“We need the farm to be self sufficient. Our main goal is to reduce the number of cattle we butcher for sale, increase live cattle sales and improve our finances. ”
– ValMarie Braun and Kittie Strasser of Skwishtin Ranch, AB
Young Agrarians is celebrating the eleventh year of the Business Mentorship Network (BMN) program in BC and the third year of the BMN in the Prairies!The BMN offers farm business mentorship to a diverse array of new and young farmers. The mentorship is offered over the course of a year. Through one-on-one mentorship, peer networks and online workshops new farmers develop the skills necessary to operate ecologically sustainable and financially viable farm businesses.
Meet a mentee from the current cohort and learn about their farm and why they joined the Business Mentorship Network. Want more? Head over to our BMN Blog for more mentorship stories.
Meet a Mentee: ValMarie Braun, Kittie Strasser, and Alora Bester
Skwishtin Ranch, aptly named as we are ‘squished’ into 68 acres, is a small family run farm. We started out with poultry (chickens, turkeys, ducks, and quail) and recently expanded the farm to include pigs and cows. The plan is to add a set of breeding Kunes Kunes, if we are lucky! We are currently raising out 4 little piglets and hope to breed two next year. We’ve chosen to raise Dexters; a mini-breed of hearty (and tasty!) Irish cows, so our finished animals are half the size if a typical cow. Half of our ladies are crossed with Speckle Park; a modern Canadian breed of beautifully speckled or spotted (and equally delicious!) cows. Both breeds are known for their nice lean, well marbled, flavourful beef, but this ensures we raise smaller, more environmentally- and health-conscious sized cattle. They enjoy sunshine, green grass, and grow fat and flavourful with the addition of fresh fruits and vegetables available to us through Loop.
While we do keep an assortment of laying chickens in all sizes (and a whole pen of bantam chickens just for our enjoyment), ducks and quail year-round for eggs, we also purchase broiler chicks and turkey poults in the spring to grow out and butcher. These birds are like miniature dinosaurs! Plump, fat and delicious! Mom also raises and trains milk cows for sale. As more and more people are trying to eat better and getting into homesteading, our niche is the small, little dual-purpose cow. Most of our ladies are Belfairs (Jersey/Dexter) or Red Poll/Dexter and in addition to raising a beautiful chubby calf for the freezer, they also provide enough milk to the household to drink and to make butter, yogurt and cheeses.
Skwishtin Ranch is run by ValMarie Braun, Kittie Strasser and a gaggle of little girls and is located just outside of Cold Lake, Alberta. On paper, we are a sole proprietor, but in essence, it is a partnership between Kittie and ValMarie. We are currently mentoring under Jesse and Clay Williams of Whiskey Creek Ranch in Hanna, Alberta. We consider ourselves lucky to be matched with this fantastic couple. Skwishtin was born with $4,000 ‘stolen’ from mortgage funds and life is breathed into it every day through our hard work, wonderful clients and a small $25,000 line of credit (LOC). A better cash flow plan is one of the items that our mentors are helping us with.
Mom always said she was a country girl born into a city girl’s life as she spent summers out at her uncles’ farms. She passed down this love of farming and homesteading to her children and here we are. We are slightly bigger than a homestead, though as we try and raise enough meats to cover the cost of our own feeds. We follow a lot of the practices outlined by Joel Salatin and Greg Judy as we aim to raise our animals as holistically as possible. We have had a steep learning curve and some days are harder than others. Over the years, we have found some awesome gurus (and friends) that have helped set us on a better path. When we have time, Kittie updates the farm Facebook page and tried to do a Youtube page outlining how we moved from being a home to a homestead.
Find our Youtube page here: Skwishtin Ranch: Intro – here’s what you can expect from us!
We applied for the Business Mentorship Network to help set up the farm finances better. We need the farm to be self sufficient. Our main goal is to reduce the number of cattle we butcher for sale, increase live cattle sales and improve our finances. We don’t really use business tools – except for Word and Excel to track farm expenses. We are a small farm, striving to advocate for farm-to-table being healthier and cheaper for people and in doing so, we advertise mainly by word of mouth.
If you have any questions about the things we’re doing out here and why, don’t hesitate to reach out! We love what we do and it’s so much fun to share about!
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