By News

This year’s Field of the Future is headed for success

Jul 28, 2015 | 8:17 AM

Redhead Equipment’s third annual Field of the Future advance farming plot continues to grow.

 Arron McLean has been involved with all three Fields of the Future and he is still pleasantly surprised with all the support it receives… Including some timely weather from Mother Nature herself.

“We’ve been really lucky this year with the timely rains,” he said.

Redhead Equipment planted their third annual Field of the Future back in May during the Victoria Day weekend. Redhead employee, Tim Sjogren spent most of the weekend seeding on his own time to get it finished.

The initiative began in 2013 when the company was Moker and Thompson, “We ended up getting our hands on a lot more acres than we needed,” Mclean said.

long-term care

La Ronge housing shortage discussed at SUMA convention

2h ago

Fond Memories

North Stars' 20-year-olds reflect on junior hockey experience: Part 1

4h ago

Missing pet

'She means the world to our family': Woman seeks help in finding missing pet parrot

6h ago

“The employees here decided to turn it into more of a charity cause than anything. It’s just something fun to do, grow crops, play with our machinery and at the end have something to give to someone who needs it.”

This year’s green peas yield proceeds will be donated to Buckland Emergency Services (BES). “Buckland Fire and Rescue is a great choice, especially because their work helps the farming community” said McLean.

“They’re such a well deserving group and they’re so genuinely thankful. They’re just a good group of guys out there doing a lot of things that matter to us”

The Ag community has also rallied in Buckland’s corner by donating the cost of the chemicals and equipment to take on this charitable initiative.

“Fremont trucking donates all their time, the trucks and employees at harvest time to haul the crop off the field and straight to the elevator for us,” said McLean.  “Which is huge for this charity project, without it we’re in big trouble because we don’t have storage bins.”

McLean marvels at how Fremont finds the time.

 “He always makes it work, don’t know how he does it because he’s always busy, but it means a lot to Redhead Equipment to see the customers’ wholehearted support.”

McLean explained the project started off a lot smaller and snowballed into what it is now.

“Redhead may spearhead the project but it’s amazing how many people contribute in many ways,” he said.

Jim Miller, Fire chief for Buckland Fire and Rescue said they service quite a large area and the funds raised from Field of the Future will help greatly.

“We’ll be putting the funds toward a quad which can carry up to four firefighters,” he said.

“The vehicle would aid us in getting in to the bush and backwoods. We’ve had so much rain over the past few years the fields and even some of the roads are terrible to try and get the heavy equipment down.”

Miller said because Redhead Equipment deals with the farm community it would be something in the direction of farm safety and farm rescue, “it’s where we’re gearing the donation toward.”

“They’re (BES), the guys that if any of our customers are in danger or in a pickle, they are the ones who go to help them out… our customers are number one and we want them safe,” said McLean.  However that didn’t stop these hard working volunteers calling him asking if there was anything they could do to help with the fieldwork.

“All we can do now is sit back and watch it grow.” Mclean chuckled then continued. “It’s the real farmers who have all the work right now with the spraying and weeding.”

McLean believes it will be another four to six weeks before they can start harvesting the fields.

With files from Sarah Stone and Sarah Wallace

Email: mgervais@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @mmdbrodie