A post-harvest vacation from their grain farm helped give a farm couple the perspective and distance to make a decision
Carlyle, Sask. — A week after Trevor and Nickie Doty held their farm equipment sale they were on a flight to Mexico.
“Right now we’re sitting in the kitchen of our condo looking out at the Pacific Ocean. It is beautiful here. Our aches and pains are all gone,” said Trevor of Carlyle, Sask.
The couple’s retirement plans took solid form after they returned from a post-harvest vacation the year before. They were working on their year-end farm business accounts discussing retirement, when their accountant asked, what are you waiting for?
After their 28th crop and Trevor turning 55 this January, there really was no reason not to retire,
“Financially, we are in a good place and a close friend wanted to rent the land,” he said, adding one or two bad crop years could have changed their financial picture and maybe the option to retire.
A previous health scare for Nickie, their two daughters off the farm with their own careers and no one in the wings to take over the farm, retirement looked appealing.
“My tolerance for risk was starting to get to me,” said Trevor, who farmed 3,600 acres and owned 3,000 acres.
“With 3,000 acres, you are putting a million dollars in the ground every year, plus equipment costs and maintenance costs increasing. I am not going to miss that part of it any more. It is kind of nice to not write those big cheques or wonder if you are buying your fertilizer at the right time.”
After the family decided to quit farming and sell the equipment, Trevor promoted the farm sale on X and Facebook. A few people commented that it was a sad day that they would no longer farm.
“It is not sad. It is not like the ‘80s with forced auction sales,” he said.
“There was never any discussion that we have to keep doing this for as long as we can,” said Trevor, whose great grandfather homesteaded in the area in 1898. The couple live in the house built in 1915 by his great grandfather.
Next year will be the first time a Doty has not farmed the family land, but it is not a sad time, said Nickie.
“We never felt expected or put that pressure on ourselves to keep farming and don’t feel that from other people. Some farmers had said it is such a sad moment. We can’t see that. Yes, it is the end of an era. On the flip side, we’re so excited to have done it as long as we did and we lived the lifestyle for all those years and now we are going to do something different,” she said.
What Trevor won’t be doing is driving a combine or seeding for his neighbours, who have already asked.
“It is a no, maybe give me a couple years.”
Instead, the pair want to travel to car shows and continue their car collecting hobby and have the freedom to travel and attend concerts. Although they did admit to shutting down the combine a few years ago for an AC/DC concert.
When asked what they will do now in retirement, they wonder why farmers are expected to pick up new careers. When a teacher, or nurse retires, they are thrown a party and no one expects them to be back working the next year.
The couple threw themselves a party with friends, family and neighbours on the evening of their auction sale. The family set up a large screen television in the farm shop and watched the online auction during the day with a shop full of family and friends.
“I wasn’t emotional. It was exciting,” he said.
“It was an overall good day. It was a good experience,” said Nickie.
By 3 p.m. the auction was finished and soon after buyers started to arrive to pick up their equipment. By 4.p.m., 150 friends started arriving for the retirement dinner, dance and party.
“We had a pretty good party,” he said.
