Last night I took a moonlit walk around my modest farm on the south side of the Duck Mountains near Roblin, Man.
I heard a late season elk bugling, and geese chattering from a nearby field. These are the same trails and sounds my grandparents experienced, as did my great-grandparents.
I’m privileged to experience such freedom and solitude in a world with a population racing towards nine billion, while the number of farms and people experiencing life in the countryside is rapidly decreasing.
I took over management of this family land soon after I earned an honours degree of sociology from the University of Alberta.
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I started farming because I coveted the diverse skill set needed to operate a small farm and because of my growing fear that the architects of the world order were much too reactionary and excessively influenced by an unfettered self-interested philosophy.
How will America address its massive debt load, or how will scientists convince us to better manage how we affect Earth’s ecosystems, or how can we keep the world’s population at sustainable levels to ease issues that come with overcrowding, such as war, disease and pollution?
In a time of such global uncertainty, I convinced myself there is no better food security then having access to fertile land and the tools and know-how to make it productive.
That’s great philosophically and somewhat practically, but not so much financially. Like many small farmers, I rely on off-farm income to stay afloat.
I worked winters on pipelines in Alberta and Saskatchewan as an excavator operator.
I then used my education and experience of working in therapeutic group homes for teenagers and got a job as a treatment worker at a aboriginal child and family service agency, which I did for three years while farming.
Then last year I decided to change things up. I let go of my organic certification because of uncertainty in organic markets and weed pressure inflamed by wet years.
I also enrolled in the bachelor of journalism program at the University of Regina and was chosen by The Western Producer to be its intern until mid December.
I hope you enjoy reading the stories I write half as much as I know I will enjoy writing them.
