Growing Up on the Farm, a look into local agriculture, presented by Briwood Farm Market, also fueled by KUBOTA. Today we are profiling Mortier Farm.
Mike and Marcy Mortier are farming 700 acres of land, of which they own about 550 acres. They share crop and rent the balance.
Mike elaborates.
“All my farms are basically within eyesight, except for trees. And I have one farm that is maybe five kilometers away from the home farm.”
On that farm, he and his wife are the second generation to work the land.
“There’s been three generations of farmers in the family. But on this farm, we are the second generation.
“So we farm just regular field corn, soybeans, winter wheat, and hay. And then we also run a beef feedlot of about 80 head of cattle.”
Mike explains the beef operation in greater detail.
“So I sell actually to a previous boss of mine. I sell, or actually he markets my cattle. They will go either to a kill plant here in Canada or depending on the style and type of cattle, they may hit the US market.
“As of right now, tariffs haven’t hurt us on the livestock end. A bonus is because of the exchange rate on the money. So we make a little better money on the cattle going to the U.S. than we would here.
“I go out every morning and I push buttons. I got a pretty easy job. I push buttons and within about 20 minutes I have my cattle fed. And then I go through and check them for health. And then if they needed to be bedded down with straw or hay put in or anything like that, then that’s over and above that 20 minutes of feeding.”
Mike and Marcy have four children and, at this point in time, it appears at least two of them show an interest in becoming the third generation to operate the family farm.
“We have a son who is hoping to take over the farm and a daughter that loves livestock and may farm with my son. She may do the livestock and he may do the groundwork.”
Although farming consumes much of his time, he and his wife have an interesting pastime: get aboard their motorcycle and hit the road with friends.
“We bought a Harley-Davidson three years ago, and we’re finding that we have time now to ride it with friends. And we just get out on a, oh, maybe a Wednesday afternoon when we have nothing to do or maybe a Sunday just for a drive.
“And my wife likes to go along because she likes to get either a free lunch or an ice cream out of it. Yeah, she’s smiling right now about it.”
His hobby, however, brings him right back to farm life.
“I collect and restore antique John Deere tractors and memorabilia and machinery and stuff. Some people collect old cars. I take it one step further.”
Looking down the road, the price of farmland will determine what lies ahead, Mike stresses.
“There’s been a lot of changes since we’ve started farming with my dad. Just with machinery, the way we work the land and fertilize and stuff like that.
“We started buying our own land in 2000 and just have kept adding basically to our farming lifestyle. And then my dad passed away and I’ve taken over the home farm. So now we’re farming everything and with the price of land right now, we’re kind of sitting idle. We’re almost debt-free.
“So we’re thinking we’re done purchasing land at this time. We would love to purchase more. My son would love to purchase his own land too. But with the prices of everything right now, just a little bit on the high side, so we’re just going to sit idle on that.”
Hear more of our conversation with Mike below.
Written by Ian McCallum
