EDMONTON - The family farm was enough when Ellery Smith was growing up, his father's 3,500 acres growing a comfortable living for mom, dad and the two boys.
But eventually, the boys grew up and started families of their own. And even though they kept farming, the land no longer provided enough.
"The profit margins aren't quite what they need to be,'' Smith says from the back of his tractor southeast of Red Deer, Alta., where he is seeding next fall's crop of wheat in a field somewhat soggy from the damp spring.
"A minimum of 2,000 acres per family is what Ive heard is needed to make it justifiable, with equipment upkeep and trying to stay with the times. We're a little shy.''
So Smith, 29, and one his brothers came up with time-honoured Prairie solution, with a particularly western twist.
They not only went to work in the oilpatch, they started their own company.
(My brother) was tired of working for somebody else, so he phoned one day and said we should try to find a company,'' says Smith, and now Two-good Oilfield Services supplies chemicals to drillers and pipeliners.
"We just bought it,'' Smith says proudly. "We're only two months old.''
Off-farm income is increasingly important, says Statistics Canada's newly released census of agriculture.
Nearly half of all farmers -- 48 per cent --reported at least some income from outside employment in 2005, up from 45 per cent in 2000.
British Columbia showed 55 per cent of farmers working outside jobs, the highest number in Canada. But the biggest increases since the last census in 2001 came in Alberta and Saskatchewan, where five per cent more farmers rely to some extent on off-farm paycheques.
The oilpatch has long been one of the primary sources for those paycheques, says Greg Stringham at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. He says energy producers have been recruiting farm boys for decades.
"They're very knowledgable and safe workers, used to hard work and heavy equipment,'' he says.
In the employment market, farming and drilling have been a natural match. The drilling season peaks in the winter, leaving summers free to work the land.
But over the last few years, he says association members have noticed a shift in the interaction between the agriculture and energy sectors. Although no statistics yet support the observations, Stringham says farms aren't as reliable a recruiting ground for rig crews as they used to be.
"I'm hearing that that source of labour supply has really dried up over the last few years,'' he says.
Instead, like Smith and his brother, farmers seem to be looking for opportunities in the booming energy sector other than muscling around a drill bit.
"A lot of them have picked up on secondary businesses without being directly employed by the oilpatch,'' he says.
Some, like Smith, supply needed materials. Some haul water. Some provide security to oil and gas wells dotted throughout the rural landscape.
"That's very typical in the Alberta and Saskatchewan oilpatch,'' Stringham says.
There's lots of opportunity in the energy sector these days, but farmers aren't getting into it just for the money. Farmers would rather be farming, says Art Preachuk, agricultural fieldman for the County of Red Deer.
"I don't think they're doing it just because it's there,'' he says. "It's a necessity. It's helping them survive.''
"If they had their way, 90 per cent would be back to the farm.''
There's only so many hours in the day, and something has to suffer, he says.
"The work that needs to be done at home is being left.''
So far, that hasn't been too big an issue for the Smith brothers.
One can work the farm and handle calls, while the other drives a truck and makes deliveries to clients. They also took advantage of the natural pause in oilpatch activity while country roads dry out to put in their wheat, barley and canola.
"As soon as breakup's over, we'll have all the crop in the ground, so it works out perfect,'' Smith says.
Most of his new workload consists of dispatching the company's two employees.
It's a little bit more work, but Smith says he's just putting formerly non-productive downtime to profitable use.
"With a small company its not bad at all. It's well worth it.''
