Juggles Sports and Farming Career

DIFFERENT ACTIVITIES FOR SURE, BUT HARD WORK AND DEDICATION ARE TRANSFERABLE SKILLS

By: Lee Hart

There may not seem to be any obvious similarities between lumberjack sports and farming, but Connor Morse says both activities require some similar disciplines.

Morse, who is busy part of the year as one of the top young competitors both nationally and on the world stage of lumberjack sports, also farms with his father Jeff Morse in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley, producing purebred Simmental cattle, along with a 70 head dairy operation.

“The lumberjack sports and farming are both very rewarding,” says Morse who is the third generation on the beef and dairy operation at Kingston located about an hour west of Halifax. “If there is a downside it’s that I am most busy with both activities at the same time of year. With the sport I need to be training and competing, just at the same time that we are planting or putting up silage or weaning calves. They aren’t very compatible from a time perspective but we make it work. And I also believe it is important to have some variety in life.

“In other respects they do complement each other,” he says. “They both involve hard work and commitment. You have to do your best with both and you’re always working to see where you can improve. There is a lot of satisfaction in knowing you did your best.”

Morse, 27, was born and raised on the family farm, which has been a long-standing mixed farming operation. There were always dairy cattle and long before Connor arrived on the scene his dad established DJ Simmentals raising purebred Simmental cattle.

Today the purebred beef and dairy enterprises operates under the Morseview Farms name. On the dairy side they milk 70 head of registered Holstein cows, housed in a freestall barn, with a parallel milking parlour. On the beef side they’re calving about 90 head of Simmental cows, marketing both open and bred heifers along with yearling bulls.

In about 2011, Connor, in his mid-teens, got involved in the Young Canadian Simmental Association (YCSA) and began attending events and showing cattle, creating his own herd prefix CDM Simmentals.

“The first event I got involved in was the Maritime classic and then in 2012 I attended the National Classic held in Turo, NS where I won the grand champion overall aggregate award,” says Morse. With that award he won a trip to the U.S. national leadership conference in Oklahoma.

He continued with his YCSA involvement joining the Maritime YCSA board as a director. He later served as Maritime YCSA board chairperson, which included a seat on the national YCSA board.

Morse remained active with the YCSA program until he aged out a couple years ago.

His involvement with lumberjack sports began several years before he began showing Simmental cattle. “I was about sixyears-old and as a member of a local 4-H club I got involved in The Woodsmen Skills Competition and that has just continued,” says Morse.

He competed in 4-H lumberjack events and then in 2015 as he attended Dalhousie University Faculty of Agriculture he joined the university lumberjack sports team. After graduation in 2018 with a degree in agriculture business with a minor in animal science, he joined the Maritime Lumberjack Association and began competing on the professional circuit. Morse has excelled at lumberjack sports over the past five years. He competes in two different leagues — The Stihl Timbersports Championship and the Maritime Lumberjack Association competitions.

In 2018 he qualified for the Stihl Timbersports Canadian Championship where he was named Rookie Champion.

That qualified him that year to be part of Team Canada to participate in a world competition in Liverpool, England and then in 2019 to attend the world championship held in Gottenburg Sweden, where he competed in the Rookie World Championship events.

Just earlier in the summer of 2023, he participated in the Stihl Timbersports Canadian Trophy Championship in Kitchener, ON where he had his personal best performance, placing seventh in the national event.

While there are several disciplines or events in lumberjack sports, four of the most common include the standing block chop — the competitor uses an axe to chop through a standing log, just like felling a tree; the single buck, which involves one competitor cutting through a log with a handheld crosscut saw; the underhand chop — the competitor stands on a section of log and uses an axe to chop through the log between his feet; and the stock saw, which involves using a chain saw to make two cuts through a section of log.

In all these timed events, Morse says it requires plenty of training to improve performance. At the Kitchener event for example, it was an endurance competition that involved moving through all four disciplines as quickly as possible.

“There are probably four key elements that I always have to be working to improve,” says Morse. “Of course strength is important, you have to be able to put some muscle into each event. Technique is certainly a big part of it — learning how to swing the axe and where to place it, for example. Speed is obviously important, these are timed events, so strength plays a part in speed as well. And of course equipment is key. You need to use quality tools that are properly sharpened and maintained.”

Interestingly enough, the tools used in lumberjack sports don’t just come off the shelf from a local hardware store. Morse says most of the axes used are manufactured in Australia and New Zealand, and need to be maintained with a razor sharp edge. Axes cost about $1000 each. And the six-foot cross cut saws used in the single buck competition costs about $3,000 each. With only a select few technicians with skill and training to properly sharpen the cross cut blades, those saws have to be sent away for sharpening.

There are some lumberjack events, such as the “hot saw” category where competitors develop modified, high-powered saws, however, for the stock saw event those are chainsaws that come directly from the factory. “There is no horsepower modification and they are factory sharpened — all saws are the same — so competitors in the stock saw event are all on equal footing with the equipment,” says Morse.

While he just competed in the Stihl event in Kitchener, there are about six more events on the Maritime Lumberjack Association circuit he plans to participate in this summer and fall.

With the purebred Simmental enterprise, they have increased herd numbers and improved facilities in recent years. While the dairy enterprise has good facilities in place, and as often is the case in most areas, there isn’t a lot of opportunity to buy more quota to increase herd size. “I believe we’re at a place right now with the farming operations where we just need to fine tune management and see where we can improve production efficiencies,” says Morse.

With lumberjack sports his plans are to hopefully continue competing for a few more years. “I’m happy with my performance over the past couple of seasons but I plan to keep training and hopefully continue to improve on the professional circuit,” he says.

“I really enjoy the challenges of both aspects of my life right now. We will continue to produce high quality breeding stock that appeals to commercial beef producers along with a very productive dairy operation, as well as the lumberjack sports.

“They don’t have much in common, but during my time with YCSA I learned a lot about organizing events and certainly with farming in general you understand the importance of hard work, dedication and the need for stick-to-itiveness. I believe all those skills are transferable and valuable no matter what you do in life.”