Farm award recognizes eastern Ontario dairy couple
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
by SUSAN MANN
For Eastern Ontario dairy farmers Jason and Amanda O’Connell winning Ontario’s Outstanding Young Farmers award was “pretty overwhelming.”
Amanda adds they didn’t expect to win. “When we first met a lot of the OYF alumni, they’re all pretty inspiring and great business people. It all kind of happened very fast.”
The couple farms in partnership with Amanda’s father, Stuart Hammond, at Sunol Farms in Carleton Place and were nominated for the award by Holstein Ontario. They received it at a ceremony in Guelph on March 25. The O’Connells will now represent Ontario at the national competition being held in November in Quebec City and will compete against winners from other provinces for the Canada Outstanding Young Farmers award.
The judges in Ontario chose the O’Connells for the provincial award in part due to their willingness to adopt changes, their desire for continuous improvement and growth and their involvement in their industry and community, an Outstanding Young Farmers March 27 press release says.
Amanda says their mentality is “nothing stays the same; everything is changing. We never really get too complacent in anything we do. We’re always looking for new ideas.”
On their farm, Jason and Amanda bought out Amanda’s grandfather’s share of the operation in 2006. One of the first changes they made was to push the herd to produce more milk per cow. They culled almost half the herd in the first couple of months of when they took over and increased cow comfort. Having fewer cows enabled them to have a bit more room in their barn and then concentrate on genetics, Amanda says.
They’re now milking 90 to 95 cows and filling more than 120 kilograms of quota daily, whereas before the herd was 127 cows being milked and filling 70 kilograms of quota. In addition to the cows, the O’Connells grow corn, soybeans, wheat, alfalfa and grass hay on 1,500 acres.
“In this day and age, you need to always be changing and adapting new technologies because everything’s based on efficiencies. That’s what technology is for, to be more efficient,” she says, adding that they didn’t inherit nor did they receive their farm as a gift, but they bought half the farm and that means “our bottom line is pretty important to us.”
In addition to their farming, Jason and Amanda help out various organizations, including the North Lanark Agricultural Society, Junior Farmers, 4-H, the 2013 International Plowing Match, Holstein Ontario and the Lanark Dairy Producer Committee.
To be eligible for the Outstanding Young Farmer award, farmers must be between 19 and 39 years old, derive at least two-thirds of their annual income from farming and demonstrate progress in their agricultural careers, the release says. Nominations for the 2015 awards, open in September and are due by Dec. 1. BF