Our Family
Our farm family enjoys living in the country where we have the golden opportunity to grow healthy food. We hand planted our first crop of garlic in the fall of 2010. Our children are Shawn 17, Lanita 15, Linette 14, Sheldon 11 and Sherwin 10. We also custom graze cattle and have our own little sheep flock. Kevin enjoys seeing vast differences in land when we switch from being “garlic farmers” and “cattle ranchers” to soil farmers~ soil builders. We are always trying to improve the quality of our soil by increasing the microbial activity in the soil. Cocktail cropping, polycropping, and avoiding monocultures is the first vital step in combating disease in our crops. We monitor brix, soil conductivity, and maintain that garlic should NEVER be weed free for the overall health of the crop.
Giving back to our community
We really like the close-knit community that we live near (Kipling), and always want to keep a helping hand for our community. Kevin is a captain on the local volunteer fire dept and really enjoys that sort of excitement. Caroline teaches piano in Kipling during the school year, and both Kevin and Caroline hold active positions on the local music festival board.
Family values
Our children all participate in team soccer, recreational hockey, swimming, as well as several school team sports throughout the season. In the not so busy winter season, they take both piano and violin lessons. Summer days are filled with fun on the farm keeping busy with pets, picking eggs, moving chicken tractors, and..garlic weeding?!
Continually improving
We are thankful for courses we have taken such as the Ranching For Profit course, following up with 3 yrs in EL (Executive Link). This time meant trips to different locations such as Edmonton, Big Sky Montana, where we have met life-long friends, and people that first sparked our garlic business. The marketing lessons, people-interactions learned through this will no doubt affect our business decisions for the rest of our lives. We met valuable people–people who genuinely cared about our business decisions, and our family. During this time period, Kevin and I took the ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’ Steven Covey course–highly recommended. We were introduced to influential writers on business, and encouraged to be proactive in self-evaluations available, such as Winslow evaluations. Understanding what kind of a person we are from an objective view can sometimes be unnerving and humbling, but can be very valuable when channeled in the correct direction. We took the Bud Williams Marketing course–twice, and attend grazing schools, tours, and seminars available in SK and Manitoba. We really feel we have a LOT to learn, and the demands of small-scale farming in the 21st century can be daunting! We remain active in our local Southern Saskatchewan Holistic Management Club–a collection of ranching/farming families that have established goals of where they want to go~~therefore making decisions that will bring a beneficial result to the land, people, and finances.
We’d love to hear from you
Do you have a question or comment? You can email us through our online form.
