SSCA welcomes Don Kelsey of Choiceland to our Board of Directors. He fills the Northeast Directors position. Don is no stranger to farmer associations as he sat on the National Farmers Union Board as one of the three representatives from Saskatchewan for the past 9 years.
As Don comes on to the board we are sorry to see Ed Beauchesne leave. He was a strong proponent of direct seeding and is changing the farming landscape around Albertville. However, ties with Ed and Marg will be maintained as their son George from P.A. comes on the board as one of the directors at large along with Adrian Johnston from Melfort.
Don farms as part of a family farming operation with his father Cliff and brothers Glen and Ray. They are farming 2700 acres just south of Choiceland very close to the Fort a la Corne Forest Preserve. Since 1981-82 they have been continuous cropping the majority of their acres. The local ADD Board ran a three year 40 acre Conserva Pak plot on their farm and the Kelseys liked what they saw. They began direct seeding with their own equipment in 1988. Flexi-coil made a set of steel packers they mounted on their Friggstad air seeder. They also switched from shovels to Dutch knives to make direct seeding work for them.
Don says that one of the benefits that attracted them to continuous cropping and direct seeding was increased soil cover. They farm gray wooded land that can have sandy knolls peaty bottoms and white clay areas all within short distances of each other. The land is subject to both wind and water erosion. With the sufficient precipitation they normally get they felt direct seeding would work well to protect their soil.
This spring Don talks about the need to have a very flexible system in their area where excess moisture has made seeding difficult in the past few years. Normally they like to band NH3 in the fall with narrow knives. They want to open up their soil a bit and dry it out so they can get on it in the spring. However, in the last two years they have switched to spoons so they can seed place more fertilizer. It has been very difficult to get banding done in the fall! They also use a heavy harrow to place granular herbicide and spread high residue fields in the fall. With the high moisture springs they have been getting some of their canola has been seeded successfully with a bit of tillage and these harrows!
The effort Don has made to develop a farming system that will protect his soil coupled with his practical farm policy experience makes Don a welcome asset to our board.