Hairy Hill Farmer Talks About Agriculture Today

Hairy Hill Farmer Talks About Agriculture Today

Rosanne Fortier News Correspondent

Ron Mosiuk and his wife, Kathy Sawchuk farm near the Hamlet of Hairy Hill.

They have 50 head of cattle and farm one-quarter section of land and have been doing so for the past 25 to 30 years.

Ron said he hopes he can start seeding in the middle of May. He is not trying any new farm techniques this year. “We might land up summer fallowing this year,” Ron said.

When Ron was asked about how he believes the COVID-19 will affect their farming, he replied, “I don’t think it will affect us much. I feel it might affect getting fertilizer. But I am sure there will be fertilizer out there because a lot of bigger farmers get it in advance. COVID-19 might also affect farmers getting fuel where we might not be able to buy fuel if they ever stopped producing it. But I think it will keep going. These next couple of months will probably be the worst. But even now, I was watching the news and they said not to worry the grocery stores are getting supplies in that way, it is not a big panic.”

Then when Ron was asked what the challenges were to farming today, he replied it has been so wet outside for a lot of years now. “It has been really tough to get out in the field and try to get seeded or to finish combining in the fall time, it is always wet. The last three years already has been quite bad. It was very dry before that but almost in a way that was better because with the wet conditions, a person is not able to get into the field. Last year, we won’t able to spray so our crop had more weeds and stuff then it should have had. A little bit of land around three or four acres got too wet for us to seed, so we lost that. Making hay is a bit tougher because it is always raining. But we have a tractor and a shredder, so we shred our hay out. I am doing this by hand to make it last longer. We try not to waste much. This year, it seems like farmers have enough hay but yet it is going to be close because we couldn’t make all that hay last year.”

When Ron was asked what he was doing for his emotional health, he answered that he is just going with the flow and hoping things will get better. “I am thinking about the good points about farming which is the freedom a person has and the ability to do whatever we want to. We don’t have a close neighbour telling us that they don’t like this or that. Nobody has to tell you what to do,” Ron explained.