These days, married couples often dream of retiring to an easy life of long vacations and sightseeing, but Sandy Easterbrook and Bob Griebel, who moved to the Bergen area in 2007, had something different in mind.
Easterbrook was an art conservator and worked restoring paintings in Saskatoon, and Griebel worked for 30 years as a neurosurgeon for the University of Saskatchewan, but when they retired, they wanted to live the country life.
The two now spend their summers with the animals and their gardens, producing berries, vegetables, honey, dairy products and a variety of meats.
They lived and worked in Saskatoon for most of their lives, and thought it would be nice to retire and have something to keep them busy.
“Retirement was drawing near and I don't play golf, so I had to do something,” says Griebel.
“I grew up on a farm and always kind of enjoyed the lifestyle and living and working with animals and being in touch with nature, so it seemed like a good fit, and Sandy was kind of keen to try it out.”
Easterbrook stayed in Bergen for two summers before Griebel decided to make the move, and they both decided to retire a bit early, as they knew they would need every bit of energy they could get in order to get things rolling.
They constructed and repaired five buildings since moving, as well as tending to all the chores, says Easterbrook.
“So it took quite a bit of work and sometimes we joke that we're not retired – we're just tired, because it's more work than our city jobs ever were. But we enjoy it – we love being outdoors.”
She does spend too much time in the cheese house, so they are going to change things up a bit next year, whether it be getting an intern or cutting back on the production, she says.
They have a small Jersey herd and raise their own dairy sheep, and all the milk is harvested while the animals are being grass-fed through the spring and summer, and they stop milking once the animals start eating hay in the fall, she notes.
“It's clean and based on grass. As soon as they go onto hay, we stop milking them because of lower quality – and also because we need a break.”
Besides their savings, this endeavour is their only source of income, but because they're retired, their expenses aren't very high, especially when most of what they eat comes from the farm.
“We make a small income every year, and my grocery bill is about $20 a week on average, so we're not spending a lot of money on food,” she adds.
The garden is augmented with greenhouses so they can extend their growing season, and they grow just about everything that can be grown in the area.
They also planted fruit trees four years ago, but haven't had a lot of results from those yet, she says, noting they still have to buy fruit in the winter, which is likely their biggest expense.
The couple had originally planned to retire to a small farm where they spent their summers in the '90s, but after a bad drought, they decided to retire elsewhere.
“We'd planted like 200 trees on our land. Most of them died and we just got discouraged with the water situation. We had a well on our land but no running water.
“So we started looking closer to the mountains, because we thought once we retired, there'd be time to do some hiking, which there hasn't been,” she joked.
Though they haven't been out hiking, there is an abundance of water on their land, with both Fallen Timber Creek and the Community Creek running through.
“Lots of water, view of the mountains – what more could one ask for?”
During the Feast of Bergen, one of the professional chefs who cooked for the event stayed at their place and after waking up to the fresh air and crowing roosters, he said it was “just like Tuscany,” she notes.
Griebel says he enjoys the country life because of the close contact with, and watching of, both nature and the domestic animals.
“Just watching the natural world unfold around me, and I enjoy the personality and the spirit of animals as well,” he says.
The farm is a bit of a menagerie of projects, with not enough to run a commercial enterprise, but enough to support themselves and eat good food at the same time, he adds.
“We retired into this. The sad thing about farming is it's difficult to make a living at, as so many farmers have to work off the farm in order to survive.”
They sell about 90 per cent of the dairy products, 80 per cent of the garden products, and about 60 per cent of the meat, with most of the products going to the Bergen market.
They also do their best to make everything organic, but he notes there is a place for antibiotics and pesticides, though there are often many viable alternatives.
“The bees, we have to treat the mite problem. We've lost hives due to mites. I tried going strictly organic with them one year, use alternative methods and such, but it didn't work, so I do use that for the bee mites,” he adds.
He likes producing the honey because he likes watching the bees work, “because they are such interesting creatures – and because I have the time to watch them.”
He doesn't think he and his wife are very unique or different, though.
“It's just in retirement, we wanted to get out of the city and get more in tune with the natural world around us, so we chose to do this sort of thing.”
