- Upcoming Events -

-> Standard Hill Connection Sale- February 23, 2018 at the farm (Lois' yard) 1 PM

* 2018 sale offering *

Much of our activity revolves around our small bunch of children and our large bunch of cows, with a little sprinkle of time for Christine and me.
            Our oldest boy Jayce turned eight this year. He enjoys curling, 4-H, building, and learning. He participated in curling through the local curling club and through 4-H. He was able to learn about the basics of the game and go to some competitions that gave him experience in travelling and meeting other kids. 4-H has helped him get out of his shell. He has become more confident in situations that are stressful and new. He has always loved animals and in just his second year of working with a heifer he has come a long way in what he can do. He also showed a lot of courage to move on and compete in the district 4-H speaking. His building activities mainly include the wonderful world of lego. Many hours are spent building his sets, which he never wants to break, and designing his own construction of animals. School is something that comes easily so far for Jayce, he loves to read and to learn about almost anything but once he knows something it may be difficult to explain to him that there might be more to it or a different side of the story! Jayce is growing into a fine young fellow and is becoming more of a help with his siblings and the farm every day.
            Karli, our five year old girl is never too far behind her big brother. She is spirited and outspoken and fun to be around. She started kindergarten in the fall and is meeting the challenge head on with success. It is a big step to leave home for two or three days a week to go to school and she is enjoying her new friends and activities. She was fortunate to have a big brother that was a huge help on her first few days of school. This fall she also started “can skate” at the local rink and she’s taken to it like a hog to slop! Karli loves crafts and making things, and wow can she go through a roll of tape! She enjoys going out to visit her cows and always wants to pet them, so I don’t think it will be difficult to get her to tag along to 4-H and junior activities. According to her school teacher she is a avid learner and a pleasure to have in class. She generally wears her heart on her sleeve and is caring and compassionate. We are proud of her character growth in the last year for sure.
            Our youngest, and second boy Landen, turned two this fall and has had a big year for milestones and life lessons. He started standing and walking, furthered his vocabulary by a thousand fold, and has developed singing and comedy skills. He can sometimes effectively play with one or both his siblings and his favourite activities with them seem to be running and rough housing. He also enjoys his time alone with mom and dad when the other two are off at school. He is easily persuaded to go outside with mom or dad to do farm work and often stands ready with his boots and pyjamas ahead of who is headed outside. Of course he is always busy and seems to have a lot to say. He is known to be silly and to love to smile and make other people smile.
            Christine and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary this October. I’m very fortunate to have found such a great mate and mother to our kids. We both share in looking after our family and our four legged friends and make time to be involved with some other activities as well.
            Christine is the Secretary/Treasurer for the local recreation board and the custodian for our local community hall, of which we are both members. She enjoys the opportunities she gets to volunteer with the kid’s school classes and activities. Christine and the kids (I’m not sure how much help they are) do some gardening and landscaping around the yard. She enjoys going to yoga and visiting with friends and family. We had her running the tandem axle grain truck for silage and grain harvest this year for the first time and I was very proud of her ability. The kids also enjoyed being her side kicks.
            I find some time, largely due to our capable full time hired man, to volunteer and partake in some social activities. This past summer marked my first full year as President of the Saskatchewan Hereford Association. I enjoy working with our board and members and I enjoy utilizing my people skills to help work through the associations business and meet new people. I also continue to be quite involved with the North West Sask Hereford Club which holds its annual field day in August and I sit on the committee that organizes the Stockade Round-Up Fall Cattle Show in Lloydminster every November. I continue to be a 4-H leader, and working with the youth never grows old. In the winter months I curl once a week in the evenings and enjoy making it to an occasional bonspiel. As the kids grow older I hope to do more activities together with them.
            As a family and a cattle operation we saw many activities and changes throughout the year. There were very few dull moments.
            We pretty much did a full overhaul of our bull sale this year. We moved in up about three weeks, we changed the location to mom’s yard from our neighbours, we did not have a guest consignor, we went from a live sale to a video sale, and we are grateful that we had some very good help to get it all organized and considering the weak cattle market last fall we had a pretty good sale.
            2017’s calf crop was our first in many years that the calves were all conceived from natural service. We set this up to tighten up our calving season and subsequent group of calves, and so far so good. We brought in two new Hereford herdsires, from The Cliffs Farm and Chestermere Hereford Stock Farm, and one new Black Angus herdsire, from Belvin Angus. We also purchased walking rights from K-Cow Ranch on our own Tiger 5T son, Bengal 479A. We were blessed with fairly good calving weather and managed to avoid a few spring storms in large part. Breeding naturally went great again in 2017 and it won’t be long and we’ll be seeing the results with our calving to start mid January 2018.
            This summer we continued to work and improve on the cleanliness of our shop and the workability of the corrals for the bull sale in February 2018. I’m a little bit of a clean freak when I get on a roll and I enjoy moving the furniture around, figuratively speaking.
            I managed to make a whirlwind trip down to the South East Sask Hereford Field Day for the second year in a row, and was impressed with the cattle and the hospitality of the breeders. Our Annual North West Sask Field Day was held in early August. It was well attended by breeders and we were pleased to win the cow/calf show with a Cannon 62T daughter and her Dominator 70Y heifer at side.
            We were fortunate to be included in the North West Sask Angus Tour with a great group of producers this August. A lot of planning went into that day from the committee and from us for planning our tour stop. I consider the tour a huge success and look forward to it again next time it comes this way. Right after the Angus tour came the Turtleford Summer Cattle Show where we exhibit cow/bull calf pairs. We were awarded with a champion again this year with our two year old Angus Cow, a Special Focus daughter with her Settler grandson at side.
            In September I followed up a lead on some bred heifers for sale from our friend Harvey Duke of Wascanna Cattle Company and we ended up buying a large group that are now integrated into the herd and enjoying our grazing corn. Also in September Christine and I snuck in a few day trip to Waskesiu for our Anniversary. We had fun hiking around town, canoeing, and enjoying some down time. We got a new puppy this fall for Jayce. Dinomite is a German Sheppard cross Australian Sheppard Border Collie that has lots of energy and intelligence. He tried his paw at chasing calves but has since settled for staying by my side when walking the pens.
            We had another late harvest this year, but we had a plentiful one. We ended up buying a combine so we could complete our own harvest on time. We are well stocked with feed and bedding for the upcoming year.
            Then we started into the fall show season. With the late harvest I was unable to make it to the Edam Fall Fair this year, and I was only at the Stockade Round-Up as a volunteer and not an exhibitor for the first time in many years. Agribition was a benefit for our program again this year. I took two pens of bulls down, one of each of our respected purebred breeds, and with the help of our friend Mike Gerlinsky and his son Rylen we gained some new valued contacts and visited old friends. I was also busy at Agribition helping with the Hereford events and would like to thank everyone that participated, volunteered, or spectated for making the shows and events great. After Agribition we go into a period where we resume “normal activities” and we have begun planning for our 2018 bull sale.
            Soon we will be clipping and picturing bulls and heifers, and I hope to have the catalogue pretty much completed by the time we start calving. We are excited to have a new guest consignor to the bull sale in 2018. Brennan and Taryn Schachtel will be offering ten Red Angus yearling bulls and some commercial open heifers at the sale slated for February 23rd. We are also bringing in our friends at Castle Rock Marketing into the fold for the sale to help us out.
            That is us and our 2017 in a nut shell. From our family to yours may you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! And remember, keep your stick on the ice.

- Recent Success -

Turtleford Summer Cattle Show 2017 -> Cham Two Year Old British Cow w/ Bull Calf - STANDARD HILL LADY ANN 382C (by Special Focus) with Colonist 388E (by SHL Colonist 375C)

Res. Champ Mature Cow w/ Bull Calf- STANDARD HILL BEBE 327A (by SH YAHOO 68Y) with QUANTUM 361E (by Minburn Quantum 55Y)

In Loving Memory of Tony Myer (1938-2013)