Sheep producers named farm family of the year
Sheep producers named farm family of the year
Silver Bend Ranch of Miniota has earned the 2018 honour from the Red River Exhibition Association
By Lorraine Stevenson
Reporter for the Manitoba Co-operator
Brian Greaves and Karen Hill and their son Mark are the Red
River Exhibition Association’s 2018 Farm Family of the Year. The
couple also has a daughter, Alison, who is studying veterinary
medicine in New Zealand.
A Miniota-area couple who began to farm “from scratch” in the early
1990s is the 2018 Farm Family of the Year, named by the Red River
Exhibition Association (RREA).
Brian Greaves and Karen Hill, who have two children Mark and
Alison, were presented with the award during the Hall of Fame
banquet in Winnipeg last week.
It’s a great honour, says the couple, who took over the farm on
Hill’s family’s side in 1993, naming it Silver Bend Ranch.
A school teacher, Hill met Greaves in New Zealand while visiting
there to do some travelling and teaching.
Greaves brought with him over 20 years’ experience in the sheep
sector when he came to Canada.
The two and a quarter sections they began to farm included land
Karen’s grandparents had homesteaded, plus land acquired by uncles
and her father over time.
Her father bought his parcel with pay from his service in the
Canadian Air Force during the Second World War, but pursued a
career as an agricultural representative in Dauphin instead of
going back to farm.
Hill and Greaves stepped up as farm successors after her bachelor
uncles had no immediate family to carry on behind them.
They then became both sheep and cattle farmers and have exemplified
adaptation, innovation and environmental stewardship in their farm
operation.
Big changes
Over a relatively short period of time, they made many changes
and improvements to it, the most significant being switching all
its cropland over to perennial pasture.
They re-established hay land, added shelterbelts, enabled
rotational grazing, and restored a nearby wetland, fencing it to
keep out livestock. They also began to deploy innovative farming
practices like no-till seeding, polycropping, and winter bale
grazing.
All of this was done to ensure their farm’s long-term
sustainability, said Hill.
Theirs is very light and sandy soil, which had eroded and become
depleted from earlier conventional practices used there.
“We knew if we were going to be a success on the farm, job one was
to restore the health of the soil,” she said.
The wetland restoration was undertaken in a partnership with Upper
Assiniboine Conservation District. The area had been drained in the
1950s when Hwy. 83 was constructed, but was never a productive site
and they wanted to see its role protecting the watershed resume,
said Hill.
“We have wonderful groundwater here and it’s really important to us
to maintain that underground water supply.”
They also worked with the Upper Assiniboine Conservation District
and Prairie View Municipality to create an easement on 95 acres of
land along the Assiniboine River for the development of publicly
accessible hiking trails and riparian forest, and Hill was involved
with a local committee that had interpretive signage placed on it
acknowledging the presence of Aboriginal people once residing in
the surrounding Assiniboine River Valley.
Their artifacts dating back 1,000 years have been found in the
river valley below their farm, notes Hill.
Sheep producers
The couple has 120 head of cattle but are also the first sheep
producers to be honoured with the RREA award.
They currently have 60 breeding ewes and about 140 lambs and
Greaves’ experiments with crossbreeding their sheep flock have
produced a composite breed featuring maximum carcass growth,
increased fertility and significantly higher-quality wool.
They took the view that if you have to shear wool, it should
generate income, said Hill. Lower-quality wool can cost more to
have it sheared than it’s worth.
“Our sheep now produce 10 to 12 lbs. of wool per sheep and we’re
now into the levels of what’s considered finer wool, so we’re
looking at $2 to $2.40 per pound for it,” she said.
Greaves has served in numerous leadership roles with groups and
boards such as the Canadian Co-operative Wool Growers, Manitoba
Sheep Association, served as a mentor to other sheep producers, and
as a wool and sheep judge in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
Karen’s been a volunteer board member and staff with Agriculture in
the Classroom–MB and a 4-H leader while also serving on the
executive of local sports and culture groups.
Next generation
Their devotion to agricultural life has evidently rubbed off on
the next generation too.
Their son Mark has recently signaled his intent and interest to
carry on the farm and is now enrolled to study animal science in
September. Their daughter Alison is completing her final year of
study in veterinary medicine in New Zealand.
The farm family’s name has been added to a distinguished list of 52
other farm families recognized by the RREA since the award’s
inception in 1966.
“The Greaves Hill family is deserving of this award because they
embody what it means to live in rural Manitoba,” said Eleanor
Cassels, chair of the Farm Family committee and president of the
Red River Exhibition Association.
“They engage with their community, are exemplary stewards of the
environment and have built a farm business that is progressive,
diverse and a welcome place to work and visit.”
This article was originally published in the June 28 issue of the
Manitoba Co-operator.
