It's always thrilling to watch a harvest crew work together to clean off a field - but what's even more thrilling is to see farmers join together on one field to support the Canadian Foodgrains Bank Grow Project in their community!
"Harvest season is always busy so that's another amazing thing, is that people take time out of their individual farm harvest schedules to work on this community project, shares Regional Representative for Manitoba, Gordon Janzen. "That's an amazing thing and so appreciated!"
Janzen was back in the Westman Region earlier this week, this time to attend the harvest day for the Boissevain-Morton-Whitewater (BMW) Grow Project, and a beautiful day it was for the farmers, neighbors and local supporters of the BMW Foodgrains project.
Just under a dozen combines, and about another dozen trucks and grain carts, joined together from neighboring farms to pull off the 300 acres of wheat on Monday's harvest day.
"It's a wonderful day, a beautiful warm September day and it's a great day for harvesting," shares Janzen. "Other projects are also harvesting today on the same day!"
The Heritage Harvest Grow Project at Austin harvested their canola that day, located next to the Manitoba Agriculture Museum, and the Choice Growing Project out of Carmen harvested their soybean field on Monday as well.
"It has to be a good weather day for combining and that's why people enjoy coming out here," he adds. "Here at the BMW Growing Project we're on the Del and Heather Fraser farmyard just southwest of Fairfax with the surrounding wheat field. The group starts with lunch and so it's a wonderful day to visit with neighbors but also be reminded about the reasons why we work together!"
Del and Heather Fraser are passionate about the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, having availed their 300-acre field to the BMW Grow Project for about 15 years, this adding stability to the grow team's annual project.
Please listen to more with Gordon Janzen as he shares on the different variations of community grow projects and other fundraising projects for the Canadian Foodgrains Bank!
"The BMW group has come out every year and has provided a good amount of donations to the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, and then that's also multiplied by matching contributions from the Canadian government," says Janzen. "So, it makes a big difference for a lot of hungry people in different parts of the world."
"I want to say thanks to the farmers, and the volunteers," he adds. "Not only the BMW group but other community projects across Manitoba as well."
The Fairfax field yielded 60 bushels per acre on Monday's harvest day.
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