Manitoba's Young Farmers Adapt To New Way Of Life

Dec 15, 2020

The Canada's Outstanding Young Farmer Award Ceremony for 2020 has been pushed back to next year due to COVID-19

Andre Steppler and his wife Katie were the Manitoba nominees for this year.

The Miami, MB couple manage the cattle division at Steppler farms.

Andre talked about how COVID-19 has impacted his operation.

"For our farm ourselves, we do have to move to more of an online platform for marketing and online for the sales, which we've kind of been doing over the last 10 to 5 years anyways," he says. "It didn't hit us as much as a shock factor but it's no doubt when we trim back our networking and our ability to tour farms and just visit and get to know our customers, it does change our life quite a bit."

Andre says winning the Manitoba award earlier this year has brought more of a spotlight to their farm.

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Video: A chain harrow is a game changer

Utilizing a rotational grazing method on our farmstead with our sheep helps to let the pasture/paddocks rest. We also just invested in a chain harrow to allow us to drag the paddocks our sheep just left to break up and spread their manure around, dethatch thicker grass areas, and to rough up bare dirt areas to all for a better seed to soil contact if we overseed that paddock. This was our first time really using the chain harrow besides initially testing it out. We are very impressed with the work it did and how and area that was majority dirt, could be roughed up before reseeding.

Did you know we also operate a small business on the homestead. We make homemade, handcrafted soaps, shampoo bars, hair and beard products in addition to offering our pasture raised pork, lamb, and 100% raw honey. You can find out more about our products and ingredients by visiting our website at www.mimiandpoppysplace.com. There you can shop our products and sign up for our monthly newsletter that highlights a soap or ingredient, gives monthly updates about the homestead, and also lists the markets, festivals, and events we’ll be attending that month.