BY ANDREA EMOND MUSTHAVEN HOLSTEINS:

BY ANDREA EMOND

MUSTHAVEN HOLSTEINS:

As the sixth generation on their family’s dairy farm in Uxbridge, Ont., brothers Chris and Craig Mustard share a few things in common. Growing up, they played on the same minor hockey and soccer teams. They took the same courses in high school and eventually went on to graduate from the University of Guelph together in 2004. The pair even got engaged – and married – the same year, standing as best man in each other’s weddings. Their sideby-side trajectories in life might be better understood by one simple yet important fact, revealed by their father, Grant, part way into our chat in mid- November: not only are Chris and Craig brothers and close friends; they are also identical twins.

“As a parent, I have very fond memories of those times,” Grant says, looking back on a lifetime of raising two full-of-beans boys on the farm. “Though there were days my wife Rosemary would march them out to me in the barn, one in each hand, and say, ‘I need to go for a walk!’”

Thankfully, there was never a shortage of work to be done and the pair never minded helping out. “We had two options,” Chris jokes, pointing them out on an open hand. “Help your mom or help your dad - pick one! If we weren’t at sports, we were probably out here.”

Jokes aside, Grant stresses how much the boys have contributed over the years and how their drive and desire to succeed has always come from within. He’s proud to see them continue the tradition of farming on land that’s been in the Mustard family since 1853, but notes they haven’t always had cows. Up until the mid 1970s, Grant’s parents, Mac and Mona Mustard, had a mixed farm, feeding pigs, chickens and shipping cream. Then, in 1972, they purchased some Holsteins, formed a partnership and began shipping milk. But as Grant explains, his dad was never in love with the idea of milking cows. “He did it because, financially, it looked like the thing to do. People were doing well; it looked like milk was where it was at.” Being related to some deep-rooted Holstein breeders in the area, he adds, including the Phoenixes, the Snoddens and the Parishes, certainly helped too.

Fast-forward to today and it’s clear that dairy farmers were exactly what the Mustard family were meant to be. Their sprawling freestall barn, built in 2001 and retrofitted in 2012, currently holds 75 milking cows, which are milked on average three times daily by two Lely A4 robots. They added the first robot in 2012, eight years after Craig and Chris came home from school to farm full-time and four years after they had completed their succession plan and purchased the farm from their dad. The second followed in 2015. Their latest expansion came earlier this year when they added a 62’ by 130’ addition to accommodate 25 more cows in the free-stall.

When the robot idea came up, Grant supported it, but still wanted a fallback plan in case things didn’t work out. He was skeptical and though he wanted to move forward, he had one request: “don’t take the parlour out.” The three of them laugh about it, now, looking back and recalling how the parlour sat empty for a year before they finally took the whole thing out and sold it. “I don’t think it’s for everyone,” Grant says, “but for us, robots are best thing that’s ever happened to this farm.”

He believes the technology gives good, keen dairymen the opportunity to be even better and says that putting in their first robot made his sons “keeners,” if they weren’t already before. After eight years with Chris and Craig home from school putting their touches to things, they had reached a point where they needed to make big changes to see improvements. And so, they put in a call to Harry Linde at Lely in Woodstock and began moving forward with a plan.

Chris explains how, just six years ago, it wasn’t as easy to find farms in the area with robots that they could tour. He describes that time as the start of the “robot revolution” and remembers Linde taking them to tour farms in Oxford and Elgin County.

The Mustards liked what they saw, and on March 8, 2012, they, too, joined the revolution and installed their first of two robots. It took some time for them to adjust their feeding regime and figure out how to breed for traits most suited to a robot set-up, but fairly soon after making the switch, they noticed a jump in their production. “Our BCA had always been above average,” Chris says. “But it

jumped 60 points higher after the robots.” Today it sits at a healthy 256-270-255. Several Superior Production Awards have followed, an accolade both Chris and Craig agree would never have even been a pipe dream before.

On top of all of this, the robots have allowed the family to achieve more balance in life, something Grant has been preaching to his sons since they were young. Though the farm was always the first priority, Grant and Rosemary (who grew up in town) wanted their sons to know that there was more to life than farming alone. Both boys played soccer in the summer and hockey at a high level right through high school and university and few of their friends lived on a farm. They smile, describing their creative routine for getting chores done quickly when a hockey game or soccer practice was on the line. A family cottage in Haliburton has been a welcome retreat in the summer and it’s where they head each year as soon as the last bale from first cut is in the barn. When Grant and Rosemary purchased it in 1996, Grant’s father feared it would be the end of the farm. Turns out, it’s been anything but. It’s become a special refuge away from it all – a place for making memories and spending quality time with family. Chris and Craig both proposed to their wives there and these days, it’s where the grandkids like to hang out.

Chris and his wife, Jill, live on the main farm and have three young children, including a set of twins. Lincoln and Natalie are five, and their youngest, Anderson (Andy), is three. A hockey net in the alleyway and several bikes propped against the wall tell a tale of a childhood not unlike their father’s.

The Mustard family recently received recognition for their contributions to farming in Durham Region over the past 150 years. The crown deed for the farm dates back to 1853 and descendants from the Mustard family have been farming here ever since. They received a certificate and specially-designed sign to display on their farm from the Ontario Federation of Agriculture.

Craig and his wife, Rebecca, live just down the road and have a fourmonth-old little boy, Caleb, who, at the time of writing, is already sleeping through the night. Rebecca hails from Australia and met Craig while attending the University of Guelph.

Though her original destination when planning her year of study in Canada was the University of Toronto, the 2003 SARS outbreak changed all that, and instead, she attended school in Guelph where she met – and later married – Craig, a “farm kid” from Uxbridge. The couple returns to Australia every other year to visit family and friends.

Though the brothers have always been very close friends, their personalities are, in fact, quite different. “In the way they think, they are so alike,” says Grant. “They’re on the exact same wavelength, so much so, that they hardly have to talk to know what’s on the other’s mind. But personality-wise, Craig is more like his mom – a little quieter – and Chris takes after me and likes to talk!”

It’s that very yin and yang duality that’s served them well on the farm all these years and has helped define their roles and allowed them to excel at what they love to do. Craig, for example, is the crop guy. He and Grant look after most of the farm’s 800 acres, divided equally between hay, wheat, soybeans and corn. They grow all the feed needed for the TMR they feed based on each cows’ stage of lactation and custom roast soybeans for their local co-op on top of that. Craig also does some custom work on the side, which includes baling large, square bales for neighbours and combining. They ramped up their custom work when the brothers graduated from university and came home to farm full time. “We added two people to the business and we needed to pay for it somewhere,” Grant explains. They’ve slowed down somewhat since then, with family life and a need for balance always at top of mind.

If Craig is the “crop guy,” Chris is the “cow guy,” though Craig is quick to describe their involvement on the farm as overlapping, clasping one hand in the other to prove the point. Since his third year of university, Chris has been making the breeding decisions. He strives to achieve a balance of type and production, but won’t use a minus component bull on the herd. He’s always liked nice cows, but over the years has come to realize the really special ones are better suited for someone else’s barn. Six of their higher-end cows were sold to Wisconsin in the mid 1990s, a pill that was hard to swallow at the time, but made sense in hindsight. Another looker, Musthaven Goldwyn Jaelyn EX-92 was purchased by neighbour Terry Beckett as a two-year-old in 2014. Jaelyn, who was named All-Canadian Sr. 2-Year-old in 2016, is now jointly owned by Blondin, Glauser & fils, Villyvon and William and Pierre Morille, and was Reserve Grand at the Quebec Spring Show last year and fifth of 18 Senior three-yearolds at the Royal.

“Don’t you wish you would have kept her?” Gary Jebson asked Chris and Craig ringside in Toronto. “No way!” was their answer. “She’d have been just another cow in the barn!” says Craig. “We’ve got no regrets,” Chris adds. “I mean, how could you?”

Having no regrets is a good way to describe the life that the Mustard family has led to date. It’s true they’ve faced some challenges – Grant battled cancer in 2010 and has had both hips replaced in recent years – but all in all, they consider themselves fortunate to have done something they’ve enjoyed all these years and not to have faced too many obstacles in the process. “We’ve been pretty lucky that way,” Chris says. “We’ve been very blessed as a family.”

In terms of what the future looks like at Musthaven, Chris would like to continue to see small, steady improvements in production and would like to eventually achieve a classification with the lowest scoring cow being Good Plus. Buying more quota and cows is an ongoing goal and Chris says they could milk 90-100 without it adding much more work. They’d like to buy another farm, but admits that’s getting tough where they’re situated. With 800 acres to crop right now, Craig doesn’t foresee the family being able to crop much more without increasing their current inputs.

Grant’s plan includes more golfing and trips abroad. He and Rosemary have traveled extensively, visiting Europe four times, as well as Australia, the Yukon and Alaska in recent years. A well-executed succession plan, founded on “good, professional advice” has paid off. Grant feels good about where his sons have taken the operation since 2004, and now, he says, it’s their story to tell. “It’s about them.”

Chris and Craig are excited for what the future holds and hope their families stay farming for many years to come. “We hope it continues,” Chris says. “We’re definitely setting it up so that the future generation can take over.”

44 the Link WINTER 2018 www.ontario.holstein.ca