Farmers embrace flexible transition

Farm transition plans are important, but they shouldn’t be set in stone, said Peter Smerychynski, who took over the farm from his parents and is welcoming his son, Konnor, into the family farm. “A real progression plan was not formal with us. It was an understanding. It turned out better than the formal stuff,” said Peter, who will spend the next few years planning, adjusting and formalizing the transition plan for Konnor to join the Westlock-area family farm. “Is there a perfect plan for farm transition? There are dead ends and back roads and all these things that come up that are never ever planned for,” said Peter, who farmed with his father for 37 years before his dad passed away three years ago. For Konnor, watching the strong partnership and good communication between his father and grandfather was key to understanding that not all good transitions are written down, but also rely on good relationships. “I really think the idea of a succession plan and the idea of me joining the farm started a long time ago, not just these last couple years. It was a suggestion from my father and grandfather that this could be yours,” said Konnor, who recently returned to the farm after graduating from Lakeland College’s agriculture program. “I watched my dad and grandfather work together and it was very clear from the beginning it doesn’t have to be a written down partnership to be a partnership. I am very glad I got to step in the last couple years with my father.” Peter said his farming started by being active on the farm as the youngest child of four. “I drove a tractor here since I was 10 years old. I knew how much fertilizer was used, what chemicals were used. I knew how we finished the cattle. I knew it all, but I didn’t think I did,” said Peter, who took a year at Olds College and a year and a half at the University of Alberta before ending his formal education when a quarter section of land became available near the farm. “I bought land on Boxing Day with my dad’s help and went from there. We had a great partnership.” When he started farming, they had six quarters of land, 50 cows and 40 sows. Peter’s first purchase after the land was a 1987 single-axle grain truck. Gradually, the father and son team expanded the farm, updated equipment and worked together. Buying the quarter section was an important first step for Peter. This year, Konnor also bought some land as part of an investment in the farm. “My philosophy was if you are going to farm you better be in the game right away, otherwise you have nothing to motivate you or work for or you don’t feel part of it.”

SHARE YOUR FAVOURITE | WP PRAIRIES PASTRIES CONTEST - ENTER TO WIN! Program puts students on the land

The One School One Farm project connects urban children with rural landowners while helping to restore natural habitat It’s fitting that Elizabeth Bekolay’s initiative, One School One Farm, obtained its charitable status on Earth Day last month. Connecting urban students with rural landowners is a passion of hers and what better day to celebrate? The biologist, who teaches at Saskatoon Public School’s outdoor school south of the city, said the idea to make these connections came to her in “a vision.” She was a kid who always wanted to be outside exploring nature. As an adult, working as an outdoor ecological educator, she pays close attention to biodiversity and ecosystems. “Since about 2005, I’ve been studying prairie remnant systems pretty intensely,” she said. The food system, while obviously necessary, has also been the cause of lost native prairie. But how to bring that habitat back? In 2018, she established a board and began planning for pilot projects. The COVID-19 pandemic delayed them, but in spring 2021 the first two went ahead. They include students from Victoria School and Walter Murray high school and landowners that Bekolay said heard about the project and volunteered to participate. The projects focus on establishing either bluff plantings or prairie strips on land that the landowners have decided need vegetation. They aren’t necessarily farmers. “We’re calling them land stewards,” Bekolay said. “They have land and they want to do something that benefits nature. “They have to give in order to receive. They have to give their time to the class, to give a tour of the area, a bit of a history of the area. They plan together with the students what they’re going to do to increase biodiversity and sequester carbon on the site.” The plantings include native species of trees, shrubs, grasses and flowers. The idea is to draw beneficial insects and pest predators to the area. “When we started, we kind of just let the students and land stewards go for it,” Bekolay said. But then drought hit and there was a huge learning curve as participants saw which species survived and which didn’t.

Teaching a child not to be a sore loser requires patience

Q: Our 11-year-old daughter is about as sore a loser as you can find. and both my wife and I sense that we are responsible for her poor behaviour. We used to let her win at games when she was young, thinking we were fortifying her self-esteem by giving her these easy victories. We failed to appreciate that our daughter began to feel that winning was her natural right, but she recently had a meltdown while playing board games because she could not accept she was losing. We need to do something about this. Our daughter cannot grow up expecting to win all of the time. A: I don’t think that you should get too discouraged. You are not the first parents who have engineered wins for the kids for the wrong reasons. The bonus for your daughter is that you and your wife are recognizing the errors of your ways and are willing to do something about it. The bottom line is that it is not too late for all three of you. You can help your daughter fix this thing but it is going to take a little time and a lot of patience. Let’s start with the board games that led to your daughter’s meltdown. Board games are great. They are all about chance. Winning and losing is the luck of the draw. You don’t win at board games because your moment of self-esteem is higher than is someone else’s. Neither do you lose because it is lower. I do not know why you win and lose. You just do. If your daughter has another meltdown when she loses, you can ask her to leave the room until she calms down. Then you go back to the game and try again. And you keep doing this until one day your daughter figures out that having fun, playing the game, is all that there is to it. None of the above should be tied into her self-esteem. Of course, she is going to figure this out faster if you and your wife set some good examples of winning and losing for her. Just make sure that you do. Oh, and by the way, there is a significant message in life built into all of this. Most overly successful people whom I have met will tell you that they just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Their success was not based on manufacturing their breaks in life. Their success was based on knowing what to do when those breaks came to them. Much of it is luck, just as it is with the board games.

Prairie wildflowers present photography opportunities

One of the biggest joys of spring and summer on the Prairies is the profusion of wildflowers. They make the ideal subject for photography because they are usually close at hand, and the riot of colour is irresistible. The best part is that we can experiment with different photographic techniques and create our own artistic spin. Cloudy or overcast days are just what we need in some cases. A wildflower meadow in full sunlight may be fine if we’re looking at a grand scene that includes the meadow, hills, and sky. However, direct sunlight is often too harsh to capture enough close-up details, especially delicate plants with white or light-coloured petals. Clouds act as giant diffusers, smoothing out the highlights and deep shadows to reveal more detail. On a sunny day, photographing in either early morning or evening helps avoid the harshest light. Another trick for close-up photos is to stand between the sun and the flower so your shadow shades the area that you’re photographing. Or use an umbrella to create a wider shade area. Showing the setting where the flowers grow adds interest to the photo and gives it a sense of place. But sometimes the background is messy or overly complicated and may be distracting. In that case, try to eliminate or at least simplify the background. One way to do this is to get low to the ground so that most of the background is sky. The most common way to simplify the background is to use a wide aperture on your lens (a small f-stop number such as f/2.8 or f/4), which results in a shallow depth of field. The flower will be sharp but the background will be thrown out of focus, making the flower stand out. This effect becomes even more pronounced with a telephoto lens.

Family business offers unique rewards

WOLF CREEK, Sask. — When Robin Exner and Barb Price were staff members at Circle Square Ranch in the early 1990s, they could never have imagined that they would still be at the same camp 25 years later. However, after their courtship and marriage, followed by the birth of their first child, the Saskatchewan couple decided to take on the job of running the ranch in 1998. Seventeen years later, Robin and Barb and their four children are the driving family force that keeps the year-around children’s camp and retreat centre running smoothly. “I look at it as a calling,” said Exner, executive director of Circle Square Ranch near Wolseley, Sask. “I feel like I grew up here because I was a camper here and then I went on to be a summer staff member, and even in high school and university I always came back in the summers to volunteer.” Exner serves as the general overseer of operations at the ranch and Price is an assistant, having served in a variety of roles from office clerk to kitchen manager. Eighteen-year-old Olivia runs the junior horse program, 16-year-old Morgan is a staff member, 14-year-old Tanner takes care of grass cutting and odd jobs and 12-year-old Nadine does canteen duty and housekeeping. Nadine is still fortunate enough to get a week off and become a camper like the other kids her age. With up to 650 campers and staff passing through the ranch’s doors each summer and numerous other groups visiting during the fall, spring and winter, Circle Square is a multi-faceted operation that requires input from the entire Exner family. “We feel a calling to do it and work with youth because we want to make a difference,” said Barb, who sees many children blossom during the summer camp program. The camp features one-week sessions for campers aged six to 18. Programming includes horseback riding, wall climbing, archery and water sports set in a Christian-values atmosphere. Children come from across Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba and stay in stationary covered wagons, each containing eight