Reading Time: 5 minutes In the five years since Country Guide last caught up with Riley and Lee-Anne Kemp, their lives have become even more hectic. For starters, their family has grown to three children — six-year-old Lexi, three-year-old Elliot and Halle, who just turned six months old. Riley still works off farm as a teacher at the local […] Read more
Five years on: Riley and Lee-Anne Kemp
Country Guide revisits two Manitoba beef producers building their future
Five years on: Wayne and Maria McDonald
Country Guide revisits the livestock operation of McDonald Farm
Reading Time: 6 minutes Wayne McDonald has never had a job off the farm and admits that he has no idea what nine-to-five is all about. That’s the way he likes it. Now, thanks to some hard work and their very dedicated focus, he and wife Maria have managed to achieve one of the key goals they set themselves […] Read more
A lesson in farming
At Lakeland College, an innovative student-managed farm is turning out business-minded young farmers ready for the job ahead
Reading Time: 10 minutes Nearly 10 years ago, April Thomi faced the same dilemma as many high school students the world over. She was trying to decide where to go to college. April knew she wanted to farm. She had grown up on the Stanko family farm in southern Alberta, where her family had raised cattle and still grew […] Read more
Taking the farm beyond the family
It takes smarts and determination to use your farm to help a new farmer get their start, but the rewards can be deeply satisfying
Reading Time: 9 minutes Four years ago, Tom and Margaret Towers were facing a dilemma that’s becoming increasingly common for farm couples as they move into what are politely called their senior years. The Towers knew they couldn’t continue to manage alone forever, and they also knew they wouldn’t want to leave the farm near Red Deer, which they’d […] Read more
Living together, farming together
Common-law is the choice for more and more young farming couples
Reading Time: 11 minutes As Eric Walker tells me about his farm, there’s lots of talk about complex business structures and about his ambitious plans. And there’s lots of talk, too, about family, hope and love. “It’s been a constant whirlwind of expansion, a blur of building, and three babies… that’s on top of the three we already had,” […] Read more
Young, smart & stubborn
Trend Setters: Katelyn Duncan says new farmers must face the core challenge
Reading Time: 5 minutes Fortunately, statistical trends don’t capture stubbornness, optimism and enthusiasm, necessary ingredients for farmers. Because the trends that the statistics do capture don’t make easy reading. Here we bring you two inspiring stories of young people meeting the challenge head on. But first, here are those statistics below, starting with some numbers from the 2011 Census of […] Read more
They’re bucking the trend
Trend Setters: Robyn McCallum and Ryan Taylor are making their own future
Reading Time: 5 minutes In their mid-20s, Ryan Taylor and his partner, Robyn McCallum, are about half the age of the average farmer in Canada. Not only that, they also started from scratch a few years ago, near Miramichi, N.B. The 2011 census found that in the Atlantic provinces, only 7.1 per cent of farmers were under 40 years […] Read more
Editor’s Desk: Is this the last generation?
Reading Time: 2 minutes The above title caught my eye as I was thumbing through some 2011 back issues of Country Guide. Hmm, I wondered, have the last five years changed what I think about whether young people can successfully take over enough of our family farms to actually comprise a “generation?” Or will they even want to? In […] Read more
The young are on board, literally
In Ontario’s Northumberland County, young farmers make up the majority on many commodity and farm boards. Here’s how we do it
Reading Time: 5 minutes There’s nothing like an unexpected dinner invitation to get the attention of a person who is normally responsible for daily meal preparation. The invitation arrived by text, and it didn’t take long to figure out whether to accept. Accept first, I said. Ask questions later. When I did ask the question, I was right to […] Read more
The first-generation farmers of Hillside Dreams Goat Dairy
Like other new farmers across Canada, Barrie and Merel Voth may not produce the commodities you’d expect, or farm at the scale you’d like, but they’re committed, brave, and very, very smart
Reading Time: 6 minutes How serious are Barrie and Merel Voth about their start-up goat dairy venture? Serious enough that they wrote exactly two exit options into their farm lease agreement. Bankruptcy. Or death. “Oh, but don’t write that!” says Merel. In April last year, when they signed on the dotted line for their five-year lease agreement at Silver […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
