ACME, Alta. – When an Alberta law forced Richard Ruchkall out of national farm politics two years ago, he intended to return home and run the family’s turkey barns while his wife went back to school.
That lasted two weeks.
“I was soaring with the eagles and I couldn’t work with the turkeys anymore,” he said recently during an interview at his family’s home near Acme.
Ruchkall had joined the Alberta Turkey Producers’ board in 1993 and eventually moved to the Canadian Turkey Marketing Agency. When he became chair of the national organization in 2000, he also acquired a seat on the Canadian Federation of Agriculture board, which introduced Ruchkall to a new level of politics.
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He was spending a lot of time in Ottawa, rubbing shoulders with federal cabinet ministers, immersing himself in World Trade Organization negotiations and travelling the globe on CFA business.
He was in his element.
But time was running out because of a law back in Alberta that limited marketing board members to two three-year terms. He had already received one extension, but by 2002, his life in the fast lane was drawing to a close. If he couldn’t sit on the provincial agency’s board, he couldn’t represent it at the national agency. And without that springboard, he couldn’t be part of the CFA.
He didn’t go down without a fight.
“I actually wrote (Alberta premier) Ralph Klein a letter and I quoted him out of a newspaper article … that said, ‘you know, I’ll remain premier of this province as long as people vote for me,’ and … I said, ‘how come, as a person that lives in Alberta, how come I don’t have the same right as you?’ I was never satisfied with the answers I got back from them.”
Ruchkall decided to make the most of his predicament. His wife Monique had been looking after their two turkey farms – Morninglory Turkey Farm and Acme Poultry – while he had been away and the couple decided he would now stay at home and run the farms while she studied in Calgary to be an acupuncturist.
The plan soon derailed.
“I had had a taste of something else that excited me,” he said.
“I didn’t want to do this no more.”
The Ruchkalls called a family meeting with their daughters Amanda and Megan and discovered that while the girls loved living in the country, they had no interest in farming.
With that decision made, they put the farms up for sale and set a deadline of Sept. 1, 2003. When the deadline passed, they put only their quota on the sales block and sold it all in two days.
It proved to be a blessing in disguise because it allowed the Ruchkalls to continue living on their farmyard 21/2 kilometres west of Acme.
But the process wasn’t easy.
“We toyed with it for a while,” Monique said.
“We thought, ‘what’s the right thing to do? Are we doing it for the right reasons? What are the reasons?’ It was gruelling.”
The family had a party in the barn that Christmas when the last flock was shipped out. They broke out the champagne and said goodbye to 18 years of turkey farming.
“It was tough to say, ‘let’s go to the next chapter of our lives,’ ” Monique said. “It was tough.”
January and February were especially difficult.
“There were tears,” Richard said.
“It was that hard because we had left one lifestyle that we were accustomed to for another lifestyle.”
Richard took a job as director of business development with Pinnacle Nutrition, a Manitoba poultry feed company.
His excitement about the new position is palpable when he starts talking about it. The dark days of last winter are behind them.
“I’ve found my stride and I just can’t wipe the smile off my face,” he said.
“My wife, Monique, is doing well. Things are good with the school. Her marks are exemplary. She’s honour roll. It’s doctor stuff she’s taking. She impresses me all to heck.”
While Monique continues her studies in holistic medicine, Richard is following another dream.
As a teenager in Manitoba, he had been interested in drama but gave it up for football because at the time it seemed more gender appropriate. Soon after he stepped down as chair of the Canadian Turkey Marketing Agency, he returned to that dream and signed up for acting classes in Calgary.
He has been in one television commercial, landed a walk-on role in a movie shot in Calgary and was featured in a national magazine advertising campaign.
As well, Ottawa came knocking this year when the federal Liberal party approached him about running in this spring’s election. He gave it serious consideration but in the end declined.
“I lost the popular vote at home,” he said, referring to his family’s ambivalence to that kind of a career change.
Their success in navigating from one lifestyle to another has proved one thing to the Ruchkalls.
“There is life after turkeys,” Richard said.
