RAPID CITY, Man. – Jamie Byrom points to a picture of a dairy farm
hanging on his kitchen wall.
The farm boasts gigantic oak trees and lush green hay fields, a
testament to the fertility of the farm’s soils.
The farmyard is a tidy assortment of pens, barns and alleyways. A
farmhouse built of cobblestones stands slightly apart from the rest of
the buildings.
Not long ago, this dairy farm in North Yorkshire, England, was Byrom’s
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home and as he points out each of its features, his voice betrays a
mild longing to return.
Byrom arrived in western Manitoba last winter, pulled by a desire to
live and farm in North America.
For almost 20 years he had been searching for a place in the United
States that would satisfy that desire.
Failing to find what he wanted, his attention eventually shifted to
Western Canada, where he stumbled onto a farm that immediately struck
him as the place he wanted to live.
“I just thought, ‘this is it. This is the place I’ve been looking for
all these years.’ “
What he found was a grain farm bordering the highway that runs between
Brandon and Minnedosa, Man. The fields and farmyard were in need of
improvements, but nothing Byrom wasn’t prepared to tackle.
“There’s quite a lot of work needs doing. No, not quite a lot of work.
A heck of a lot of work needs doing to the land.”
Last November, Byrom received the immigration approvals he needed to
move to Canada, and arrived Dec. 10. He had sold his dairy farm in
England earlier in the year.
There were hassles with moving his furniture, his two border collies
and other personal belongings to Canada.
Adding to his stress was uncertainty about whether he was doing the
right thing. His mother had cried when he told her of his plans to
leave England.
“It was extremely stressful. I knew I wanted to be here, but I was not
sure it was the right thing to do. You never are sure.”
After settling into his home, Byrom began making plans for spring
planting. He needed to buy more farm equipment and he had to decide
what crops to grow.
He was a dairy farmer, familiar with growing hay and harvesting silage.
“I had never grain farmed in my life before.”
He bought a tractor, an air seeder and a grain truck. He looked at more
than 15 different grain trucks before buying one.
When the day arrived to start planting his first grain crop, Byrom felt
a mixture of excitement and fear.
The question was whether the crops would do well. Byrom sensed he would
be under the scrutiny of his neighbours, curious to know how he would
manage.
“I wanted to convince them that I was at least a half decent farmer,”
Byrom said, while seated at a dark oak kitchen table he brought with
him from England.
“I had to make sure I did things right as best as I could.”
His optimism increased after the crops emerged and the year generally
went well until harvest time.
That’s when events started to spin out of his control.
He hadn’t bought his own combine, relying instead on another area
farmer.
When a bearing broke in that farmer’s combine, Byrom hired someone else
to do the threshing, but that person left after a day due to
commitments to other farmers.
“Meanwhile, I was pulling my hair out. It was just disaster after
disaster and I lost those few days.”
Before he could make other arrangements, the rain set in. The cloudy,
overcast weather lasted for close to a month, driving down the quality
of Byrom’s crops. His wheat was still standing, but 190 acres of barley
had been swathed and it started to sprout.
Byrom decided then that he would buy his own combine. When the wet
weather finally departed, he was ready to do his own harvesting.
Driving his combine down the field and watching it lap up the swaths
was a jubilant time.
“It was just putting a smile on my face. I was actually getting the
crop off after all that. I was just thinking that this was marvelous.”
While his first year of grain farming had its setbacks, Byrom already
is thinking ahead to next year.
He plans to have all his equipment well serviced before spring arrives.
He’s thinking of growing conventional crops again, and he’s hoping to
clean up some of the sloughs and stone piles in his field.
He will also spend time learning more about crop production in western
Manitoba. He appreciates the advice he received this year from
neighbours and workers at the nearby AgPro grain terminal.
“I’m just firing straight ahead. I’m just putting everything I’ve got
into this farm and my life here. I want it to be a success.”
