BRAE, P.E.I. — Farming has been in Justin Rogers’ blood since the day he was born.
For his wife, Laura, it’s been a way of life since she married into the Rogers family in 2004. They now own and operate Picturesque Farms in Brae, across the road from his late grandfather’s homestead, where the couple produces 450 acres of seed wheat, oats and barley in rotation with forages and soybeans and raise beef cattle.
“My childhood, growing up, consisted of being in the field, barn, woods, the farm shop. I hung off of Grandfather Harris, and Uncle Stephen’s words and actions,” said Rogers, 40. “I looked up to them. This made the career choice very easy and natural.”
Picturesque Farms is also where he and Laura are raising their two children, Mary, who is five and Luke who is now the age Justin was when he obtained his first farm animal. An eight-year-old Justin was out in the barn with his grandfather and uncles tending to a heifer which was having problems with her first delivery.
The calf was delivered by Cesarean section and all of the men’s attention was on saving the valuable registered cow.
Rogers, however, gravitated to the tiny, premature heifer calf. Grandfather Harris moved away from the cow long enough to instruct the boy to take some dry hay and wipe down the calf with it, the action intended to help get the calf’s blood flowing. It was slow going for several months, but the calf survived and flourished.
“Many of that calf’s offspring are in our herd today,” Rogers said. “My interest in farming began, I think, the day I was born, because I have no memory of wanting to do anything else.”
“We want to be financially healthy environmentally healthy. We want to be able to contribute back to our community. They all have to work together. Or else, why would we be doing it?"
-Justin Rogers
Rogers also derives some off-farm income from driving a school bus. Perhaps not coincidentally, his uncle also drove a school bus.
“There’s a picture of me out in the field with my little toy tractor, loading hay on it. And I’d have a trike that was a bus. I’d have to leave the field and go drive the bus. And I still do it today.”
Laura, who is a high school math and science teacher, works beside him on the farm, helping with the livestock, driving tractor and rouging the seed grain fields, often with the children along.
“His passion led him. He was born to farm. He was kind of looking for whatever he could do to make it his dream.”
Rogers wanted to go into farming full-time as soon as he finished high school. By then his own herd had grown to six animals and he had been acquiring and fixing up old farm machinery since he was 13, selling it and re-investing in more equipment.
But his parents convinced him to go to Nova Scotia Agricultural College in Truro, N.S. where he studied Agriculture Business and Farm Mechanization.
It was there that he met Laura who was studying Environmental Sciences. By then Rogers was acquiring the family farm, piece by piece.
'Battened the hatches'
Picturesque Farms was primarily potatoes and beef cattle until two farm crises intersected around 2007 — the BSE disease impacting the beef industry and virus issues that turned their seed potato crop to money-losing tablestock.
“We still envisioned a career in farming. That was the way I wanted to raise this family and offer the different life lessons and opportunities that a family farm could offer,” Rogers said. “We just battened the hatches for a few years, and I worked off the farm a lot.”
The turnaround started around 2012. Warren Coughlin was operating a custom grain cleaning business in Coleman and was looking towards retirement. Justin arranged a five-year transition of that business while building a new operation in Brae.
“We decided to gear up for the future here and try to meet all the standards."
They also went through the process of becoming seed grain growers. They started with 20 acres in 2014 and were up to 150 acres to seed last year.
Being environmentally responsible is one of the farm's main goals, said Laura.
“We want to be financially healthy environmentally healthy. We want to be able to contribute back to our community. They all have to work together. Or else, why would we be doing it? There’d be nothing for these fellas,” Rogers said, pointing to Luke and Mary.
“If we can’t protect the resource that’s providing for us then we’re in trouble.”
At the recent Atlantic Farm Mechanization Show in Moncton, the seventh-generation owners of Picturesque Farms were presented the 2019 Atlantic Region’s Outstanding Young Farmers award.
“Only passion and determination empowered the Rogers family to start their operation from scratch, something that most people say is impossible today in agriculture," said Canada’s OYF program first vice-president, Franck Groeneweg, during the presentation.
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