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The Hutterite Way
Listening, Learning, and Sharing the Labor
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Article and photos by Ivan Glick
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If the Hutterites of western Canada have a special secret for their farming success, it is that their leaders listen to everyone in the community.
Ask the Hutterites why they are such good farmers, and they may tell you it is because the Creator gives to everyone a measure of intelligence and ability from birth. They believe that when the wisdom and abilities of all the people are combined, success rates for all go up. The Brothers have figured it out: success is the result of listening to each other with an unselfish attitude. Some would even call it a system.
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Eugene Janzen
Hutterite men are skilled cowboys
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Hillcrest Colony at Dundurn is structured like other Saskatchewan Hutterite colonies as a joint venture communal farming community where every person shares cradle-to-grave security and all share in colony work. Decision making in the colony is structured so it, too, is a shared activity of skilled people who listen to each other.
Raising Skilled Farmers
It was the Hutterites who invented the concept of kindergarten centuries ago. From ages three to six, children in every colony start learning the unique Hutterite attitudes in kindergarten. From age 15, when a boy becomes a man and starts sitting with the men in the dining hall, they rotate assignments, as apprentices, so all of them learn the necessary farming skills. They become mechanics in a well-equipped shop and are also educated in livestock management and crop production.
The system turns out skilled operators for large combines and 4WD tractors who also know how to service and repair the equipment they operate.
Every morning, immediately after breakfast in the communal dining room, there is a quick board of directors-style meeting at the minister's apartment. The colony business manager, the two ministers, and the farm boss discuss plans for the day's work. The ranch boss reports how many extra men he may need that day. The dairy boss, field boss, and other enterprise leaders also report in.
The next stop is the shop where colony men receive their assignments for the day. The work needed to be done that day and the available human help to do it are matched with artful efficiency.
Growth of the Colony Farm
Women preparing dinner in the communal kitchen |
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The colony believes in making the fullest use of every resource, no matter how small, for fear it will be lost if they don't. This foundational practice guides all decisions, including their farm and ranch operation that has expanded from 12 quarters of land (160 acres each) in 1969 to 32 quarters today.
Hillcrest Colony is a mixed grain and livestock farm on about 13,000 prairie acres. It has a 90-cow dairy, a 250-plus farrow-to-finish sow unit, laying hens, broilers, a few hundred geese, and 1,500 ducks. The farm grows barley, oats, canola, and irrigated bread and feed wheat that frequently tops 90 bushels per acre. There is also a six-acre vegetable garden. |
Three 160-acre quarters of land are in corn for silage. Alfalfa and barley are grown for hay and silage. Green feed (oats and peas) is harvested as haylage if the weather doesn't cooperate to put it up as hay. Hay and pasture provide most of the cattle feed.
A salty marsh is flooded early with water pumped from a lake a few miles distant. This native salt-tolerant grass, cut before it heads out, produces a large crop of nutritious hay. Upland hay and pasture land is in crested wheat grass, Russian wild rye, tall slender wheat grass, prairie wool that is cut for hay, and alfalfa/brome for silage. The grasses are cut young for feed quality rather than bulk.
Winter Swath Grazing
Hillcrest makes fullest use of summer grazing, and winter swath grazing (forage or grain left in the windrow for winter feed) has also worked well when the snow has not been too deep.
The beef operation, like the main farm, is tightly managed. Starting from a Hereford base they rotate with Gelbvieh, Red Angus, and Red Simmental bulls. There may be 300 replacement heifers on hand most years, but they are culled severely for conformation and disposition so only 220 may make the cut.
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These men are trained both to operate modern combines and to wrangle cattle from the back of a horse. |
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After freshening, these heifers are evaluated for milking and mothering abilities on the basis of calf growth. If a heifer is protective of her calf to the point of hostility, she doesn't stay around for another lactation.
Three young men are assigned to the ranch. They draw on additional help from the farm as needed. At branding time there may be a dozen all skilled cattlemen. They are genuine cowboys who can handle a rope and a horse. Beyond that, they've learned how to diagnose animals for general health management.
Steers and surplus heifers are usually taken to 800-900 pounds for sale to feedlots for finishing. They have taken some to 1,300 pounds because of the closed border price collapse in recent years. These heavy cattle have covered costs, but just barely, while cull cows have barely covered the cost of transportation to market.
Construction of apartments for a new colony is underway with Hutterite men doing the work. |
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Veterinary professor Dr. Eugene Janzen, of the University of Saskatchewan, is impressed by the colony's side-line beef operation on saline land that is too salty to farm. He has been monitoring their 900-head beef cow herd and suggests it may be the best managed commercial herd in western Canada. The colony has had a positive margin with their cattle business in spite of Canada's disease problems that closed the border with the U.S. to beef exports and created a price downturn. |
Minister Joe Wollman was cattle boss before being chosen to serve as the colony's religious leader. He likes cattle and can still swing a rope. He remembers that the colonies were just replacing their horses with small tractors when he turned 14. Instead of four horses pulling each grain binder, they could hitch three binders behind each tractor.
A 14- or 15-year old boy would ride on each of the three binders. The tractor was driven by another youth because at that age they all knew how to operate the machinery. Today, they have gone from binders and threshers to large combines and have five years experience with GPS mapping.
Starting a New Hutterite Colony
As the families that make up the colony grow, so must the farm. From 40 people who came to Hillcrest in 1969, the colony has grown to more than 100. They have decided to divide and start a new colony on another 12,000 acres they already own at Allan, Saskatchewan, where half of those in the present colony will move.
The first phase of construction for the new colony was under way last summer with 14 double occupancy modern self-built apartments taking shape. The ladies had already planted and mulched 6,000 trees and shrubs for homeland beautification.
When the new colony buildings are completed, those in the original colony will divide into two groups and all colony property will be split down the middle.
Nobody knows who will make the move until the last minute. Everyone will pack up and prepare to move. Then, on the night before moving day, they will all gather in church and cast lots to decide who will actually make the move to the new colony the following day. Those who are to remain at Hillcrest will unpack. It's a Hutterite decision-making system rooted in history.
The Hutterites themselves do not think of it as living in the past. To them it is a matter of using the past to build for the future. They look forward to a future that will continue to accommodate individual aspiration and shared achievement with security within the group without the stress and worry of going life alone. |
