Reading Time: 8 minutes It all started with a scoop of blueberry cheesecake ice cream from a creamery in Sicamous, B.C., more than ten years ago. About 13 years old, John Pruim was on a family road trip back to the province where he had spent his early years when the taste of farm fresh ice cream stirred something […] Read more
Sask. creamery turns ice cream dream into reality
Sometimes your childhood dream can come true — and turn a delicious profit
Planning for 2025 and beyond
Reading Time: 3 minutes Farming is a complex business full of daily decisions with expensive consequences. Country Guide associate editor, April Stewart, sat down with Evan Shout, a.k.a. the Farmer Coach, for his thoughts and top tips on how farmers can prepare to make decisions not only for the coming year but for the next decade. Below is an […] Read more
Setting goals in the new year that can work
New year, new goals. Or maybe not. What keeps us from sticking to and achieving our goals?
Reading Time: 5 minutes Ah, the optimism a new year brings. An invisible line drawn in your mind’s eye between the last year and next as you flip open a fresh calendar. (Or, if you’re younger than me, scroll to the next month on your phone’s calendar app). Your eyes sparkle with eagerness, you drum your fingers in anticipation, […] Read more
One page at a time
After 16 years and more than 4,000 stories, Tom Button, Country Guide’s editor, has turned a page in his career
Reading Time: 5 minutes For those who missed our December issue where Button thanked his readers for their almost two decades of support, you’ll have missed the announcement that Country Guide’s long-time editor is headed for retirement. What started as an opportunity to have fun producing a business publication for Canadian farmers soon transformed into the humble pursuit of […] Read more
The case for hiring a full-time employee on your farm
It’s different today. Employees come with expectations. You have to work with them... but on this farm, it’s more than worth it
Reading Time: 12 minutes You may have had help on the farm before on a seasonal, casual or term basis. Most farms probably have. But farming today is different, and so are the reasons why you might be considering a full-time employee. So how do you know when it’s time to take the plunge? Will it pay off, or […] Read more
Get more shots on goal with AI
The Global Institute for Food Security in Saskatoon is planning to lead the world into a future where computers can re-design and improve natural compounds and where science will make bigger strides than ever before
Reading Time: 5 minutes Ben Scott builds proteins. You got that? He is not looking for proteins. He creates them, from scratch. Scott is an engineering biology expert at the Global Institute for Food Security (GIFS) at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. He is helping GIFS build an engineering biology foundry to design, build and test new enzyme […] Read more
Agriculture takes a ride to the city
Looking for a way to talk to urban consumers about how farmers produce food? Jeanine Moyer takes farming right to the heart of Toronto
Reading Time: 6 minutes For the second time this past spring, Jeanine Moyer and her father Allan Wallace were phoning their rural Ontario neighbours, tracking down just the right animals to take to Toronto. They wanted docile animals, and, equally important, trusting owners — the kind of owners who would let Moyer and Wallace take their livestock on an […] Read more
Target: work-life balance
Life can be better. Even on the farm, real balance can be achieved
Reading Time: 6 minutes The struggle to find work-life balance may be “the single most important thing in your life to get right,” says Weyburn, Sask. farmer, Jake Leguee. “It’s also one of the hardest things any of us will ever do.” Farming presents unique challenges for achieving work-life balance. While technologies like robotic milkers and birthing cameras in […] Read more
In the combine
Syngenta leader Jeff Rowe talks about being prepared for leadership and the importance of listening to people
Reading Time: 3 minutes Jeff Rowe, CEO of the Syngenta Group, doesn’t often get home to his farm near Princeton, Illinois. He’s usually operating from his base in Basel, Switzerland, instead. But when he does get back to the Midwest, you might catch up to him running a planter in the spring or the combine in the fall, just […] Read more
The formula for farm growth
Capital + Risk + Execution = Farm SUCCESS
Reading Time: 3 minutes “Change is inevitable, growth is optional.” That’s how John C. Maxwell said it, and he might have said it best. It’s easy to look around the ag industry and see changes in the landscape. Suppliers, competitors and customers are consolidating and growing. Yet growth is often met with more scorn in farming than in these […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
