My way of farming: by mat redsell

The residue left after crimped rye as pasture for the horses. The horses do a great job of breaking the rye down.

I have never had anything more challenging than farming. In my old age it is the one thing that keeps me going each day. If I did not have horses to feed, crops to grow or machinery to repair I'm not sure life would hold much appeal. I remember my great uncle once telling me that he was tired of living and then he just died.

Farming is like learning to play the piano. In the first lesson you do not learn to play the piano and it only takes about 10 years of constant practice every day to be able to play the piano well. I play the piano well!

I started farming late in life after careers in publishing, aviation and harpsichord building.

When I thought about farming I did not want to sell to a large multinational company that dictates the price of the goods so vegetable growing sounded pretty good as it requires a small amount of land with minimal equipment. So I did that on 1/4 acre which provided me with some vegetables. I had a few chickens too for eggs. But commercial vegetable growing requires long hours and hard work so I decided that value added farming by growing our own organic sunflower seeds and then pressing the sunflower seeds into sunflower oil was a better choice. The same with the spelt flour which we grow and then mill for flour. This type of farming requires about 50 acres, tractors or horses which is another complexity to farming and requires lots of money and time to make it happen.

It must be remembered that farming like I do does not produce any monetary profit. But myprofit is the healthy soil and a lifestyle to be proud of.

That being said just how did I farm and get money to purchase a farm? I worked day and night (yes night too) to purchase buildings and to renovate them for tenants. This paid well and was very lucky but the actual farming has been very difficult finding out just what I can grow as crops, how to improve the soil and life a life that is enjoyable. And I am still struggling with all of these things but each year gets better. Unfortunately old age is catching up with me and we have had to take on a partner to continue our farm.

The other important factor is that I got married late in life (69) to a very hard working gal who takes care of the chickens and our garden. Some of her needs are met with a new hardwood floor and recently moulding for it made in our woodworking shop.

So where is my profit in farming?

The decision to press vegetable oils and mill flour offer a reasonable lifestyle, good exercise and lots of fresh air with little travel.

An example her was in in 2022 I prepared for the sunflower crop by plowing a hay field with lots of alfalfa in early September that has been used for about three years as a pasture and hayfield. I then planted rye at 120 lbs /acre along with white clover 4lbs /acre and peas. In the following spring I waited until anthesis when the rye is in full flower then I crimped and plant the sunflowers in one pass. The white clover makes its appearance after I harvest the sunflower seeds which becomes a pasture for the horses for a couple of seasons.

See the following article.

(http://matsfineoils.com/Crimped%20rye.html) .

While this method of using crimped rye does seem an efficient use of my tractor I am also thinking of just planting rye directly into my pasture after a few seasons eliminating the plowing. My experiment at over planting the pasture with grasses and alfalfa seems to work so why not just plant the field with rye in the fall and crimp and plant sunflowers in the spring missing the plowing. I did this over planting in the fall of 2022, the rye came up and gave me a crop. I did some of this in the fall of 2023.

The harvested sunflower seeds get pressed into sunflower oil for our customers and also used as fuel in our Diesel tractors.
The cost to us this year should be about $.38 a pound for sunflower seeds which saves a lot of money with
sunflower seeds selling at $1 a pound which we had to purchase 2022 because of a failed crop which is normal in farm life.

This year has shown me that growing your own taking time developing the methods to yield what you need can reduce the costs substantially while also maximizing our soil health and become self sufficient which is my aim.

The other area I like is in the milling of spelt flour. For 1500 lbs of spelt per acre on our farm then I can mill at least 1000 lbs of flour with little cost of dehulling since we developed the machine. We sell the flour at $2 a lb to our customers so that acre should provide $2000 of income for us per acre. Our cost per acre with compost is less than $200 an acre so the profit is at least $1750 per acre which is very good.

The difficult part is we presently have crops in about 25 acres of our 50 acres in sunflowers, rye, corn and spelt with the remainder in wood lots and pasture for the horses which increases our soil health. Our basic soil health is improving so our yield is gradually increasing.

The good thing about this way of farming is that the seeds are in our bin until we have orders to press fresh oils and mill fresh flour. Our oils and flour not degrade in the bin while waiting for a customer by pressing fresh oils and fresh flour to order.

Some of our competitors use Ukraine and Russian sunflower seeds and sunflower oil that you purchase sunflower oil for a very low price making our sunflower oil look expensive. But consider the time it takes to get the sunflower oil to Canada the oil , it will may have lost any nutrition so the saving is meaningless. Fresh oil and flour is best nutritionally.

I like the idea producing our own but one must also have a market so I developed my own customers and stores to purchase our products.

Efficiency will reduce our costs in the long run and that takes time and money which we are doing each year.

This all sounds very easy to bypass the corporations and going directly to the customer which has many advantages but getting those customers requires a lot of work and maintenance.

I have read a lot of what the farmer organizations have published to encourage farmers but feel a lot of it relies on governments to make changes but they are too influenced by corporations so what I have done is put me back in control by selling directly to the customer.

And the bottom line for us is that we still do make a monetary profit and need our pensions to break even so even being old does have some benefits making our profits in soil health, good food and a wonderful lifestyle.

mat


mat