Hi, my name is Tim Island. I started farming with my Dad at the very young age of six. You may ask how is this possible? Well, at the time my mother was raising my four older sisters and pregnant with my younger brother. So, you could say that I was in the way and the only way my Dad could babysit was in the tractor. When I would get tired of riding in the tractor, my Dad would let me out at the end of the field with my toy tractor. I would pretend that I was summerfallowing, just like my Dad. Little did I know that 25 years later I would be standing in front of you telling you not to summerfallow.
Thinking back to those younger years, there was nothing else I wanted to do but be a farmer. Now that I am 31, I have taken over the family farm, married to my wife Dawn, and have two daughters, bailey and page. My family has grown to include Kevin, the Credit Union Loans Officer, Darren, the Royal Bank Loans Officer, Les, Farm Credit Corporation, Rollie, our accountant, Jim, the lawyer, and my dog Soxs.
When I was 17 and renting my first farmland, this was not the picture I had in mind. My picture included at the age of 30 being financially stable, with my winters being tied up between skiing and hockey. The phrase "Don't think so, Tim" comes to mind.
The idea of direct seeding was planted in my brain by my father-in-law, Rollice Gronvold of Tisdale. He was continuously cropping with the use of minimum tillage. He had then decided one winter to buy a Concord air drill and start direct seeding his whole farm. At the time, I was farming 50/50 in the Brown Soil Zone north of Shaunavon. My major crop decisions were should I seed wheat or durum. The ideal of continuous cropping seemed far fetched, let alone direct seeding.
This led to the occasional friendly discussion on farm practices in the north versus farm practices in the south. Over a two year period, I watched Rollice direct seed and discussed 50/50 farming compared to direct seeding. All of a sudden, direct seeding started to make sense. It is not how much moisture you get, it is how much you save on wear and tear on equipment, fuel savings, and time saved by one pass seeding.
We then decided to try it on our farm. We were lucky enough to be able to rent a Concord air drill for 300 acres. We were amazed at how shallow we could seed a crop in standing stubble and still get good seed to soil contact with moisture. Normally after pre-working, our light soil would dry down two to three inches. Therefore, you have to seed deep to get the seed into moisture or wait for a spring rain. Through direct seeding we have the ability to seed specialty crops into moisture and get good, even germination.
Now that I had the taste of direct seeding, the only way to go into it was whole hog. However, still being a little bit nervous, I thought I better take in a few direct seeding workshops. So I did and the knowledge I received was very good, not only from the different speakers, but also from the farmers in attendance. The only thing I could not find was another fool like myself that farmed in the dry brown soil zone in southwest Saskatchewan, who wanted to quit summerfallowing and go direct seeding. Through talking to different people, I got in touch with Barry and Cecil Reisner from Limerick, Saskatchewan. The farm in similar soil and moisture conditions. After a phone conversation and a farm visit with Barry and Cecil, I came away with a lot of practical information. This information included not only what worked for them, but also what did not work.
Now it was time to buy an air drill. I thought this would be the simple part. "I don't think so, Tim!" Should I buy 9" or 12" row spacing, single or double shoot, and which of the 100 different openers on the market do I pick? The only simple decision was that it have the ability to seed. We finally decided on a Flexi-Coil 5000 air drill.
Now it was time to go and see my friendly banker. This is where the wind was taken out of my sails. Concern about the long term viability of continuos cropping in this area of the province was their major problem. By changing my entire operation, it gave them no past history to base a decision on. Zero-tilling in other areas is significantly different than in southwest Saskatchewan, given our unpredictable moisture levels. However, if I was still feeling that changing my operation was in my best interest, they then suggested I contact our agricultural specialist. This was very aggravating because of all the research I had done on my own previous to approaching them. But then I remembered that it took my father-in-law two years to convince me of the benefits of direct seeding. After a few months of seeking out different banks, I finally talked one of them into lending me the money to buy my air drill.
Now I was going seeding and this is when I found some of the hidden costs, like when you tell your crop insurance agent that you will be stubble cropping. As my personal coverage was based on summerfallow, my coverage for stubble would be based on area coverage, which was only 10 bu/acre. It would then take at least three bushels of that coverage to pay the premium, leaving me with only seven bu/acre from crop insurance. It looked like I would have to get out of crop insurance, which made my banker very nervous.
So now we had to think of some kind of alternative cash flow to offset the risk of crop failure. It was then that two of my neighbours asked me to do some custom seeding for them. This was a way of generating some cash flow through the spring. That spring we direct seeded our 2000 acre farm, plus custom seeded an additional 1500 acres. To the disbelief of all my neighbours, the crops turned out very well.
The first year was very hard for cash flow, with the major expenses coming in the spring when I was used to carrying costs over the whole growing season (i.e. fuel, oil and repairs). Now that I am going into my third year, I have made a lot of little mistakes, but I have learned a great deal of knowledge form them. I feel that the future for direct seeding will grow. We have seen it in the growth of custom seeding. Now I find that the farmers that made all the jokes about me in the coffee shop are phoning in the evening, asking questions on how direct seeding will work on their farms.