Eighteen-year-old Abby Smail and her first 'show holstein' Cherry Blossom, since retired,

agreed to lead the photo-op parade for this article, and we agreed that would be a good idea.

In reading an agriculture article recently, concerning the disappearance of the family farm

and addressing the demands of the farm product's consumer, we decided to take a look for

ourselves. Admittedly, our agricultural knowledge could probably fit comfortably inside a match box,

although we do pride ourselves in being learned at identifying a good read. And this one  is indeed

a good one, highlighting our own crop of South Dundas' newest and up-coming entrepreneurs.

After speaking to several farming people we were caught up in the subject of succession and success.

Most spoke of the happier notes around farms, families, and futures. Along the way we spoke to

Abby Smail who plans on leading the 4th-generation of South Dundas Oliver-Bert-Rob Smail's

LoLan Holsteins operation at Brinston. Olivia Mudde told us she was moving home to Mudde Farms Inc.

after three years at McGill's MacDonald campus in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, West Montreal, Qc.

Olivia plans to work with her father, Ian, eventually initiating a 3rd-generation at their swine farm slightly

more south of Brinston. And we spoke to Ellen and Josh Biemond, 2nd-generation owners and

operators of Upper  Canada Creamery and New Care Farms, three kilmoetres east of Mudde on Waddell Rd., South Dundas. Josh and Ellen Biemond have been continuously developing and adding products, and

narrowing the gap between producer and consumer since taking over that family operation 10-years ago.

        In early November of 2024 a journalist with Global news, Trisha Dev, produced a story presented within their “Economy” section.  The story announced the official closing of Lindley’s Farm and Market in the Hamilton, ON area. 

        This particular farm and market had operated through eight generations and more than 180-years, opening in 1842 shortly after James and Mary Lindley arrived in Canada from England. The couple, journalist Trisha Dev had composed, grew fruit and vegetables in their new found property, and over time built themselves a strong family with sound values, and a great love of farming. Eventually they passed the business along to the next generation, and generations to come.

        Well down the line, as the family moved and expanded and continued to produce products for their market, the news eventually came that operations were shutting down, Ms. Dev’s research offers. The announcement included that the farmland ‘would be leased for the foreseeable future.’

        Around the same time Ontario Federation of Agriculture’s Vice President, Sarah Wood, said there was a trend in farm closing, adding that farms, in attempting to manage risk, are diversifying due to new challenges, tariffs and taxes.

        The farming community in Eastern Ontario is no stranger to family dairy farm closures in a distinctly changing agriculture landscape. Once an area well populated with many small, family owned and operated dairy farms, those have taken a huge hit in both numbers and visibility. Where once a drive in the country offered a wide variety of architectural vistas of small farm homes, barns and silos huddled along rural roadways, those scenes have been replaced with miles of maturing corn and soy beans. Even the tree lines are gone.

        Today cash cropping has become the staple investment in ever expanding agricultural land-use, providing less costly profits, and in turn ensuring the business of all types of farming retains a viable future..

       “There is a changing landscape!” VP Sarah Wood said while being interviewed by Global News.

        “Long-standing family farms (often) close due to a lack of succession planning, and a generational shift where no children are interested in taking over.” Ms. Wood pointed out.

       In following discussions around the generational farm continuance with local owner/operators the long time love affair between owners and their inherited family business remains evident. However, the words ‘cash cropping’ came to light repeatedly, in a noticeable string of sentences, much more so than words like dairy, or beef, or pigs.

        Eventually we were directed to the Smail farm at Brinston and the Mudde farm a few miles south of Brinston. The Bert & Rob Smail operation, Lolan Holsteins, is both a dairy and cash crop business while Mudde Farms Inc. is a swine and cash crop obusiness. Both are indeed generational, and both are planning to include daughters who are at the moment, being specifically educated in the business of agriculture. Abby Smail and Olivia Mudde.

Abby Smail as she was interrupted during morning chores . . . 

       Meeting 18-year old Abby Smail, (officially Abigail) we are quickly made aware this young lady is keenly intent on earning the 4th-generation moniker as owner of Lolan Holsteins at Brinston. Abby’s great-grand-father Orville and his wife Charlotte (Moore) originally acquired the property for a farm in the early 1940’s says their grandson Rob Smail. The original Smail’s two boys, Bert and Ron, inherited the farm, eventually handing off parcels to their sons, Rob and Tom respectively. 

        Rob Smail smiles when he’s asked about his daughter’s intentions to continue the family operation. He speaks shyly, certainly with pride when asked about his eldest daughter’s involvement. As though caught saying too much in answering our questions, he smiles widely, and says while nodding over our shoulder, “You might just as well ask her!” We’re unaware the eldest of Rob and Tracey's three children, Abby, is standing right behind us.

        Abby Smail is currently enrolled in Algonquin College’s Generalized Business Agriculture Program at their Perth Campus. She makes the drive weekly, returning home prior to each weekend to put in three days, carrying out the milking and associated chores demanded to keep some 50-purebred Holstein cows happy and productive. 

        Abby is keen to share her dairy farm knowledge. She speaks in a confident and strong manner. Over the next hour Abby discusses the twice-daily milking program currently in place, automating for the future, ensuring the recently born holsteins are comfortable, and she talks about increasing quota, breeding and along with her sister Grace, showing their cows at various agricultural events. The youngest sibling, Harris, is a star defenceman in the Upper Canada Minor Hockey League U11-Rep Division and he keeps busy working on his stick-handling and shooting.

        “We have to be prepared to fill our quota every day,” Abby defines, emphasizing, “Seven days a week to just retain what quota we own.” 

        Abby Smail radiates a very open, family established pride in her Holstein milk cows, stroking their cheeks and scratching their ears as we walk the length of the barn. She speaks to many of them by name. Abby explains the regular employment of a classifier, hired to visit the farm every few months “to guide our keeper selections.”

        “We work to maintain stock that scores between 85 and 100 points.” Abby points out, adding, "The best milkers are the first picks of those judged.

       “We are constantly circulating our milk stock and we also have a good sized cash-crop operation,” Abby says as we approach the end of the barn, then apologizes, “I don’t drive the big equipment.”

        “She doesn’t like to drive fast at all,” Mom Tracey chimes in without breaking stride. She  flashes a smile, then continues walking through the barn toward the office to speak with Rob.

        “We get involved in that part of it,” Abby defends the admission that the large equipment is simply too big to accommodate her safety comfort level. And cousin Jordy (Smail) apparently manages the harvesting equipment, lives virtually next door, or “right over there!”, identified with a nod toward the north, Abby says before adding,   “But I will drive with the wagons.!” 

        Abby Smail says “I dream of the day we can initiate our own plans to develop a robotic driven dairy operation.”  

In fact, Abby’s ‘we’ speaks volumes, driven to retain the Smail name in the farm for generations to come.

        “Our year end project is actually a five year business plan. I’m hoping to be able to use that as an outline for our own business plan on expanding the farm when I graduate,” she says.

        In Abby’s words: “When I’m planning I understand it’s for the future and I am fully aware we’ll run into unknowns. I believe there would be even more unknowns if we didn’t plan ahead. Over the next year I’ll be continuing my education while returning home on weekends to work. I’ll have that opportunity to look at implementing some of that learning and some of those new ideas we discuss to find a fit that is good for us and for our business. 

        Following graduation, I am excited to start working full time alongside my Dad, and initially I plan to make small upgrades to our barn, including the installation of automatic feeders. We are also discussing expanding our box stalls for the calves and continuing to build our quota in an effort to expand our daily production and our overall operation.

        I intend to create a business plan that can constantly be adjusted and updated, directed at eventually creating a free stall barn with technically advanced production automation that will allow us flexibility and the opportunity to work to accomplish our goals, whatever they may be at the time.”

        As we close the interview Abby Smail walks with us to our car. Her manners and her mannerisms, her devotion to family and family values precedes near every word. During our verbal engaging back and forth,  Abby included her grand-father and grand-mother, her parents and each of her siblings repeatedly. To Abby, the family in family farm is very special. And the relationship with her holsteins is just next to that.

See more "family farm" here . . .

Olivia Mudde returns to her parents home farm each weekend to share and to learn in her

preparation to join the family team following her final semester at university . . .

       Cont'd. from home page . . . .

        Two concessions and a few turns to the south of Lolan Holsteins we turn into Mudde Farms Inc., the home of Ian and Tammy Mudde and their children, 20-year old Olivia and 18-year old Terry.  

      Mudde Farms Inc. originated in 1966 when Olivia Mudde’s Opa and his nine brothers and sisters, along with their parents, moved from Holland to Canada. 

        “My grand-father told me he was never really interested in farming and describes his experience buying land as a trick from a friend, because he was unsure just how much work he had to do with the land to see a profit ,” Olivia wrote recently in preparing final university papers. 

        Opa Mudde developed a love of farming and raised a son, Ian, who, reportedly picked up the agriculture bug at a very young age. By 2004 the Mudde Farms Inc. was a modern swine farrowing operation under Ian’s direction, and just as importantly, the home of Ian and Tammy’s new-born baby girl, named Olivia. Near 20-years later Olivia and Dad are operating a large and modern cash cropping and swine operation of which any agriculturalist would be proud to claim ownership.

        Olivia explained she is in her final semester attending her third year in the Farm Management and Technology program at McGill’s MacDonald Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue campus in Montreal, Qc. Her move to Montreal to invest in agriculture studies has allowed her to view farming from an all new perspective, and to listen to and choose from any number of applicable ideas to bring home and test in her own facilities.

        “It’s been so good to get away and learn so much that can be tested and/or included in our operation,” Olivia says, adding, “I’m fortunate my Dad is so open to me taking the lead with some of these new ideas and lucky for me he also believes every operation always has room for improvement.”

        The younger Mudde says she intends to get involved in the financial side the family business and to expand her knowledge from the many available sources presently at her disposal.

        “A strategy to support our efforts to have the farm become more sustainable includes buying a soybean seed treatment mill and crusher to process our own soy beans and feed them to our pigs,” Olivia explains, explaining, “I’m putting all the numbers together and developing a management plan to ensure this would be a good fit for our farm.”

        Ms. Mudde speaks maturely and confidently in discussing the yeah’s and nay’s of the family’s current operation. As interested as she is in the soybean mill she identifies what she names “a weakness” of currently not having the ability to spread the operation’s manure production on their fields due to a labor shortage. An air of confidence in her ideas and accomplishments to date fills the conversation as  she suggests that weakness can be simply eliminated, pointing out, “That will change once I'm done school!”

        From Olivia’s course paper presented to her educators of the Farm Management and Technology program at MacDonald campus, she provided the following notes (grammatically edited): "In the next five years I foresee there being some major upgrades to our dry sow barn including a slight expansion of production of pigs finished per week. In the next ten years I see additional equipment used to do more of our own spraying and manure spreading. In fifteen years I see my Dad relaxing some and enjoying life.

        Also, over this time, I see the farm investing in more land and expanding our crop varieties. I will have continued stepping up over that time, making more decisions on my own and working to involve my own family in the operation. 

        Based on current predetermined business goals, the priority list includes me being more involved with the farm financials, adding to my daily responsibilities and being more actively involved in day to day duties. I’ll be organizing a proposed budget for a soybean treatment mill in an effort to make an informed decision on the ways and methods we’ll be looking at to become a more sustainable farm. I have composed these priorities following lengthy discussions and sharing idea proposals with my father. 

        I’m intent on working to make our place better, and I’m excited to see how I’m going to make the fit in our plans for the farm.”

        Olivia Mudde says she has every intention of working to create a sustainable operation at Mudde Farm Inc. Top to bottom, dirty hands and all. Olivia Mudde is family farm through and through. 

She is, no doubt,  going to continue turning heads.

Noah and Miriam Biemond are working their way through secondary school, yet to decide 

where their adult life will lead them. Both currently take part in the wide variety of chores 

at the Upper Canada Creamery and NewCare Farms . . .

        Several years ago, actually 10-years ago, we followed the development and construction of Biemond’s Upper Canada Creamery. At the time we originally spoke to Ellen and Josh Biemond they were in the midst of organizing an automated rotary milking parlour. 

       Biemond’s new generation was investing in the family operation with plans to process their own milk and produce varieties of cheese. In an automated environment.

        On the Upper Canada Creamery web site currently the story, in part, goes as follows: "As all industries evolve over time, so has our farm. Leaning on our parents for guidance, we found ways to improve the productivity and quality of our operation, both in the cropping and the dairy. We invested our time in an intensive and active role in creating an environment that fosters nutrient dense growing conditions and sound management practices. This decision has allowed us to find time and energy to continually expand our vision of a sustainable, nutrient-rich, holistic farm.

         The younger Biemonds purchased the farm in 2011 and have taken further steps to improve and grow our business opportunities. We have increased our land base to 400 acres, we’re milking 50 mixed breed cows on a 90–96% grass-fed diet, influenced by the time of year. As of 2015 we were on our way to building a new, energy-efficient, 24-stall rotary milking parlour, in turn managing more cattle, and reducing chore time by 1.5 hours each milking.

         Upper Canada Creamery opened in 2015 as a Certified Organic, federally inspected, state of the art, modern dairy processing facility located a mere 250m from our milking parlour and barn. This allows us to comfortably and without interruption complete the journey from Farm to Fridge. 

        We are offering consumers a variety of simple, yet wholesome, Organic Grass Fed products that boast a smooth, creamy texture, with unique yet traditional flavours using minimal ingredients.

         The Creamery has provided the opportunity to connect consumers to the farm and witness agriculture at its best. 

         We’ve invested hard work, time and dedication to grow our business, and with vision, passion and support networks in place, we have made our dream a reality. We continue developing a plan for product line growth and integrating the community into our lifestyle.

        As a result, to date, we have been recognized for our hard work and innovation by receiving the Regional Premier’s Award for Agri-Food Innovation Excellence (2016) and being 1 of 4 finalists for the Ontario Outstanding Young Farmer Program (2017)."

     We spoke to Ellen Biemond, interrupting her constantly while moving between processing and serving clients at creamery. Ellen answered our questions as someone who has gone through much of what Abby Smail and Olivia Mudde are speaking of tasking eventually at their own farms.

        “Josh does all the farming,” says Ellen today, raising her head from the meat refrigerator while retrieving packages of beef for a waiting client. She adds, “and we have Jill Westervelt in charge of all of our processing. She is special!”

       These days Upper Canada Creamery is producing and marketing cheeses, yogurt, milk, ice cream, cream, butter and more from their operation at 11575 Waddell Road. Their product line also includes all cuts and packages of beef and pork, including sausages. 

        Ellen, it crosses our mind while talking, keeps an eye and possibly a finger on all of the building blocks currently used and employed in developing the Upper Canada Creamery and updating the NewCare Farms operation. She speaks excitedly of their growth, of the most recently developed flavours of frozen yogurt or fresh curds, of keeping the family schedules moving on time, of meeting various farm market dates and times, and all of those demands that routinely require answers rather than being shelved.

       The Ellen Biemond suddenly relaxes for a few moments, and speaks passionately about family and farming. When her customer leaves Ellen jumps up, landing on a short table. She is in need of a quick break. She explains she is leaving the following morning for Scotland with her eldest daughter Hanna and her aging Mother. Hanna is off on a student exchange program, Ellen’s Mother is taking the opportunity of travelling with her daughter, and youngest grand-daughter Bethany who is also tagging along. 

        Ellen leans toward us with her hands clasped in her lap, as though she’s about to deliver the same motherly speech she’s repeated so many times previously.

       “Farming is a lifestyle the right team can make awesome!,” she says, looking straight at us while she’s speaking she hesitates for a moment, sure we are listening, and adds, “I love it and I wouldn’t trade it for anything!”

It was interesting to note in organizing this story that today’s upcoming entrepreneurs are most eager to learn, to research, to gather information, entertain discussions, seek second opinions and initiate action. Any caution or the thought of hesitation has not been mentioned.

That may be because, compared to what their parents went through, information and technology allows the new kids on the block to operate within a very different business mentality and economy. It’s a new world in which the upcoming entrepreneurs understand how to access, manipulate and use information. They understand available technologies and support, they exercise open-mindedness, and they can access and set in motion any or all of that in split-second timing. 

        “There is a changing landscape!”, the quote used at the opening of this article is both real and meaningful. Proven in the bitter-sweet reality that not one of the young people we spoke to mentioned, or even see, one iota of doom and gloom in that statement. Or just as importantly, in anything to do with the agriculture industry.

As those of us of a certain age have been witness to, and by our own experiences been allowed to compare, the new entrepreneurs can and will attain solutions to the task at hand more efficiently and more quickly than we dared dream.

And that we would bet on!