38 Follow us on Twitter: @PrairieFarming Better Farming | March 2024 UP CLOSE these to manage the variabilities that come at us year after year.” With the knowledge that efficiency, profitability and sustainability are linked, Clayton and Jesse work to find small changes that allow for accumulating improvement over time. Their data-driven approach allows them to monitor these changes over the span of years. Clayton says, “At the end of the day we aren’t looking for a silver bullet, but we look at all the one or two per cent improvements. By adding those up year-to-year, we can get to where we need to be rather than turning the place upside down in one year.” What is your favourite thing about being a farmer? Jesse: My favourite thing is the science behind it. If you know the physiology, biology and chemistry of your plants or soil, you can make management decisions to affect change. It’s like a giant science experiment all the time and it’s limitless. It is really fun and challenging to see the change you are making. Clayton: From a producer level, agriculture is the freedom to do what you want with what you have. You can make changes in a challenging area to try to make things better than the generations before. It’s a growing-onthe-backs-of-giants type thing. What is your biggest farming challenge? Jesse: The soil would be mine. It’s a challenge to know our soil and our limitations, and figuring out what we can do to make the soil we have the most profitable and productive it can be. Clayton: It’s honestly where we are farming. We are taking a challenging area and trying to take it to the next level. A lot of the challenges are specific but not new to the area, so we have to learn what people did in the past and take ideas from outside of the area and make them work with where we live. We know our soil and we kind of know the weather. We know we can work on the soil, but we can’t really change the weather. We work on the things that can be changed. How do you manage teamwork? Jesse: Well, we sort cows all by ourselves and haven’t gotten a divorce yet (laughing). Clay takes on more of a managerial role and we sit down every night and look at what needs to be done and split it up and get to it. Clayton: Communication is key. We have very deep conversations about what will and won’t work and we take each other’s opinions on validity. When just the two of us work cattle, that’s the most heated time, but we can still manage after it. What do you enjoy doing in your time off? Jesse: We have a full-time farm and two full-time jobs and two kids. We are pretty much working on the farm all the time, which is fun to us, but anything we can do with our family is also fun. We don’t have any wild passions outside of ag. Once you are involved in ag, all your passions seem to evolve around ag. Clayton: We try to spend as much time with family as possible, and often that works right in with farming stuff. We enjoy camping, and anything the kids want to be part of is good for us because we can do it as a complete unit. What are your herd goals? Jesse: Profitability to have longevity. If our kids are interested when they are older, they’d have a step up because of this, and they would have the opportunity to take over. Clayton: I would say our biggest goal for our herd is improvement. We are looking annually at improving weanHarper checks the seedling depth with dad, Clayton. Jesse Williams photo
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