During the 1990s the Plummer family zigged while everybody else in the farming community zagged, a move that appears to be paying off.
Instead of getting bigger and maximizing efficiencies, Moon Lake Farm downsized and became a more labour intensive operation.
According to Statistics Canada’s Census of Agriculture, Saskatchewan producers increased their farm size by 17 percent and the amount of land cropped by 40 percent between 1991 and 2001.
Around the same time the Plummer farm, located just west of Saskatoon, morphed from a 1,500-acre grain farm to a 250-acre irrigated operation focused on the production of potatoes and other vegetables.
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Ken Plummer said there were a number of reasons for reining in the operation about four years ago.
Saskatchewan was just entering what turned out to be a prolonged drought. His son Kevin, who was recovering from a broken back, had a good construction job in the city and had less time and inclination to sit on the tractor.
So the decision was made to give up the rented land and refocus the business on the home quarter and a few other parcels the family owned. It turned out to be both a practical and profitable.
“With the vegetable, potato and other crops, our bottom line is the same as it was with 1,500 acres,” said Ken, who at age 72 is the elder statesman of the family.
Last year Moon Lake Farm cleared $600 per acre on its Dark Red Norland spuds and an estimated $3,000 per acre on pumpkins.
Of the 50 acres they irrigate every year, 10-15 acres are seeded to potatoes and another three or four to other vegetables such as pumpkins, corn, carrots, cucumbers and beets. The remainder of their farm is sown to cereals and oilseeds.
Their table potatoes are marketed through Agristar Produce Sask. Ltd. in Lucky Lake, Sask. Last year they sold 150 tonnes or about seven semi-loads through the wholesaler.
“We’re able to ship from the field. We don’t have to store anything,” said Ken, whose spuds earned him first prize for red potatoes and reserve grand champion for the overall table stock potato exhibit at the 2003 Canadian Western Agribition.
Vegetables harvested from the field and grown in a 90 sq. metre greenhouse operated by Kevin’s wife Arlene are sold out of a roadside booth staffed by Ken’s wife Anne. It’s truly a family operation, with 11-year-old grandson Andrew hauling the produce by quad from one neighbouring farmyard to the other.
Anne was initially hesitant about starting a new career in her late 60s.
Having worked as a sales clerk in a pharmacy, a nursing clerk in a hospital and as a bookkeeper and kitchen designer in a cabinet shop, she was ready to sit back and enjoy her six children and 13 grandkids.
“I really resented it. I really did. I thought this wasn’t fair. I’m supposed to be retired.”
Four years later, at the age of 71, she now thinks she got the best deal of the bunch. Anne gets a kick out of meeting strangers who see her highway signs and make a vegetable-buying stop along the well-travelled Valley Road between Saskatoon and the Moonlake Golf and Country Club.
Her makeshift booth, which consists of two canvas-covered single car garages, does between $2,000 and $3,000 of business a month during the peak summer period.
Having a farm located 10 minutes outside a city with a population of 232,000 has allowed the Plummers to sell all the vegetables they grow directly off the farm with minimal advertising effort.
But it has its drawbacks too, like when a prolonged city road project caused a confusing detour that sent about one car per hour to the Plummer house asking for directions. Or when they had turkeys and chickens on the farm and would wake up to discover some of their animals had been stolen during the night.
The family is also blessed with proximity to the South Saskatchewan River and the Moon Lake reservoir. Ken helped found and served as chair of the local irrigation district, which provides water to about 20 farms or 2,700 acres along Valley Road.
He feels that irrigation saved his farm and empathizes with farmers forced to follow the bigger-is-better model of success who are now struggling with low commodity prices and the after effects of BSE.
“I’m glad we’re not into big acres of cereal crops anymore,” said Ken, who at one time loathed vegetable farming.
When he inherited the farm from his father in the late 1960s he vowed he wouldn’t grow those crops anymore, haunted by memories of harvesting 20 acres of spuds and 13 acres of cabbage in the days of the single-row potato digger, horse and buggy and root cellar.
The potato operation is now fully mechanized but growing, harvesting and packaging the rest of the vegetable crop by hand is still a labour intensive process that makes Kevin long for the days of the large grain farm.
“It would be nice if you could just sit on a tractor and do it, but the economics aren’t there.”
The vegetable business has been profitable enough that the family is at a crossroads, once again considering expansion.
Kevin would like to grow more vegetables but has discovered that good hired help is hard to find and he is not willing to quit his well-paying carpentry job in the city.
“Economics tell you to shut it down, plant it all to hay, and go work in town. But I’ve got (farming) in my blood.”
