The Rural Voice, 1989-10, Page 35it rains. Then I have to take a cut in
price for poorer quality hay." All hay
is fed to the livestock. There is a large
demand for straw in the area, and
"selling straw is the cream," says Don.
Operating the feedlot and cow herd
enables the Lewis family to practise
crop rotation in the cash crop opera-
tion. "The land stewardship program
is nothing new to us. We've always
rotated our crops," Don says. Corn is
planted for a maximum of two years,
and in many instances just one year if
the ground is clean enough to allow it.
"Some of the rented land is pretty
dirty, so we put it in corn for two
years to clean it up. Once we get on
top of it, we put in canola," Don says.
Spring canola is followed by wheat
or, if the field is being seeded down,
barley. At one time Don grew a large
acreage of soybeans, but the fence
rows between fields created a haven
for groundhogs, which completely ate
off the first two or three rounds of the
field.
Because of the shorter growing
season in Grey County, timing is
crucial to ensure quality and quantity
in the crops. The barley and canola
are planted by the end of April and
corn has to be in by the first week in
May to get full benefit from the 2,500
to 2,600 heat units in the area. Much
of the land that Don farms is open
bottom with a gravel base which dries
off quickly, allowing early access to
the land and making use of all the
moisture in the lighter soil.
Don, who has grown canola for
the past seven years, had always found
that the cool climate suited the crop —
until the past two years. He saw his
average yield of 44 bushels per acre
drop to only 15 bushels per acre
during the 1988 and 1989 crop years.
Crop insurance payments helped to
make up the difference.
Given plenty of snow and the
open -bottom land, Don has considered
planting more winter canola. But
despite the 30 per cent increase in
yields resulting from earlier flowering,
Lewis is reluctant to switch entirely to
winter canola.
"We may not have any chemical
costs in the initial planting of winter
canola, but there certainly is more
chemical control needed for the after
growth. If I don't control the mustard,
it will be there next year. Some
people accuse it of being a weed."
Don doesn't like to follow a winter
crop with a winter crop and finds that
the 11 months that winter canola is in
the ground, from planting in August
until harvest in July, is almost too
long.
While he has had two disappoint-
ing years, and the trend in the area is
to more winter crops, Don intends to
plant spring canola again next year.
Farmers tend to mechanize to
compensate for labour short-
ages and costs, Don says.
"You either pay for it in
labour or pay for it in interest.
Sometimes with labour you
can lay the help off. You
can't lay the interest off."
"You can't look at yield on a year
to year basis. If you did, you wouldn't
be farming half the time. Sometimes
you take one year and you'll suffer
some yield reductions, but you make
it back the next year because you did
something to the land, be it plowdown
of clover, or just cleaning up the
ground. You have to look at the long
term."
The drought in 1989 in Grey
County has been far worse than it was
in 1988, Don says. The corn has been
stunted and crop insurance adjusters
estimate that yield on some of Don's
lighter soil will be 50 to 60 per cent
below average. "The quality of corn
will be all right, but the yields will
really be cut," Don says. "Last year
the barley yield was cut but the corn
yield was super. What we're losing
one way we're gaining in another."
Don averages his crops over five
years when quoting yields. Barley and
wheat average 55 to 60 bushels per
acre while dried com averages 91 to
92 bushels.
Preferring not to keep all his eggs
in one basket when cropping, Don
grows a variety of crops to help spread
the flowering times to catch the
summer rains. "You're bound to get
in on some of them," he says.
This fall, Don planted hard red
wheat to replace some of the white
winter wheat. The renewed interest
in wheat in the area has meant more
custom combining and drying for him.
At one time, Grey County grew a
substantial acreage of wheat, but the
old varieties had trouble surviving the
winter. New varieties have produced
a large increase in acreage.
Don estimates that the extra cus-
tom combining of wheat crops will
push his total combined acreage up
to more than 2,400 acres when he
finishes combining the com this fall.
The custom combining grew over the
years out of necessity. Like many
other farmers, Don felt growing pains
in the early 1980s. He bought two
farms in 1976 and, according to
statistics, 8 of 10 farmers who bought
from 1976 to 1981 are gone.
"I'm supposed to be one of those
statistics. We carried a tremendous
debt load." But with the help of his
wife Sharon's off -farm income as a
nurse, and the extra income from
custom work, Don pulled through.
The farm is now paying for itself.
Purchasing a combine was too big
of a cash outlay and just not possible
for Don when he started farming.
Besides, "you just get them paid for
and they wear out," he says. "When
you're doing custom work, you want
to get a lot of work done and give
people service. You don't want to
go out with an older machine."
Leasing provided the answer and,
after 11 years, Don continues to lease
two machines for a two-year period
before leasing two more new ones.
"If you don't have a lot of money,
you can generate cash flow by leasing
and keep a steady rotation of good
rigs," he says. He estimates that he
would have had to wait five to six
ycars to realize the benefit of pur-
chasing a combine, and he didn't
think he could wait that long. Ideally,
purchasing a combine outright and
trading it in regularly would suit Don
if he had sufficient cash flow.
The two medium-sized combines,
equipped with two-way radios, are
better tailored for the often small
acreages in the area than one Targe
combine would be. If an acreage is
large, both combines work together.
Lewis and a hired man do custom
combining for about 20 farmers in the
area.
Other equipment on the Lewis
OCTOBER 1989 33