TIMBER RIVER, N.B. — TIMBER RIVER, N.B – At a gala awards ceremony held recently in Sackville, the Chignecto Soil & Crop Improvement Association named Timber River Eco Farm as Farm of the Year for 2018.
Part of a provincial organization, the Chignecto Soil & Crop Improvement Association is comprised of many area farmers concerned with maintaining good farm practices and keeping abreast of new programs and government-instituted policies. Through meetings, workshops and regular newsletters it provides its members with information on up-to-date equipment, farming programs and incentives, innovative farm practices and improvements in the many, diverse aspects of agricultural production today.
Timber River Eco Farms, owned by Pirmin and Katrine Kummer, are producers of Timber River Eco-Spuds – potatoes grown with a minimum of chemical fertilizers and no herbicides.
Pirmin Kummer prefers to cultivate crops, also letting some fields return to natural habitat for birds and animals, which helps with insect problems as well; in some areas they partner with Ducks Unlimited. Caring for the land is a priority for Kummer so as soon as a crop is harvested, it is seeded again with forage crops which are later tilled back into the soil to enrich the land and prevent erosion.
“As soon as we’re done harvesting we seed the field right away, either with cover crops or grass. So most of the time, even right after the potato harvest, you’ll see green fields and that helps to prevent erosion,” he said recently.
The operation currently harvests about seven million pounds of potatoes each year; 20 per cent of last year’s crop yield was not harvested, due to extreme wet weather. Eco-Spuds are sold at Sobeys and Foodland stores across Atlantic Canada and into Ontario.
The farm also grows about 220 acres of barley, fall rye and oats which are sold to a local dairy farm for feed. Straw is sold to local cattle producers for bedding.
The Kummers, who purchased their farm 25 years ago, have been members of the Chignecto Soil & Crop Improvement Association for many years. After completing a Master’s Degree in Chemical Engineering, Jonathan, the eldest of the couple’s three sons, joined his parents on the farm last year.
Chignecto Soil & Crop Annual Awards
During the annual awards evening, a number of area farms were honoured for outstanding crop production, including the following:
Second cut chop silage – Prescott Farms, Sackville
Cereal silage – S & S Farms (Dixon), Port Elgin
Square bale, hay – Forks View Farm (Richard and Harold Brooks) Sackville
Round bale silage – Tantramar Acres (Robert and Nathan Murray) Point de Bute
Corn silage – Roga Farm (Con and Rose Rommens) Melrose
First cut chop silage – Roga Farm
Round bale hay – Allan and Shelley Fillmore, Midgic
During the evening many door prizes were also awarded and an auction of grass and corn seed as an annual fundraiser for the Chignecto Soil & Crop Improvement Association.
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