeded his first certified organic crop in 2000.
Boredom with conventional farming, the search for better returns and mounting health concerns all contributed to his decision to convert the 1,600 acre farm into an organic operation.
It hasn’t been an easy transition. Staying on top of the weeds and the summerfallow work can be overwhelming at times.
“Man, I don’t think I got off the tractor all summer,” said MacGregor, who has three children, two of whom still live at home.
Harvest is a whole new ball game as well.
He has vivid recollections of taking off his first hemp crop, spending four hours untangling what amounted to dental floss wrapped around the feeder chain drive of his combine with Julie’s steak knives.
All things considered, however, the change has been a good one, especially the decision to grow hemp, which is far and away the farm’s most lucrative crop. It accounted for two-thirds of his 2003 income. The 150 acres planted this spring will likely contribute an even bigger share to the 2004 bottom line. He knows farmers who are grossing $500 per acre growing it for the oilseed market.
MacGregor was surprised how well his hemp fared this year despite extremely difficult growing conditions in northeastern Saskatchewan.
Most crops in the area succumbed to the combination of an Aug. 14 hailstorm followed by an Aug. 20 frost. But MacGregor’s hemp survived nicely, despite an infestation of bertha armyworms.
It has germination levels between 88 and 90 percent, which meets the contract specifications with Terramax, a seed distribution company based in Qu’Appelle, Sask., that buys the majority of his hemp seed.
MacGregor attributed his good fortune to the northern vigor of the Finola semi-dwarf hemp he grows. He was also able to get good germination levels on his wheat despite most of it being feed.
But there were some disappointments this fall. MacGregor only harvested half a normal borage crop and as of Nov. 18 was still attempting to bring in a “disastrous” crop of red clover.
Farming is still a struggle and a risky business but these days it’s more fun than it used to be.
MacGregor is intellectually challenged by the daunting task of growing unfamiliar crops without the use of fertilizer and herbicides.
And while there is still plenty of financial stress, there is no more working with the sprayer, which he considered the worst job on the farm.
“It was the happiest day of my life when I parked that thing.”
His 78-year-old father Leonard, who still actively farms alongside his son, was also glad to get rid of the chemicals. But he has mixed feelings about going organic. In some ways it feels like it is taking a step backward.
“If your crop comes out nice and clean and then the weeds come in, you have to watch the weeds grow. That’s the way we farmed 40 years ago.”
