More Sask Farms

Me in the wheat field

“Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower

 

oldie
oldie

Most of my time is spent at my desk pushing my keyboard-plow, but this week I had the chance to go out to a colleague’s grain farm with some students. It was a great example of a small family farm – if you can count 1200 acres as a ‘small farm’. Although this is an order of magnitude more than a farm in BC or Ontario, it is also an order of magnitude smaller than the mega-agri-business conglomerate farms in SK: lots over 10 000!

The view from the 'hill'

 

It was a really nice mix of field crops: canola, barley, oats, and peas; animals: sheep, beef cattle and kitties; fruit: sour cherries, seabuckthorn, 2 kinds of raspberries, saskatoon berries, huskap, and apples. I think I sampled everything, and mowed down 100 cherries of the tree… though it still had lots on it. I also saw lamb’s quarters in the orchard lanes, so I’d love to go back with a bucket (or 10) one day.

The old shake and shingle farmhouse
The old shake and shingle farmhouse

Overall it was a very charming place and made me really nostalgic for rural living. One of the nicest parts was the warm reception we got; my colleague’s mum Joan made us cucumber sandwiches and potato salad out of the garden, along with fresh berry tarts and a bowl of awesome local sour cherries. We had a sunny picnic in the garden and topped it off with a multi-treat fika that would make any Swede proud.

There was lots of farm equipment to look at too, but I’ll include that in another post.

Sheeps! These are meat mutton, and they don't even need shearing
Sheeps! These are meat mutton, and they don’t even need shearing

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