Day 5 - The Road to Saskatoon

Andy and I headed East in the rain and drizzle from Three Hills, Alberta heading to Saskatoon in Saskatchewan.  The trip was just over 500 kilometres.  We stopped along the way a few times to take some pictures. One of the most outstanding memories of the trip so far was the amazing rich coloured, wide open, clear sky's, with clouds uniquely dotting the horizon.  It was truly beautiful.

For most of the road trip, our destination was straight in front of our noses with a few very important intersections marked for our attention.  Any bend was greeted with a cheer as we pushed on through the day.

Naturally we had to stop at some of the towns along the route, for gas for the car, or for us!  One place we stopped at was a town called Kindersley and inevitably there was an Agricultural dealership; and not just one.  There was be a John Deere dealership on one side of the road and a Case IH/New Holland on the other, all with vast numbers of tractors, sprayers and combines regimentally lined up on display.  The workshop space was incredible; great amphitheatres with technicians gladiatorially battling with their spanners (or laptops!)

By the time we arrived at Saskatoon we headed to the Western Grains Research Foundation for a meeting with Garth Patterson, the Executive Director of the not for profit organisation.  Amazingly we drove straight into Saskatoon and straight to Innovation Place for our meeting.  After meeting Garth and Gina Feist (Research Program Manager) for some quick introductions; we headed down to Boffins Club where we were joined by Garth's wife Carole-Anne.  We had supper and discussed a range of different aspects of food, farming, genetic modification, breeding and end user concerns.  Andy and I even got up to have our photograph taken with the band, Whiskey on a Sunday, fortunately we were not asked to perform for our supper!

After leaving Garth and Carole-Anne Andy and I headed south around the city to find Barb Stefanyshyn-Cote, the chair of Nuffield Canada who had very kindly offered to put us up during our stay in Saskatoon.

Alberta Day 4 - Beyond Agronomy

Our second day out with Steve started with a visit to Al Jones, who's family has been farming in Alberta since 1903.  Al runs about 5,000 acres with his family.  A herd of 200 Herefords (Herfuds) cattle also run on the farm.  We looked at some of Al's crops after a tour of the workshop.  Steve and Al are trialling precision rape seeding with very low seed mortality compared to the usual air seeding.  The photograph above shows the young canola seedlings growing fantastic root structures very quickly.  Al doesn't practise CTF (controlled Traffic Framing) but has been zero till for a long time.  Again what stood out was the lovely soil, very well structured even after a lot of heavy rain.

Al is also trying a field of Faber Beans this year to see how the crop develops and to get a handle on its Agronomy.  The crop was just starting to flower and in need of a herbicide, but weather delays, due to rain are frustrating the operation. (Sound familiar?)  Beans would be a fairly new venture in the area to add further diversity into the rotation.

I put this picture in of a huge tractor, used for seeding to demonstrate the low ground pressure that they are using when travelling on the fields.  These tires would run at 7psi on the front and 8psi on the rears. It helps that the tractor is duelled up but the attention to traffic and soil protection is a credit.  Getting the soil wrongly managed can be a disaster especially on the soils around Alberta.  Here's what we saw when driving to Saskatoon the following day, not a customer of Steve's!

After an agronomists lunch we headed out to visit Spencer Hilton who has land spread over a 100Km  strip end to end.  I bet it's quite a sight at harvest moving men and machines along the highway.  Spencer had a great business, succession and planing are the key.  Weekly family management meetings and regular staff meetings all made for a very well run business.  The staff were empowered that if they weren't happy, for a safety reason, they could shut the operation down, the management would sort it out and they would move on.  With the removal of the Canadian Wheat Board new markets were developing and Spencer was taking full advantage.  They are contracted to grow malting barley for an American brewing company where the risk was shared between the two parties, in the form of an area value rather than a bushel value.

A huge thanks to Steve and Vanessa for putting us up and showing us around the Three Hills area of Alberta, it really was a terrific visit!

Alberta Day 3 - Three Hills with Steve Larocque

Day 3 and we've been very well looked after by Nuffield Scholar Steve Larocque who runs his own company with wife Vanessa called Beyond Agronomy.  Steve lives and works around the town of Three Hills in Alberta.  The town has a population of 2,500 and somewhere 19 churches!  Most of the farms in the area are about 3,000-4,000 acres and have been zero tilled for about 20years.  The soil is loamy, almost sweet smelling and with the great advice Steve is offering to his clients, yields are moving on up.

I was very interested in the planting methods used for zero till so we headed to the local John Deere dealership Evergreen's at Drumheller.  In the yard was a Seed Hawk planter with a seed hopper for fertiliser and seed that could carry 20T.  Bearing in mind nearly all of the fertiliser for the crop is applied at seeding, these rigs were huge.  All pulled by over 500hp of tractor either on duals, triples or tracks, with widths of up to 66'.  Even transport widths were hovering around the 5m mark!  We also looked at the John Deere ConservaPac opener which placed the fertiliser and the seed almost down the same drill row, seeding tine behind fertiliser tine, reducing soil disturbance creating a very even drilling depth and capable of following uneven topography, with short leg length.  Drilling speeds of around 4.5mph are common, so relatively slow compared to our drilling speeds but reduced soil disturbance is key to the system.  

After some lunch we headed out to visit a Hutterite Community at Starlands.  The we were met by 'Farm Boss' Peter Stahl.  It was a very slick operation and Pete was keen to show us around the farm.  The investment was huge with 3 big drilling rigs each worth somewhere near $750,000.  Each of these systems is capable of planting 350 acres in a 24 hour period, and with 14,900 acres (of all crops to plant), seeding can be completed in 14 days.  The infrastructure was impressive too with grain store, hog yards, dairy, beef and chickens.  The community share everything between each other, so all 93 souls get a share of the wealth.  At the communal kitchens we met Pete's wife and daughter who were busy preparing the fresh chicken for super that evening.  It's a shame I couldn't take any pictures but the I will certainly remember Pete for his warm welcome, generosity and openness into the way they live.

We called in to look at some of Pete's crops and the picture above show wheat plants being planted between the rows of Canola stalks.  This is using the guidance on the tractors (RTK) to the fullest and means the new roots and follow the old crop root channels down without all the stubble stalks being ripped up.  It also acts as protection to some degree to the young shoots as they emerge.  Another great day; meeting interesting people, more tomorrow.

Alberta Day 2 18th June

Day 2 and we are out on farm.  Today we were visiting the team from Agritrend who are a group of independent crop coaches (agronomists) who all work under the Agritrend umbrella  The company was started by Rob Saik in 1997 and is now involved in many aspects of farm business from agromomy,  business development and precision farming (incl data management) to grain marketing and many other aspects.

After meeting Warren Bills and Matt Gosling  (and a footlong sub for lunch), we headed to the fields in Wheatland County.  There are 1 million acres in the county and 3% of that land would be classified as the best soil in the province of Alberta, with about 1/3 of that land on the farm we visited.

The spear Matt used very easily went down 18" of no-till soil before he pulled out it out to reveal the black organic soil that smelt incredible.  The soil had just been direct drilled for about 20 years and was in a great condition.  Then he put the probe back into the hole and took out the next 18" down which was a more bodied clay but also very free draining and very accessible to the plants roots.  The crops here only have a very short growth period, maybe only 150 days from the middle of April until the middle of September when the first frosts kill off the crops.  They go through the growth stages very quickly.  The stem extension stage can take as little as 10 days (GS30-GS40)  At home that can take over 35 days.  Only 2 fungicides are applied as the crop grows so fast and the majority of the fertiliser is applied in the soil at seeding.  There are no growth regulators which limits the amount of fertiliser farmers can apply, effectively pegging yield as the crops need to stand.

The drilling rig here is about 21m wide (66') and the seed trailer at the back has 5 compartments.  One for seed and the other 4 for different straights of fertiliser so each nutrient can be variably applied, to a recommendation based on soil sampling, yield prediction and previous history.  The rotation is all spring cropping with OSR (Canola) then wheat followed by barley which is whole cropped to feed to the cattle.

The cattle feed lot, where 10 years ago they would have finished 22-25,000 head of beef now they finish 11,000 head due to the economics of beef production in Canada.  There are fewer processors to sell to so a proportion of the beef is shipped to the US for sale.  The cattle will travel down to Nebraska, Utah and Washington from here.

A huge thanks to Warren, Matt and Rob for showing us around the operation and also to Marissa for the excellent home cooked ribs we had for supper.  After leaving Matt's house we headed north towards Three Hills for the next leg of our journey.

Alberta Day 1 - 17th June

On our first full day in Canada we ventured out into the Rocky Mountains along the main East-West Trans-Canadian Highway (Number 1).  We headed into Canmore, then onto Banff where we had lunch before heading further into the mountains in search of lake Louise and Lake Moraine and the Valley of the 10 Peaks, that tower over the crystal clear  glacier water.  The view took our breath away and after the torrential downpour with accompanying thunder and lightening in Banff, the sun shone and it really was spectacular! 

We were lucky enough to see this little fellow at Lake Moraine a young male Grizzly beer, just grazing grass near the car park, completely unmoved or disinterested with the 50 or so lenses pointed at him.  He looked up occasionally but decided dandelion's were a better option than tourists!  Just as well as they can run at 60Km/hr and with huge claws they obviously need to be treated with respect.

We headed back to Calgary via the Bow Valley Parkway which runs through the National Park and is a stunning drive, twisty roads, fabulous views and probably the longest train I have seen!  This train was  empty heading East to the Potash mines in Saskatchewan.  It was about 170 carriages long and was doing  about 60Km/Ha. There could have been over 10,000 T of Potash fertiliser on the train when full, with a farm gate value of over £3.5 million!

The Dodge Charger was just the beast for taming the twisty roads!  No number plates on the front though which we thought was strange.

We rounded the evening off down at the local pub with our Nuffield Scholar host Ryan Bonnett, his girlfriend Helaina and room mate Scotty.  Early start tomorrow to surrender the Charger, get a local mobile phone and head out East into some fields.