MARCH 27, 2013 -Jill Hoeppner and husband Kelwyn Hoeppner, March 27th, start their day at 3:30 am and spend the first 4hours milking the herd. The young couple live on the family farm in Abbotsford. (Ward Perrin Photograph by: Ward Perrin , PNG
(Click here to view video) The alarm on Jill Hoeppner’s iPhone rings at 3:30 a.m.
The 27-year-old farmer hits the ground not running exactly, but with a quick stride that she’ll keep up all day and well into the night.
First, coffee. Her clothes are in a heap on the kitchen floor: grey work socks, blue jogging pants, hoody, stained overalls with a granola bar tucked into the pocket. She doesn’t linger in the little blue bathroom where she pulls her honey-blond hair into a ponytail.
Outside, it’s a few degrees above freezing. All’s quiet except the occasional semi rumbling by on the highway that runs past the renovated farmhouse where she lives with her husband, Kelwyn.
Her white Chevy isn’t locked. A blue air freshener swings from the rear-view mirror as she puts the truck in gear. There’s country music on the radio, a man singing about “an old farm boy out turning up dirt.”
The song is catchy, but not a fitting soundtrack as Hoeppner drives past silent fields a few minutes before 4 a.m. It’s too early for plowing, and she’s no farm boy.
“I think that’s the stereotype,” she says later. “The farmer and the farmer’s wife. When someone meets me for the first time, they just assume I’m the farmer’s wife.”
She pauses, then adds slyly: “I’m so much more. I do it all. I’m an ag girl.”
Hoeppner’s not the only woman bucking gender stereotypes that persist in one of the world’s oldest occupations.
With 10,915 female farm operators, B.C. boasts more “ag girls” than any other province in Canada.
According to the last agricultural census, more than one-third of B.C. farms are run, or co-run, by women. That’s about 36 per cent, compared to 27 per cent nationally.
More women are entering farming through the local food movement, with a focus on niche markets, organic farming and small livestock operations.
WORKING AS A TEAM
It’s not what you’d call a typical Super Bowl commercial: no actors, models or comedians. Instead, Chrysler’s popular Super Bowl 2013 ad takes aim at the heart.
“God said, ‘I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper, then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board.’”
Set to a recording of a 1978 speech given by American radio broadcaster Paul Harvey, the ad for Ram trucks shows a series of photographs of farmhouses, fields, tractors and, of course, farmers.
It ends with the words: “So God made a farmer.”
The ad received top marks from bloggers, who pointed out that the concept came from a Canadian farm website that allowed Chrysler to remake it as a commercial. It has been viewed almost 15 million times on YouTube.
But it has also sparked controversy among critics who say its portrayal of today’s agriculture industry is outdated. There are 15 photos of men in the ad. There are three of women.
At the very least, the commercial reinforces stereotypes about the face of farming.
But Jill Hoeppner liked the ad.
“Loved it,” she says. “There was a woman in there, and a little girl standing in a field.”
The Abbotsford dairy farmer doesn’t think much about gender inequality.
“I’m a doer,” she says.
It’s 5 a.m. and she’s been milking cows for more than an hour.
“Come on, girls. Let’s go.” It sounds like she’s singing as she urges her “girls” — 202 organic dairy cows, mostly Holsteins — into the farm’s milking parlour, 16 at a time.
The concrete room is loud with the rhythmic sound of pumps. Milk machines are attached to the cows’ udders and their milk is sucked into sterilized glass jars before being whisked away to a large milk tank in the dairy. When filled, the jars are warm to the touch.
“Watch it!” says Hoeppner as a cow relieves itself, manure ricocheting off the floors and walls.
Dairy farming is messy. It’s smelly. (At the end of the day, Hoeppner washes her hair twice to get rid of the stench.) It’s also repetitive and sometimes tedious.
But the most likely reason it’s traditionally viewed as a man’s job is that it’s physically demanding. While milk machines and tractors have made it easier, treating and feeding cows that weigh about 580 kilograms remains a challenge for most female farmers.
“There are some physical things that boys can do quicker, and I guess there are some things I just can’t do,” says Hoeppner.
“We work as a team here. Everyone brings their own strengths.”
As the full moon turns its face into the shoulder of the mountain and the eastern sky begins to lighten, Hoeppner carries pails of grain and water across the farmyard to a calf barn. She kneels on the bedding to feed a bottle of milk to a baby Jersey. With one arm around the calf’s shoulders, she pulls it close to her body and pushes the nipple into its mouth. It begins to drink.
“Good girl,” she croons. “That’s a good girl.”
B.C. WOMEN FARMERS COMING INTO THEIR OWN
Hoeppner’s family represents another strength.
They’re also the reason she’s able to farm, giving her the access and support experts agree is critical to the success of women in agriculture.
“Without the support of family there’s no way I’d be doing what I’m doing,” Hoeppner says as she prepares a simple breakfast. “We all have a love for dairy farming.”
Hoeppner’s grandparents immigrated to Canada from the Netherlands in the early 1940s and eventually established Cedarwal Farms. Years passed, the farm grew, and some of her grandpa’s sons joined him in the business.
Today, the farm ranks as a large farm by B.C. standards, milking a herd of about 350 purebred cows and a separate herd of about 200 organic cows. The purebreds produce an average of 11,000 litres of milk each day, mostly for local consumption, while the organic herd produces an average of 5,000 litres.
The 270-acre farm produces grass and corn to feed the cows.
In the last five years, the grandkids have also started to play an important role at Cedarwal, including Hoeppner and two of her three sisters.
“I was the one who always found stray cats and took them into the house,” she says of her childhood on the farm.
After high school she received an agriculture degree at a U.S. college and then came home to work at Cedarwal.
She met her husband, Kelwyn, a Manitoba dairy farmer’s son, at a cow show where farmers display and sometimes sell their best animals. They’ve been married six months.
Kelwyn says he values the opportunity to work with his wife.
“It’s not new to me,” he says of her decision to farm. When he was a baby, his mom put his playpen in the barn while she milked cows. He smiles at his wife. “I expect some day you’ll be pushing a stroller while you [check] herd health.”
Hoeppner’s mom also embraced life on the farm, but it was her dad, a dairy farmer and large-animal veterinarian, who passed on his passion for cows.
“One of his big things, having all girls, is that he worried we would all find husbands and move away,” she says. “But three of the four are here, and we’ve brought our husbands with us.”
Inheritance is one of several paths to farming that is becoming more open to women, according to University of the Fraser Valley agriculture professor Lenore Newman.
“Women are finally being allowed to choose farming as a career and to call themselves farmers,” she told the Sunday Province in a recent interview.
Newman believes the high number of women farmers in B.C. is also tied to the local food movement.
“Women are coming to agriculture through farmers’ markets and through an interest in local food,” she said. “It’s a significant point of entry.”
But the desire to farm does not make a farmer, and that’s where B.C. is somewhat unique. In the Fraser Valley, in particular, where land is among the most productive in the world, high yields make small farms more economically sustainable than in other provinces.
“A family in B.C. can still earn a living on a small farm,” said Newman, meaning a farm under 100 acres.
This opens the door for women who decide they want to farm but can’t raise the capital for large-scale farming, such as grain production on the Prairies.
“Women are farming, but they’re farming differently than men. They’re involved in organic, small-scale, bio-dynamic farms, and they’re farming for high-end, specialty markets,” said Newman.
“It’s a big shift.”
PASSION AND COMMITMENT
It’s a little tougher to define the impact women like Hoeppner are having on traditional agriculture. But follow her for a day and you’ll start to get an idea.
Her passion and commitment rivals that of any recent college graduate determined to make a difference in her field. And it’s this spirit that renders stereotypes almost irrelevant as it puts her on the cutting edge of B.C.’s agriculture industry.
“Meet Lila Z,” says Hoeppner, leading a purebred Holstein from a special pen into morning sunlight spangled with dust motes.
She is introducing the bovine equivalent of royalty: Lylehaven Lila Z is a member of the “million-dollar club.”
As a two-year-old heifer, she sold for $1.15 million. That was before Cedarwal acquired her — she’s now 11 — but she remains an important asset, though she produces no milk for the farm tank.
Lila Z’s worth is in her offspring, who tend to be high milk producers or, in the case of her sons, pass along that trait to their offspring.
The pretty cow is routinely artificially inseminated, and her fertilized eggs are flushed and sold to be implanted in other cows. Her calves have been born as far away as the United Kingdom, Germany, South Korea and China.
The farm’s genetic program helps to secure its future at a time when more people are eschewing local milk in favour of cheaper American dairy.
Today Hoeppner is giving Lila Z “snuggles” before a group representing a national dairy genetics company arrives to tour Cedarwal’s young stock.
She is all business when a van pulls up and four men get out. One is wearing strong cologne that mingles with the smell of manure as he follows Hoeppner and her sister Lorene into the barns.
Hoeppner points out the best animals and rattles off their lineages mostly from memory. “She’s like a computer,” says Westgen dairy sales representative Camilo Ruiz. “I’m always impressed when I’m here.”
While showing the group around the barns, Hoeppner notices a pregnant cow that looks uncomfortable. She asks her uncle if he has time to check her.
Her morning continues with office work — keeping immaculate records on hundreds of cows takes hours each week — then lunch, another tour, and finally a visit from the farm’s veterinarian, her dad, who checks the herd for heats and pregnancies.
Rich Vanderwal says the quality of the calves born on the farm is a result of his daughter’s diligence. She knows each cow and calf by name.
“I think you’re proud of your kids no matter what they do, but when they come into the family business there’s a feeling of continuity that’s really special,” he says.
The sales representative from Hoeppner’s last tour is a family friend, so she and Kelwyn accompany him to her parents’ house for supper.
At the end of the night they drive past Cedarwal. The waning moon illuminates the quiet barns.
At 10:30 p.m., she sleeps.
