This farmer is making a big bet in Happy Valley-Goose Bay

He's 25 years into his business — and now, Tom Angiers says he's really about to get started.

Angiers is betting the farm — on his farm — in Happy Valley-Goose Bay this year, planning to double production, bring in half a dozen foreign workers, and market his food for the first time to new customers through the Nutrition North program.

It's a sizeable expansion for Spruce Meadow Farms — and Angiers is doing it all while watching his children and grandchildren grow up, at a time where most other people would be looking to step back and enjoy retirement.

"I was born a farmer and I'm going to die a farmer. I eat, sleep and breathe it," he said.  

"So I'll just go until I can't get out of bed, and I'll just go until I can't go no more."

The key to this year's expansion is a cold storage facility that was built over the winter on his farm property. 

The structure will allow Angiers and other farmers to store their crops at particular temperatures. Angiers said that means he can store potatoes for as long as 10 months before needing to move them — compared with about a month and a half in his old facilities.

'It's a risk'

The extended lifespan means Spruce Meadow Farms can wait through dips in the market price, and provides time for more cleaning and some processing of the raw products.

It also helps Angiers build a bigger case for full-time workers: his farm had just one last season, but he's hoping to hire several full-time employees for this growing season through foreign worker programs.

"Being small has kind of held me back," he said. "Now it's the time to get it bigger, where I won't have to do all the physical work. If it's big enough, I can supervise.

"Once I get this big enough, and I get more workers here, then I can spend more time on sales and marketing."

Though both federal and provincial money went into the construction of the facility, it hasn't quite paid off yet: Angiers said he put up $200,000 of his own as well and needs to see returns.

He admits it was a risk — but so is everything else in the business.

"Farming is a risk," he said. "Every day you get up, every day you go after it, it's a risk, you know?"

Setbacks and successes

Angiers has had his agricultural heart broken in the past.

In 2004 he was effectively forced to restart from scratch, after he and other farmers along the Trans-Labrador Highway were told that the water they were using to irrigate their crops had potentially been contaminated by an old military landfill.

He had spent five years growing the farm, and had produced 250,000 pounds of potatoes in that last year. Angiers said it was "devastating." 

But it hasn't stopped him.

"I made a big bet in the beginning, and I've been betting big ever since," he said. "We just keep putting in and keep putting in. Sometimes the cookie jar gets pretty slim, but we just keep putting in." 

Early indications this year are positive.

The cold storage facility is also an important part of the supply chain that Angiers is developing for the Nutrition North program, which provides farms some government subsidies on food being shipped to northern areas.

Spruce Meadow Farms has been taking orders from residents of Labrador's north coast for about two months. The offering includes vegetables that Angiers has grown locally, and some other fruits that he has bought from suppliers in Boston and Montreal.

The food is shipped through Prince Edward Island to his cold storage facility, and then onto airplanes. Angiers said shipments can get from Boston to Nain in less than a week.

He's selling directly to consumers, and said so far the results have been encouraging. Two years ago, he struggled to find buyers for his products. It looks like that's no longer a problem.

"They're blown away, a lot of people up there," Angiers said. "You should see the messages we're getting."

Grandkids in the game

As Angiers oversaw the construction of the cold storage facility and the expansion of his business over the fall and winter, his son Chad was working on securing his own agriculture lease from the provincial government.

Tom is a ninth-generation farmer; Chad is a 10th. And Tom's grandchildren will be the 11th generation in the long line of farmers, Angiers is sure, just as soon as they're old enough to get involved.

Both Chez and Chayse Angiers are showing interest, helping their grandfather pick some crops, and move some wood. And definitely helping when it's time to get on the tractor.

"Crops are good, they have no sugar, and there's lots of produce on this farm," Chez concludes, when asked why he's sure he wants to be a farmer.

Tom isn't worried that the boys will grow out of it, or that the family line would end if his bets go sideways.

"It's just like a school of salmon swimming up the river, and someone gets caught, it doesn't mean the salmons are gone," he said. 

"This is our journey, our life's journey, and we're going to stick to it."

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