MINNITAKI, Ont. Ñ With each passing year, farmers get more involved with the idea of keeping profit inside or at least near the farmgate.
That’s the way Robert Egli has been running his 960 acre sheep farm since emigrating from Switzerland 53 years ago.
“If there was to be only one thing I’ve learned in 50 years on this farm, it’s to keep your profit on the farm any way you possibly can,” said Egli.
“For everything you do in agriculture, there are at least 10 people out there wanting to provide services and do your marketing and other things for you. If you let them, then they earn the profit. The more you handle things yourself, the more your farm is going to survive and prosper.”
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When Egli purchased the abandoned homestead site in 1952, it was the closest thing to true wilderness you could find. A dirt road, which was to eventually become the Trans-Canada Highway, passed in front of the farmyard.
“There was no electricity or telephone or running water,” his wife Margarit said. “We were from Zurich in Switzerland, which was already a city of 400,000 people, so this was a little bit of a change.”
The nearby town of Minnitaki had 20 residents in 1952, and there were more than enough wolves and bears in the area to make any person think twice about raising sheep.
But sheep made sense to Robert. With his location halfway between Winnipeg and Thunder Bay, he knew he was not in a good spot for shipping grain or cattle to major markets. Moreover, Robert and Margarit wanted to be farmers and this was the only farm the young couple could afford.
On-farm processing
“We were actually in a very bad location,” Robert admitted. “It was obvious this was not a good land for growing grain. But it looked like an area that would grow good forage crops. So that’s what we’ve been doing here ever since. We turn forage into meat and then we sell the meat, all cut and wrapped.”
In their peak years, the Eglis ran more than 1,000 head of sheep, with the predators getting more than their fair share of the meat.
“It’s hard to figure out an exact number, but we’ve lost thousands of lambs to the wolves,” Robert said. “We installed an eight-strand electric fence in 1980. It cost a lot of money, but it has just about stopped the wolf problem.”
Although they tried shipping sheep live to market, the 24-hour truck trip did not work out well.
On the bright side, there was always a limited ethnic market in Thunder Bay, as well as some Easter and barbecue demand. But those markets still did not provide enough cash flow to keep the farm alive.
In the late 1960s, Robert decided they should try cutting and wrapping the meat on the farm. It worked. They were soon selling 300 lambs a year, cut and wrapped, to the local market. Revenues started to grow from their on-farm processing.
“I don’t think we would be in business today if we hadn’t started that,” said Egli. “We used to have 40 to 50 dairy farms right in this little area around here. Today, there’s only three left. That would have been our fate if we hadn’t gone into processing and then into manufacturing. We would be gone.”
He said farmers in the Minnitaki area have lost their farm supply dealer and their agriculture representative. Most of the dairy farms have been converted to hobby farms or residential sites. This trend makes them more aware of the need to always keep tuned to the market and to keep the business healthy and profitable.
Egli said that consumers now want more specific barbecue cuts for the summer market and roasts for the winter market, so that’s what they have for sale. They’ve added a herd of 60 elk, with this meat selling through their store.
The Egli’s youngest son, Peter, has recently taken over management of the farm, manufacturing and store. He said the market is always changing.
“People used to buy a whole lamb cut and wrapped for the freezer, just like they’d buy a quarter of beef. That freezer trade is shrinking. Today, people only buy for a meal or two at a time. You always have to follow the market and produce what it wants if you expect to survive.”
Sheepskin products
Follow the market is exactly what the Eglis did in the early 1970s, when they experimented by shipping some sheepskins for curing. When the samples came back, they started cutting, sewing and producing slippers and mitts. To their surprise, local customers flocked to buy the stuff.
Their small sewing facility quickly moved from the basement of the house, out to the big garage and then to a new building specifically constructed to accommodate commercial cutting and sewing machines.
At first, local talk was that it would be difficult to find enough buyers for their sewn products. Before long, the opposite scenario is what they faced. Demand for Egli’s sheepskin products grew so they could no longer find enough quality skins to make all the items customers wanted.
“When we first started sewing, we all wondered if there would be enough sales to even make it worth our time,” Margarit said. “Well, before long we were hiring people to sew and we had to start importing sheepskins from Australia and New Zealand. We buy thousands of skins a year now. We could never supply that many from our own herd.”
Not only did offshore skins give them a more secure supply, the imported skins came from breeds intended for processing. Egli’s own herd is made up of breeds intended for meat, not clothing.
Today the Eglis manufacture a wide variety of mitts, vests, jackets, caps, hats, slippers, purses, automobile seat covers, steering wheel covers, and just about anything else that can be created from sheepskin. They can also custom tailor items.
With a dozen full-time staff, their wilderness factory can only sew enough sheepskin products to fill half the demand. The other 50 percent of the products, such as leather gloves and jackets, are brought in from outside suppliers. Their store also brings in several lines of wool items to meet the growing demand for natural products.
One of the most popular new products created on site is the sheepskin liner designed to snap into a construction hard hat and wrap all around the neck and over the face. Peter said response to the liner has been overwhelming, especially from people working in winter construction, drilling, pipelines and utility services.
Not surprisingly, the Christmas shopping months from October to December are the busiest. Preparing for the 2006 Christmas rush means planning and ordering materials in January 2005.
Although they still mail out 150,000 paper catalogues each year, Peter said their internet orders are growing rapidly.
“The internet is the future of our business. We really work hard at this part of the business.”
Peter made it clear that they do not just post some items and then forget about them for a year or longer. “We allow no obsolescence on our website. Keeping it current is almost a daily commitment. It has just about become a full-time job to keep www.eglifarm.com current and up-to-date.”
Agritourism
Robert said they had no intention of becoming a tourist attraction.
“It just sort of happened all by itself. Every year at lambing time people would drive out to visit and watch lambs being born. A kid just loves holding a new lamb. Parents too.
“It just kept getting bigger every year until finally it was getting to be too much. So now we announce the Easter Saturday as our open house day. We usually get about 1,500 people that day, just touring the farm. Of course, we have the barns and the store open year round, so people can visit any time at their leisure.”
In years past, they had scheduled educational shows for the public, including sheep dog demonstrations and sheep shearing. Although every vehicle crossing the Canadian Shield must drive the highway right past the giant sheep statue that marks the Eglis’ driveway, it was always difficult to regularly schedule the shows to coincide with peak visiting times.
The daily shows were replaced with an animal park.
The park features a self-guided trail that winds through numerous paddocks that house an assortment of bison, elk, emus, llamas, alpacas, donkeys, pheasants, peacocks, swans, Texas Longhorn cattle and of course sheep.
“Tourism has become a very important part of what we do now,” Robert said.
“That’s why we’ve added the animal park. People come to visit and see the sheep and lambs and everything we have in the animal park, and it’s always friendly here. Then they come into the store and buy some things. That’s the business we’re in today. We could not make money anymore with just the farm. We need the tourism to attract people to this place and into the store.”
The downside of the tourism business is insurance liability. Robert said they used to have horse rides, hay rides and other activities for kids groups and school classes. But all that has changed.
“We are required to carry millions of dollars liability insurance,” Robert said. “People are afraid to catch a disease if they touch a lamb or something. Before, the school buses came out and kids would hold the lambs and the lambs would suck their fingers. Nobody ever got sick from that.
“But now, people are afraid of a simple little pleasure like that. That’s so sad for the kids.”
