GrainsWest Fall 2019

Fall 2019 grainswest.com 29 BEST ADVICE TOOTHERS “Farming has its challenges, and each one of us is going to stumble and fall, but having a life partner who will hold your hand and provide support makes a world of difference.” BEST ADVICE FROMFAMILY “My father taught my sister and I the value of hard work, and that we can do anything that the opposite sex can do. My parents instilled those values in me early.” LUKE ADAM Luke Adam wasn’t inclined to become the fifth- generation operator of his family’s farm near Stony Plain. “Dad grew up on the farm,” said Adam. “He wanted to farm and knew it since he was young. I wasn’t like that.” He felt farm life to be constrictive. His father Bryan, who is a former Alberta Barley director, removed the pressure to assume the family business, telling him to do something he loved. With a push from his mother Beverley to attend university, he started his off-farm journey by earning degrees in arts and education and teaching at a small school in Port Coquitlam, B.C. “They brought me in to teach Grade 9 and develop that program, and then help develop the program for 10 to 12. I stepped into an administrative role for the last three years. It was a lot of board meetings and communicating with community. I really loved it,” said Adam. By 29, he was the school’s principal. With the arrival of their first child, Adam and his wife Dani, also from Stony Plain, felt the call to return home. In the move, Dani left her position as a legal assistant and is now taking on some farm administrative work from Beverley. They now have three children, Charlie (six), Walker (three) and Madison (one). “We’d always had it in the back of our minds that we wanted to come home and with the kids it made more sense,” said Adam. Their first child was born in 2013, and the young family moved back to the farm in 2015 after lengthy discussions with Bryan and Beverly about making it work. Relationships developed off-farmgave Paly access to a network of expertise.