Goldenview Ranch

Stockholm, Saskatchewan

Bruce, Patti, Brett, Erin, Jessica and Cam Chern

Golden View Ranching is the home of the Chern family; Bruce, Patti, Brett, Erin, Jessica and Cameron near Stockholm, Saskatchewan. Stockholm is located south of Yorkton, west of Esterhazy and north of Whitewood or simply said East Central Saskatchewan. We relocated here after selling our farm and welding shop near Smoky lake, Alberta. In Alberta we operated Golden View Fabricating Ltd., a company that built self-loading and unloading round bale trucks. We also mounted Hydra-Decs, grain boxes, as well did general agricultural repair work. The opportunity to sell the business and try something new came 2 years ago, and after a bit of soul searching we decided to take on the new adventure. This gave us more opportunity to concentrate on our family, within a ranch setting.

As of January, 2005, Brett is 11, Erin 9, Jessica 6 and Cameron turns 4. The kids are involved in a number of activities, such as hockey, skating, dancing and Sunday School at New Stockholm. They are involved in many of the day to day ranching activities; for us they are considered "family affairs". By including and keeping kids involved, it gives them an opportunity to see what it takes to run a ranch and a household, so they have a realistic basis for future decisions.

Our land base consists of 3500 acres of pasture in one block, with the ranch headquarters located on the southern edge of our land base. We focus our ranch management on practices that improve soil health. We are doing this through rotational grazing and pipelines water systems that help with animal distribution and nutrient cycling. Currently we run 500 cows that calve in May/June. The calves are backgrounded over the winter months and then grown out as yearlings on pasture.

We strongly believe in sustaining and improving the land. A year ago, we attended an HRM (Holistic Resource Management) course that reaffirmed lots of what we were already doing, and added ideas to build on the structure we had begun. We had already implemented a program to ensure the quality of the land was retained, achieve high production at lower costs, and had made the move to improve family ties.

We believe that healthy land makes for healthy animals. This reduces the amount of medication necessary to keep the animals thriving. Post weaning antibiotic use is greatly reduced. Good genetics can equal or surpass the results gained with growth hormones. Animals should be handled in a humane way. Bruce has taken the Bud Williams handling course and that has greatly reduced the stress on the animals when worked. Being involved with a group of ranchers and a retailer that wants to bring the consumer something special is for us key to fulfilling the goals of our family. We are very excited about what the future brings.