COLUMN: A warm welcome awaited me in Canada
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
From the Farm by Victoria Ballantyne
Last month I was in Canada, gallivanting across the western provinces as part of my Nuffield farming scholarship.
I started at the Canadian Beef Industry Conference in central B.C. This was a great place to begin to understand how the beef industry operates and the challenges and opportunities ahead. Unsurprisingly, these are much the same as they are here.
The extremes of the Canadian environment were my reason for visiting. They have up to an 80 degree temperature variation throughout the year reaching up to plus 40 and as low as minus 40 celsius, bringing lots of challenges like having to heat water troughs! The advantage they have is that winters are dry, which are actually easier on stock than the wet weather we experience here.
The Canadians were very friendly, polite and welcoming and several generously invited me to visit their ranches and businesses. I collected my husband Jason in Calgary a week later where a fellow Australian, who has lived in Canada for 30 years, went out of his way to look after us and show us around.
Alongside farming they have an impressive forage seeds business. It was really interesting speaking about winter feeding systems and mixes. He strip grazes forage cut and left in the bout. They can do this because the temperature drops so rapidly in late September that the cut forage doesn’t rot. It is then so cold throughout winter that the ground remains frozen, so they don’t get poaching. There were a few varieties of grasses and legumes I hadn’t come across and I’m keen to find out if we can grow them here.
From Calgary we headed to north east Alberta, enjoying the conversation and hospitality of several ranchers. We had a memorable stay with Art and Kathy Wheat who, like everyone we visited, summer their cattle on the equivalent of our hill ground. We were taken out on their beautiful horses through these pastures. It is a spectacular part of the country and made me quite envious as I thought about our 300 acres at home.
A quick trip into Saskatchewan to visit Dr Bart Lardner at the University of Saskatoon Livestock and Forage Excellence Centre. This is an impressive site set up by industry, private enterprise, government and academia. There were a number of trials under way including accurate measuring of methane from cattle. We also managed to squeeze in a distillery visit and some excellent gin cocktails.
From here we headed back towards Vancouver, making several visits along the way. People were so happy to open up their homes and businesses to our questions and show us around their special places. We hope they enjoyed the bottles of Clynelish we took as thank you gifts!
Back home three weeks and 5000km later, our helpers did a great job looking after stock who seemed determined to make life difficult for them. The bulls went through two gates the day Jason left with the bulling groups mixing. This then put pressure on water and grass as rain refused to arrive.
Now we prepare for the end of the growing season and start to look towards pregnancy scanning cattle, sorting ewes for tupping and housing calves for winter. Hopefully we’ll get a few more decent weeks weather before we need to concede to the shortening days.
Victoria runs Clynelish Farm, Brora, with her husband, Jason.
