Saanichton Farm is returning to its roots.
Bryce Rashleigh remembers being 13 and combining grain on Hovey Road. As the family farm looks to mark 100 years on Vancouver Island, the Central Saanich farmer acquired the combine from his teen years to restore for the centennial celebration, and recently added a newer model in hopes of restoring the balance of years gone by.
“What we’ve found is the hay industry in the horse market is very saturated from the amount of lack of beef cows and dairy cows that have gone off the island... the hay market is very depressed,” he explained. “With everyone talking food security and grains and local grains we felt it was time to introduce grains back into the Victoria diet.”
Bryce was on hand to watch his son — the fourth generation of Saanichton Farm — combine fields of barley for Mike Doehnel who hand-malts his barley for local brewing. Doehnel’s malt was used by Driftwood Brewery to create Cuvée d’Hiver, or winter crop, which hit shelves last March.
Bryce says they’re set to combine the barley — like Doehnel’s crop off Mount Newton X Road that could create 10,000 cases of beer — and grains for bakery use.
“We need to diversify and get growing more food,” said Bryce’s son Peter Rashleigh. “You need a balance of everything to make farming work around here ... I’m the fourth generation and we used to, 30 years ago, we did a bit of everything. We had corn, we had grain, we had some cows.”
Peter got a crash course combining with his bud from Olds Agricultural College, where both were enrolled in the agricultural mechanics program. Peter and Dan Grudecki of Grudecki Farms in Acadia Valley, Alberta combined the 3,500-acre prairie grain farm last fall. With differing seasons, Grudecki was able to be on hand to help with the recent Saanichton work.
“We’ve been trying to go back to being more diverse because it just works better,” Peter said. “It’s going to take a lot of work. You have to change the direction everything’s gone for 20 years but I think we can do it. There’s a lot of interest, everybody wants local food.”
The wet spring kept them from getting as much planted as they’d hoped to be harvesting right now, but the plan is to put more winter barleys and wheats in this fall.
“Next summer we will definitely have bread grains and malting barley grains as well,” Bryce said. “We’re excited that change will come.”