Our Story

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Let me introduce ourselves!

Lori was born and raised locally in the town of Stony Plain, Alberta. And after being away off and on throughout my life I have settled close to home.
I was lucky to be born into a family where my father had a love for animals, an entrepreneurial spirit for business, and was always good with people. He was a hard working railroad man that wore several other hats while he raised us. A couple of my favourites were well drilling on all the local farms with our old Percheron Workhorse Silver, and helping at our local auction house during their livestock sales. I was stuck to him like glue, and was able to spend almost all my spare time following in his footsteps.
I was awful young when my first pony came home… I was about 2, and Co-Co was a tiny 6 month old silver chestnut colt. I learned more about life from that little stallion, that old Percheron and my father than I did from any other education.
I’m sure by now you understand that this is where my desire to always take the best care of all my animals came from. I feverishly learned about feed, grooming, and as many aspects of caring for them as I could.  I drive my teachers nuts, because everything I wrote was about animals. I spent all my time outside with the many varied animals I had, teaching and training, well, when I wasn’t attached to my Dads hip that is.
My Mom had the skills to look after the business end of things for the Drilling business my Dad had grown into a modern machine drilling company, that is still very successful today.
After high school I used the skills learned from both my parents and worked for several years in the administration field.
I married in the early 80’s and then took time off to raise my two beautiful children. I am now a very proud grandma of three beautiful grandchildren as well. During this time I worked in the medical field as well as in business operations and management
As time went on I was the hands on  general foreman on a couple home builds, including my current home close to Stony Plain.
When I met Harvey, I travelled many miles to help for several years on his 3rd generation mixed grain farm operation. I was quickly schooled on all aspects of growing crops. From soil preparation, and seeding, to harvest,  I spent many early mornings to late nights outstanding in my field.. lol I loved it.  Seeing all that hard work grow into a beautiful healthy crop was so rewarding. The stars on a clear warm harvest night was always so beautiful. ( maybe that should go below the next paragraph)
I never lost the love or desire to care animals, so my home and life has been blessed with, dogs, cats, horses, cattle, and even some birds, fish and bunnies.  The large pond in my front yard is often visited by the local wildlife.

All of these years of business experience and hands on farm and animal education, have directed me to where I am now. And that’s where I get to work with farmers and livestock owners everyday. On one hand I get to help you by offering the best hay products I can for your feed needs, and on the other I get to help you improve your soil conditions, and grow healthy bountiful crops.
 

 By now if you’ve read the about us, you have a bit of an understanding of who we are, and why we do what we do, but this is how we started and grew the business we operate today. Harvey and I met in early 2014, and from fall of 2015 I was working with him pretty much full time on the farm in Yorkton, SK. I kept my place here in AB, and made a lot of miles travelling back and forth throughout the years. 2015 happened to be a dry year in Alberta, and just like everyone else, my daughter needed hay for our horses. We had the equipment and access to hay land, so we put up enough for her, with about 60 bales to spare. We hauled that first load of bales out and advertised the second half of the load, and ended up getting so many messages we had no trouble finding a home for what we had left. We split that load to 3 different folks in Southern Alberta. It was a long haul, but because we were fair priced and provided a good product, word got out and messaged just kept coming. We didn’t have access to much more hay that year, but we did end up hauling 1000 plus Greenfeed bales out to Alberta to help farmers out. Harvey hauled it out in the old farm truck, a 79 General, no bunk, loud as can be, zero comfort, but he got the job done.
It was pretty quiet for a couple years after that, and we didn’t haul much through 2016 or 2017. But then the drought year of 2018 came. Folks started messaging us looking for hay again, and of course the customer list kept growing. We hauled all of the hay we could find in the Yorkton area, and branched out looking for more. We reached out to farmers throughout the prairies hoping to have supply in several areas, to help with variety, size and to try and keep the freight costs as low as we could. Thankfully we met several fair, like minded folks. We have kept many of those working relationships since. We had purchased a newer farm semi, this time with a bunk, we rented a trailer and we started to haul. We only advertised a couple loads that year, and word of mouth has kept us hauling. We started hauling in Sept that fall and our last load that year was hauled in July of 2019. We hauled over 5000 bales. Somewhere around 110 long haul loads. 
Through all these travels, Harvey and I spent a lot of time chatting with farmers. We saw the difficulties people were facing, the stress of these dry years, input costs increasing, soil deterioration, etc. We talked to both producers and end users almost daily. Before long sharing of farming methods and products used often became a topic of discussion. Harvey found himself sharing information about his grain farming years and the great products he had used to grow successful grain, hay and silage crops through all kinds of conditions. He has always been the fellow who wants to see people succeed, it was second nature for him to share. He had gained a wealth of knowledge by using the products for 35 plus years and developed a great working relationship with the company that provided them, so he could proudly stand behind what he used.
It wasn’t long after that first year of hauling that we were spending more time in Alberta than Sk, and started producing hay out here. When I went to order the Probalite for our hay, I found out that BioAgronics did not have an Alberta Distributor. It was then that I reached out to them, to offer our place as a depot for farmers and asked if we could represent their products here. They agreed to this working relationship because of Harvey’s years of experience with the products. They do not believe in fancy sales folks, or big billboard kind of sales. One on one, experienced farm to farm communication was always important to them. And because that’s how we do business it was a natural fit.
Our last grain crop year was 2019, and we’ve continued to haul hay and offer the BioAgronics products full time ever since.
It was through building relationships with our wonderful suppliers and clients that our name came to be. Sue, a cherished hay client once gave us this reference “these folks are the pride of the prairies” and it stuck!
We aren’t a huge company, but we have a big work ethic, operate with integrity, have kept our core farm values, and try to do our best each and every day. We didn’t choose this business, it chose us, and we haven’t looked back since. 

 Harvey was 1 of 6 kids born and raised on a 2nd/3rd generation family farm just outside of Yorkton, Sk. The farm started out small and at one point grew to 17,000 acres, including rented land. He lived to farm with his father and brothers. There are several newspaper and magazine articles that praise Danny and Harvey for their accomplishments on how they farmed and what they gave back to their local communities. One of the articles mentioned “that even though they were a small farm operation, they had a big work ethic, and always brought the crops in on time, even when they farmed the big acres” After his Dad passed away in 2005, Harvey’s siblings sold off their portions of the farm, leaving Harvey the only remaining family member on the land. He farmed that along with rented land until 2109 when most of the rented land was sold off by the elderly owners he had farmed for for 35-40 years. He still owns some of the original farm close to Yorkton today.
While he was a young adult Harvey had the opportunity to go travel around the US with a custom harvesting crew. They worked all the way from North Dakota and South Dakota, through Wyoming to Texas, branching out into Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, etc. Harvey was an asset to them because he also had his class 1 and enjoyed the hauling during and after harvest as well. He did this for 10 years from the age of 18 on when he wasn’t farming locally .
At 28, he married and settled to raise his 3 children on the family farm. He continued to farm between 10-15 quarters of land around the Yorkton area, while picking up custom work locally as well. He also ran a herd of 200 head of Angus cattle. He was one of the first farms around to offer “gate to plate” beef at the local markets. Harvey was never afraid to put in the hard work, time and energy it took to grow successful crops. Often doing it with a car seat in the machinery or a toddler on his shoulders. Throughout those early years challenges with weather, things like early frost, hail damage, etc and poor soil conditions, etc Harvey looked for alternative ways to farm. He tried several different things but never forgot he was raised to think about what he was putting back in the soil. He was taught “ if you are good to the soil, the soil will be good to you”. A way of thinking that seems to have gotten lost these last few years. He didn’t buy into fancy sales talk or big billboards. Plus he wanted to keep more money in his pockets rather than giving it away to the input guys. That’s when he met Ed from BioAgronics.. and the rest is history. He has never turned back. He shared the information he learned over the 35 plus years with friends, local farmers, and those he did business with. He even had the products shipped to Texas after a frost damaged some corn crops. It worked to save the crop. Something he’s very proud of still today. This usually was all chatted about while he was lending a helping hand. Because that’s just what he did, help everyone! Harvey is still known to the local farmers as someone who knew how to grow a great crop.
He carry’s that farm work ethic and desire to help folks into what he does today. Every person he meets seems to enjoy the swapping of old farm stories and ideas.