Against the grain
A prairie boy returns to his roots
BY Mitch Moxley
Photography by Sarah Yeaman
Blake Hunter, a 25-year-old farmer living an hour northeast of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, is taking the gravel road less travelled. Not only has he come back to the rural area most of the kids he grew up with have fled, he’s launching an ambitious organic agriculture project in the heart of Canada’s industrial farming complex.
It was a winding road back to the Prairies for Hunter. After graduating high school, Hunter studied entrepreneurship in Calgary and environmental science in California, backpacked the Caribbean in between, and then enrolled in a tourism management course in Malaspina University-College in Nanaimo, B.C.
“I was one of the people who left Saskatchewan and I said I would never come back and be a farmer,” he says. “To me, it was the big, huge tractors, the chemicals, the airplanes and spray. And people always complain about not making enough money on top of that.”
But Hunter’s mind began to change as he came across more and more organic, and profitable, farmers in his travels. He started to see opportunity in the farmland his family (who had relocated to California in 2000) still owned but rented out. “The farm was just sitting there waiting for me,” Hunter says.
So last summer, after six years out of province, Hunter returned to his childhood farm. He bought a 1970s tractor and borrowed equipment from his grandfather, a third-generation wheat, oat and barley farmer. In his first season, he planted 10 acres of hemp—“an experiment,” he calls it—but his plans are much bigger: He wants to turn the farm into a model of organic farming aimed at eco-tourists.
In his first season, Hunter used an entirely organic fertilizer called compost tea—a careful concoction of worm-filled compost, high-protein chicken eggs, humic acid, seed and rock dust, mixed together in a mesh basket and steeped in warm water, like a tea bag. According to Hunter, this compost tea—a recipe he picked up from an organic vegetable farmer he met in California—is a big reason for last season’s high yield of 30 bushels of hemp an acre.
The decision to grow hemp was also tied to Hunter’s desire to be an eco-friendly farmer. Hemp is resilient to weeds and largely avoided by insects, Hunter explains, eliminating the need for pesticides. It also absorbs more CO2 in a four-month cycle than any other plant grown in Canada. And it’s healthy—hemp seed is a high source of protein and contains essential fatty acids.
While Hunter’s last crop was a bust—the hemp crop mixed with renegade wheat and he was unable to sell it on the market—he isn’t worried. He sees farming as a trial-and-error process and hopes to share the knowledge he gains along the way with others interested in organic farming. This summer, he’s scheduling workshops to attract visitors and he’s planning to join Willing Workers on Organic Farms Canada, a notfor- profit organization that connects volunteers and organic farmers.
If things go according to plan, the farm will be worth checking out. This summer, Hunter plans to create his own biodiesel, converting waste vegetable oil from restaurants in nearby cities so that he can reduce his reliance on petroleum. It’s a technique he picked up from his father, who has been running his own solar energy company on converted biodiesel for years.
Hunter worries that Canadians are losing their connection to land and food, because many farmers are practising largescale industrial farming—to the benefit of corporations, not themselves. “Small farmers are becoming an endangered species,” he says. “I’d like to affect organic farming by trying to show a new model. One that’s smaller—and more human.”
