Ag edition: Spring Cleaning
In the agricultural sector there are off-shoot businesses that provide specialized services to area farmers.
Take, for example, seed cleaning.
“If you’re not in the farming community it does take some explanation,” said Ken Wyant.
He has been in the business for 40 years, first working with his late father Ray, and now with his daughter, Laura.
“It’s something different,” said Ken. “Not a lot of people do it.”
If asked, the layman may think of it literally but seed cleaning could more aptly be described as sifting. The seed is filtered through four screens, with the purpose of removing unwanted weeds and chaff. By sorting out the seeds that are too large or too small, the client is left with only the highest quality seed.
Farmers will travel long distances, transporting their seed by tractor and wagon for as many as two hours or more in order to access the service.
At Wyant Farms in Stayner, the seed cleaning happens about nine to 10 months of the year, while the sawmill business fills the rest of the year.
The family doesn’t take vacations, which is fine with Ken because he likes being close to home. He has lived on the farm in Stayner’s north end his whole life. He and his wife Kim, who oversees the administrative part of the business, now live in the family farmhouse on the original farm purchased by his parents in 1956 with their four daughters.
Ken’s father purchased the seed cleaning equipment, the same machine used today, in 1985. He had a full dairy operation at the time, kept pigs and grew crops. He wasn’t looking to start a business but he began cleaning seed for neighbours and it grew from there.
Right out of high school, Ken took over the seed cleaning business and the pigs, and by 2003 he was working full-time with the seeds and the sawmill.
Laura, 22, works full-time with her father.
“Your own kid is worth two employees,” said Ken. “We have fun while we’re working.”
It’s too early to tell if his three younger daughters will take an interest in the family business but he said if help is needed, they pitch in.
Ken and Laura clean red clover seed in the winter. In March, the last load of seed was in the bin waiting to be processed. Depending on the weather, spring cleaning will be getting underway soon, with oats, barley and soybeans being brought in for cleaning and treatment. In August they will start on the winter wheat.
At peak times, the father-daughter team has worked for 59 days straight, running the seed on conveyors into a hopper.
After the seed is cleaned, it is treated to the client’s specifications to make it more resistant to seed- and soil-borne diseases.
“It helps give it vigor to get it up out of the ground and get it going,” said Wyant.
The chemical treatment is highly regulated and, as an accredited seed treatment facility, Wyant Farms is audited every two years as a condition of its licence renewal.
They take pride in treating seed with precision so there is little waste. It takes 130 litres of chemicals to treat 40 tons of seed and the Wyants are able to calculate the treatment application so precisely that there is at most a cup left leftover.
“Because the chemicals are expensive, it has to be done well,” said Ken.
The operation has won an industry award from Uniroyal Chemical – The Golden Kernel – pitting Wyant Farms against 100 others, some quite a bit larger in scale, and it placed third.
The seed cleaning business is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.
