It just doesn’t really feel like work,” Olivia Riddoch says about working on the family’s 4,000-acre cash crop farm in Sarnia, Ont.
Riddoch oversees crop protection at Fairwind Farms. “I manage the weeds — or at least I try to. It’s the job that everyone sees. They drive by, you have a bad field and everybody sees it,” she says with a laugh.
But what brought her back to the family farm?
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“I first went to school for social work, tried it in the field, but I wasn’t a huge fan,” says Riddoch. “The farm’s always been — it sounds bad — but a Plan B, in my mind.”
Riddoch’s dad, Mark Lumley, runs the business side of the operation while Riddoch, her husband and two employees manage the day-to-day, hands-on work.
“It’s so rewarding. And getting to work with family, too, I feel lucky,” she says.
She notes that she’s someone who gets bored easily, so she thinks farming is a great boredom-busting job. And she says that each day she works with her dad, she learns something new. “I’m learning new stuff all the time, which some days can be exhausting, but every day is rewarding.”
In addition to corn, soybeans and wheat, they also grow sugarbeets, so field health, rotations, seed varieties, environmental factors and crop protection products all have to be carefully considered. “There’s a lot of variables that can affect your day-to-day, especially when you’re planting,” says Riddoch.
Ultimately, what does Riddoch think makes her good at her role on the farm? “I enjoy organization… I like to be organized with my day-to-day plan, where am I going to spray, what’s the most efficient way to do it. I just try my best to be as meticulous as I can be because I value our reputation as a farm. You’re spraying chemicals and it’s an important job, so I like to make sure I do a good job.”
Find out how Riddoch plans for each crop year below and listen to her dad, Mark Lumley, chat more about farm life at Fairwind Farms in his Country Guide podcast episode at our podcast page.
