Holistic farming helps farm family see viable future

Pilot Mound-area farmers Pam and Clinton Cavers have set down quality-of-life goals for both farm and family.
Holistic farming helps farm family see viable future

By Lorraine Stevenson
Co-operator staff

Pilot Mound Tawny Cavers has just arrived home from school and wants to know when her dad is headed to the barn to check the calves. She wants to go too.

This eight-year-old Pilot Mound-area farm kid loves helping bottle feed the farm's newborn calves. Her parents, Clinton and Pam, find her enthusiasm for the farm encouraging. The couple wants her, and their other two daughters, Autumn, six, and Mika, 13, to love the farm. They know many farm families don't feel that way, and tell their kids to do anything but farm.

The Cavers are determined to buck that trend, and raise kids who see the farm as a place where both a lifestyle and a living are possible.

Farm-raised kids themselves, the Cavers moved to the family farm in 2002 after buying the house and land Clinton's great-grandparents homesteaded in 1887. Harborside Farms consists of 480 acres surrounding the yard site, plus an additional 200 acres of bush pasture north of Pilot Mound.

The couple has long talked about what they want from a life lived on the farm. Clinton says he started out farming the conventional way.

Then he got married.

"Pam gave me a fresh pair of eyes," he says. "We began to change our operation, a change that's been 10 or 12 years in the making, because she had a fresh outlook on things." She'd ask why they did things a certain way. "I'd say well, I don't know. It made me think."

Together, they began to think independently, and to set down some very specific goals for themselves. Broadly speaking, those goals revolved around quality of life for the family, and raising their livestock in a natural way that would benefit their land.

Holistic management

The Cavers credit an approach to farming, called holistic management, with helping them set farm and family goals. Holistic management, a concept developed in the U.S., and now being adopted on farms across the continent, urges farmers to step back and start looking at the so-called triple bottom line - or things that should matter most - healthy land, strong family life and sustainable income.

The Cavers joined a small group of other farm families also intrigued by the concept and began meeting with a certified holistic management trainer. They took several classes. "We had certified trainers that came out to teach us holistic management principles, which encompass everything from grazing to financial management, to the social aspect of the farm," says Clinton. "It tries to teach you to encompass all of those in your decisions."

The Cavers began to make some decisions, and in so doing, chart a long-term plan for their farm. They set a whole range of goals down on paper, from production strategies they wanted to adopt, to financial goals, and how to achieve that aforesaid quality of life for the family.

They've adopted several new grazing strategies from their studies. "We like to refer to ourselves as 'grass farmers' rather than 'ranchers,'" they write on their website www.harborsidefarm.com. "We raise great grass; the animals do all the rest."

Those animals include a herd of Jersey cattle raised for meat, heritage breed American Mulefoot pigs, renowned as high-quality ham hogs, plus goats and pastured poultry. Their pigs and cattle graze together on their bush pasture. "We've combined our herds, the pigs, the cattle... they run together year round," says Clinton.

He's pleased with what he's seeing through their managed grazing systems. They're tangibly benefiting both their livestock and the land.

"Does it make sense to work off the
farm and forget the farm, or do you
do what you have to do to bring the
farm up to where you want it to be?"
- clinton cavers

Planned profit

Their holistic management coaching also convinced the Cavers of the benefits of careful financial planning. They set a budget for spending for both the farm and the family, and lay out exactly how much profit they want to earn. The goal of the holistic approach is to manage the farm so that costs of the operation is 50 per cent of expected profit. "I think it will take a few years to work towards that, but we do have our profit planned for the year," said Clinton. "We know right today what we plan on making by Dec. 31."

It has disciplined their spending, adds Pam. "You can monitor your finances monthly this way," she said. "If you have a wreck one month you can see it on paper, and you know where you have to adjust. You can see through to the end of the year, and you have time to change what you're doing, to keep yourself on the goal that you set for your planned profit."

Quality of life

The Cavers say they are realizing their quality-of life goals through the way in which their lives connect directly to the farm each day. They sit down as a family to meals every day made from healthy, nutritious food they've grown themselves. They enjoy working on the farm together. "I want them to love food and know where it comes from," says Pam. Their kids are growing up in the best place any kid can be.

Meat shop to open in June

The Cavers most ambitious plan begins to unfold this spring. They are constructing a licensed and fully equipped meat shop on the farm, and expect to open the doors to Harborside Farms Countrystyle Natural Meats in June. Using the slaughter services of a nearby abattoir, the Cavers will begin further processing their own production, into all-meat sausages, nitrate-free hams and bacon, specialty smoked meats and other retail cuts.

The couple has found direct marketing one of their strong suits and has already built up a good customer base, both in Winnipeg and the surrounding local area, for their naturally raised chicken, beef and pork. This expands their product offerings, explains Pam. They plan to continue doing direct deliveries to customers. Harborside Farms Meat Shop will connect their farm to urban consumers, and help them build relationships with the non-farming public - something the Cavers say will be really important for family farms in the future.

The meat shop also positions them for participation in the Harvest Moon Society Local Food Initiative, of which Pam and Clinton are founding members. The initiative presently involves 13 farm families who, under the Harvest Moon brand, will market and distribute family farm-raised meats, vegetables and grains.

Their meat shop is really the way they plan to realize their most fundamental goal, say the Cavers. That is, to be fully committed to their farm. The way he sees it, if you are truly committed to farming, you find a way to do it full time. "Does it make sense to work off the farm and forget the farm, or do you do what you have to do to bring the farm up to where you want it to be," he says.

The income earned operating the meat shop should eventually eliminate their need to earn off-farm income. Pam presently works at the local paper in Pilot Mound. Clinton does relief truck driving. "This is definitely something we're jumping off the deep end doing," says Pam. "But when we sat down and really thought about what holistic management has taught us, and began to think about what we want for our life, our farm, our girls... it brought us around to this. This is what we've got to do to get what we all want."