The Horticulture Diaries: BECK Farms

Rod and Shelly Bradshaw started BECK farms 26 years ago in 1987.

They grow 50 acres of vegetables, 32 acres of which are carrots (they aim for around 30). They also have 1200 acres of grain.

Grain Field

Carrot field with Rod and Shelly Bradshaw


Carrot Field

They grow a cultivar of carrots called Nantes. It is a very sweet variety, but due to the high sugar content they have a tendency to break when harvested. This causes there to only be around a 70% yield of the harvest, which they can said be

difficult to deal with, but the flavour is worth in (and I must say that they're pretty delicious). Carrots prefer cold and humid conditions, and due to the warm nights this summer they didn't have the opportunity to become as sweet as usual.

To harvest they use 2 John Deere tractors, one with an Asa-Lift addition to pull up the carrots, take the tops off, and dump them into a bin towed by the other tractor.

A video of the harvesters in action

I had never seen one of these in action, but its really interesting how it works.

The field the carrots are grown on used to be yellow peas, which added nitrogen and mellowed the soil.

They use a type of seeder that uses plates to place seeds specifically. GPS is used to seed and spray in order to maintain accuracy, although the Bradshaw's mentioned that doing things by hand can still be more accurate and effective.

They use the fungicide Contans WG to protect against Sclerotinia disease. The half of the field they didn't spray with it have white mold on the stems. For a pesticide they use DiPel to help with cabbage, fall crops, etc.

There is a weed called cleaver in their carrot field, and if too much goes through the harvester it clogs.

Carrots that were broken during harvest

They have a drilling site on their property right at the edge of the carrot field.

Shelly's brother (I think) lives on the property and has a cattle business, so all of the cattle we saw along the way are his.

Machines: Mulch ripper to leave on ground for winter, power harrow for tillage.

The cattle on the land

A far shot of the cleaning/packing/cooking
area

The workers from MexSwap packing carrots

They use a program called MexSwap (not positive on the name) where people from Mexico come to work for 10 months. They have 5 foreign workers who come in May, 1 of which is the foreman and has been there for 10 years. He has his international license so he can drive cars. 3 extra people come when the carrot harvest starts. They have 4 employees over the winter, who I believe are students.
To house employees they have 2 residences on the farm for up to 7 people.

The packing facilities

To seed it takes 1 person, harvesting takes 2 (one in each machine). Generally there are 5-8 people working in the plant washing, bagging, etc. When we were at the farm there were only 3 people bagging carrots, but it wasn't full blown harvesting season yet.

Gets pumped in while washing carrots

The harvest of carrots being dumped into
the tub to wash

Washed carrots are brought up this machine

Carrots are washed in a big tub then go through a sizer (series of bars that gradually get further apart)

The carrot sizer

Some facts about their carrot product:
- 1 acre of carrots brings in $20 000
- They plant 1 million seeds of carrots in an acre
- White bins carry large bags- bins themselves cost $220, and it carries $1000-$1500 worth of product
- Productive value of their land is $1500-$2000/acre

Rod Bradshaw started Innisfail Growers 20 years ago in 1993 after being awarded a scholarship opportunity in the UK. There are currently 5 families from Lacombe to Calgary that are a part of the co-op. Those 5 families hold 10 spots total on the council, but 5 of them are never used because the men decided they

would stay on the farm and work while the women do the governing and marketing. 95% of their product is sold through Innisfail Growers.

Pickled carrots and hot pepper jellies are some of the 'value-added' products sold.

As an added bit of security, the family also eats everything they produce!

Pickled Carrots

Bins of carrots stocked in the
cold room

Cauliflower and carrots in the cold room

Kitchen for making pickled carrots

The greenhouse growing peppers where the
infestation happened

Road and Shelly are involved in 20 different farmers market venues a week during the summer, and 4 venues a week in the winter.

They have 3 cold frames where they plant hot peppers, green peppers, dill, and transplant plants. The largest of the frames they decided to do a test and use no chemicals. The result was a major infestation. Seeing it in person showed a huge amount of bugs (mostly small and white) covering all of the plants. They attempted to use lady bugs to help keep everything healthy but it didn't work.

You can see all the bugs and issues that
happened from the infestation

Lady bugs everywhere!

The outside of the greenhouse without
infestation

The healthy peppers

Inside the healthy greenhouse growing pepper there is a noticeable difference in the condition of the plants and peppers themselves.

The final frame housed dill mostly as a trial to see if it would be more effective to grow them the entire season in a greenhouse rather than covering them as soon as it starts to get cold.