The Old Farmer's Almanac is known by many for its long range weather forecasting, but the book also includes a variety of features including farmer profiles.
The Almanac's Managing Editor Jack Burnett says they like to profile producers adding that among the farmers featured in the 2024 edition is Allison Squires and Cody Straza.
"The farm in Wood Mountain is called Upland Organics. They're organic farmers, stewarding 4500 acres as mix cattle and grain. So, it's all about their story."
Squires says it was a pretty huge surprise.
"Actually, we were contacted out of the blue about this opportunity. At first, we didn't really believe that it was the real thing, because we do get a fair amount of spam. But I think once we delved into it deeper and realized exactly what was going on we were really excited about it. It's quite an honor to be featured in such a widely distributed publication."
Straza says their overall goal is to be producing high quality, healthy food.
"One of the ways we're looking to do that is to create a healthy soil because healthy food comes from healthy soil. To make that happen, we're implementing a lot of soil health principles. Where we are growing cover crops, long diverse crop rotations, and we're grazing livestock on our cover crops. So we're reducing our tillage by doing that, increasing our diversity, and keeping the soil covered for as much of the year as possible."
Squires and Straza were named 2022 Organic Farmer of the Year, Saskatchewan's Outstanding Young Farmers gor 2022, and Canada's National Outstanding Young Farmers for 2022.
The Wood Mountain couple are also featured in the 2024 edition of the Old Farmer's Almanac.
To hear Glenda-Lee's interview with Allison Squires and Cody Straza of Upland Organic's click on the link below
Source : Pembinavalley online