Grandfather Neu came to Canada from Austria around 1900, fresh out of the Austro-Hungarian Army, and with a background in brewing rather than farming. He married and settled in Star City, where the next two generations were also based until 1963. He was only a so-so farmer, and to help make ends meet he became the butcher for his vicinity. On Keith’s mother’s side, the grandparents came from the U.K. and had been a dairymaid and a coachman.

Keith was born in Star City in 1958, then the household moved to Hudson Bay when he was 5. His father, Arnold, farmed and went logging, but did not raise livestock. Keith counts his farming career from age 14, when he was first paid to drive tractor all summer long. As the sole son in the midst of four sisters he was the obvious one to take over the family farm, though in his entire crowd of male cousins he is the only one who stayed on the land.

At first he was a ‘conventional’ bachelor farmer, starting in the early 1980s. Like so many young farmers at that time, he was forced into bankruptcy before the decade ended. His father, still farming as well, scraped through and decided to ‘go organic’ rather than continue to pour money into pesticides and fertilizers when it wasn’t coming back in yields or sales. Keith left to work in the Alberta oil patch for three years, then returned with a wife and a nest-egg and so was in a position to take over the homestead when his father retired. Although Keith met her in Edmonton, Monica came from a cattle ranch near Preeceville, just 95 Km away, and had qualifications as a partner in farm operations that few city girls could match.

Keith and Monica continued to manage the farm with organic certification, eventually switching from Pro-Cert to OCIA, and did well raising alfalfa to sell. Such cattle as they had were left with Monica’s father, Stan Hough, who managed a community pasture. Meanwhile, Keith got on with construction of a house to replace the trailers his young family then lived in. But Stan’s sudden and unexpected death put a dent in that plan, and house construction went on hold while corrals were thrown up to absorb the incoming herd.

Cattle have been the focus ever since for their thousand-acre ranch. Currently they keep around sixty breeding cows, ten to twenty yearlings, and two bulls: a Charolais for breeding stock and a Piedmontese for market stock. As there is no certified organic and federally inspected slaughterhouse nearby, that part of the operation has to be done in Wadena. Wholesale marketing of the frozen and packaged meat proved to be unacceptably slow. The better way to move meat has turned out to be direct marketing to knowledgeable consumers and to specialised organic retailers like Steep Hill Co-Op, in Saskatoon. Keith now has a booth at the Saskatoon Farmers’ Market, and sells through “Nature’s Best”, in Regina. Current sales efforts are aimed at marketing directly to restaurants, and connecting with more consumer co-ops and community-supported agriculture groups.