Cypress County’s BMO Farm Family of the Year winner announced

Pahl Livestock Limited has operated on their homestead north west of Redcliff since 1971, when Leray and his father Gilf purchased the land.

The homestead and the cattle operation is something Leray is happy to share with the future generations of his family.

“It’s always something you kind of look forward to and hope you do a lot of work and you do a lot of accumulate things and hopefully you have the opportunity to pass it on to next generation and the next generation after that,” Leray said.

“We already have Kaden here and he looks like he’s going to be a rancher too, so there’ll be four generations that’ll work off of this place.”

Leray’s sons Scott and Dan operate the ranch with him, which also includes land west of Suffield.

The cow-calf operation is split between selling cattle for beef and purebred cattle for breeding.

Each year their cattle numbers fluctuate between 450 to 600 head.

Any grain farming the family does is used to make bales feed their cattle.

Scott said ranching is something he knew he would continue with from a young age.

“I knew right away, right from well before I even graduated high school, I was kind of being the oldest son. I was kind of the glorified hired man at a young age,” Scott said.

“After I graduated, it kind of became a full-time thing. And I’ve been here ever since.”

As the award winner the family will be honoured at the Calgary Stampede with the other winners.

Leray is also excited for the recognition at the Medicine Hat Stampede, an organization he has been involved with for about 50 years.

“You get that wagon ride around the track and kind of look important. It’ll be really special,” Leray said.

Leray is a former counselor with Cypress County for 30 years.

Scott said his brother Dan and him helped get the former Box Springs Rodeo going in the early 1980’s and he used to be involved in rodeo’s himself.

“I never did compete at Calgary, but we hung out there cause we were rodeo cowboys. To kind of have this as a strictly spectator will be pretty cool,” Scott said.

“I’m kind of looking forward. There’s a lot of the guys that I used to rodeo with, their kids are now competing and a lot of them are ending up at Calgary. I think it’d be a really enjoyable day.”

The family has been involved with numerous organizations and volunteer efforts throughout the years.

Scott said the acknowledgement of being given the award means a lot.

“Not just the ranching part of it, but the giving back to the community part of it, to have somebody step back and say, and notice what you’ve done, is gratifying,” Scott said

“We’ve had a few neighbors win it over the years and it was actually quite a surprise. I was told by our grazing co-op president who I found out after the fact, he nominated us, really proud of it,” he added.

“It’s a kind of acknowledgement of all the hard work and all the years, volunteer stuff that we’ve done over the last 50-60 years, starting with dad and mom. And we kind of fell into that part of that’s what you do. You give back to the community, you volunteer where you can, you help out where you can.”

Scott mentioned that his mother JoAnn was the winner of the Cypress County citizen of the year in 1996 for the volunteer work she had done.

At almost 83-years-old Leray is still active on the farm, something he plans to continue for as long as he can.

“If something needs done, go do it, check cows, throw salt, fix fence, whatever has to be done, Leray goes and does it,” Leray said.

“I don’t sit on the tractors anymore. That’s the boys job, but I do pretty well all the swathing so I’m not That’s gonna start next week. So we’ll see how that works.”

Scott said that ranching has changed a lot over the last 25 years.

“Technology has been a big driver of that. I think the value of what ranching is now too,” Scott said.

“The old case scenario was when the son would take over the ranch and dad would retire and it was here you go, here’s the worn out equipment, here’s the bank loan, good luck,” he added.

“Now it’s a multimillion dollar business. You got to pay attention to inputs and expenses and stuff like that because it’s big business, and a lot of people don’t understand that.”

Scott adds small family farm operations are no longer common.

“The family members might run it, but you’re dealing with lots of acres, huge equipment costs, huge input costs, fertilizer, fuel, you know, insurance, stuff like that and trying to keep everything running,” Scott said.

“You’ve really got to be an astute businessman. Whereas before, if you worked hard, you kind of paved your way. Now you kind of need to be both,” he added.

“You still need to work hard, but you can’t let the business end of it slide.”

Scott adds operating with mother nature and adapting is a huge part of a farm operation.

“You can’t buck it, the last five or six years have really shown that, you can’t be, this is what grandpa did this and dad did this. So I’m going to do this,” Scott said.

“You’ve got to be willing to change and quickly, the last five years, we barely made a bale of hay. We’re buying hay from wherever we can buy hay from trucking it in, which was very expensive,” he added.

“Not much water come this spring, so you sell cows, you downsize the herd, you do what you can to stay viable and then hope for the good years to kind of rebuild again. It’s big business in this day and age.”

by Jesse Gill

Cypress County’s BMO Farm Family of the Year winner announced

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