Eco-Journal, v.17.2 March/April 2007Eco-Journal, v.17.2 March/April 2007
Four of the five winners at our celebration conference. Left to Right. Peter Jabbs and Robyn Faye, Marie and Roger Haynes, Dwayne and Shelly Logan, Matthew Wiens. Missing is Glen Crawley. Photo by Jennifer Heinrichs
By David Neufeld
Editor’s Note: Eco-Journal Vol. 16 # 2 ( March/Apr. 2006) announced the Small Farms Challenge contest. We are pleased to bring you news of the winners!
The hare-brained idea, back in 2005, was that a contest, a bit of healthy competition, might get those of us who dream about living and working in rural Manitoba to put our farm business plans on paper—thereby potentially moving some of us closer to living our dreams. A year and a half later, on 23 February 2007 we celebrated the results of that idea. We, the Agriculture Committee under the Turtle Mountain Community Development Corporation (centred in Boissevain), received thirty submissions to the Challenge. Our judges declared one overall winner and four runners up. But as one of the other 25 contestants said, “There really aren’t any losers because we got to work on our dreams.”
Our aim with the contest was to open our minds just a little to other ways of being agricultural. Our remote rural areas are experiencing chronic depopulation—partly due to the commodity income squeeze, partly due to enculturing our children away from the farm, and partly due to farmers thinking expansion, i.e. ‘How can I manage more acres so that the low return per acre will add up to something worthwhile?’ rather than intensification, i.e. ‘How can we manage less land with more layering of income sources?’ We figured we couldn’t wait for governments to give leadership to improved farm income or to repopulation efforts and we couldn’t wait for corporations to pull back from their profiteering ways. What we could do was explore different paths that held promise for farmers, rural business and communities.
Entries came pouring in
Timing is important of course. We knew, or at least hoped, that there were folks all over the map thinking responsible, healing, viable-small-farm thoughts. We weren’t sure, though, how folks were going to respond to the idea of a contest. For a few weeks at the end of 2006, when our deadline for submissions was looming and we only had a few entries, our spirits drooped. But then all those fully formed and half baked entries came pouring in. Thank-you to each of you for helping us all gain a bit of hope through this challenge.
Dwayne and Shelly Logan (from Nesbitt, south of Brandon) used their childhood and adult farm experiences, and their plans for the land they presently farm, to write up their first prize submission. They’re creating a small farm with livestock—goats, sheep, pigs, chickens and cattle—grains, forage and a market garden. Are they busy? Yep. Do they need part time employment off the farm? Nope. Are they happy? Most of the time, and hopeful enough to be starting on the next generation.
Glen Crawley of Clanwilliam (north of Minnedosa) sent us a convincing business plan for making a living on a quarter section (160 acres) with a cow/calf herd and a small hog operation. His daughter is also working her way back to the farm as her profession. Roger and Marie Haynes of Franklin (near Neepawa) recently immigrated from Britian. Their plan involves a year round greenhouse heated with willow. They are pleased with the technology and the taste of strawberries at Christmas.
Robin Faye (half time Winnipeg and half Thunder Bay area) and Peter Jabbs (full time Kaministiquia, ON) are planning for a healing centre and organic vegetable farm along with a line of value-added retail products.
Matthew Wiens, David and Rachel Braun, Ruth Maendel, Marcus Rempel, Jennifer Nast-Kolb, Elisa and Paul Suderman-Barkman presented their plan for an intentional community farm producing honey, hospitality, produce and organics education.
I wish we had space to summarize all of the plans we received. Fortunately we thought you might want to study these plans in more detail, along with their financial projections, and so we put together a modestly laid out and priced book for you. Between December, when we gathered the entries, and the end of February when we celebrated the winners, we had just enough time (thanks in large part to Carl and Sally Cunningham) to extract the most salient excerpts from the submissions and fashion them into an inspiring book called The Small Farms Challenge—your big opportunity to dream SMALL.
You can order this book for $10 plus $2 postage from the TMCDC office at 1-800-497-2393 or tmedc@mts.net. We still have a few copies of its partner book, Successful Small Farms—a study of successful small farms in Southwestern Manitoba, that we published in 2004—for $5 plus $2 postage.
Significant interest in rural living
It was a bit chancy for us to go out as boldly as we did with this Challenge. Although it went national (enquiries from as far away as Quebec and an entry from Alberta), and even international with an entry from Fargo, our committee’s primary role is to encourage our own community (Boissevain/Morton/Minto) to become more deliberate about making space for our children, encourage urban youth and immigrant families to become our neighbours and to farm in sustainable ways. Thank-you for helping us prove that there is significant interest in rural living and that we can do something about moving dreams to reality. Blessings and enjoy!