- Farmer is the man, farmer is the man, farmer is the man.

- Today we're going to unhook the two 50 off the air drill and hook it up to the keys turbo toe and do some do goes work up some organic route.

That's how we get tires off.

I'm on six nations reserve basically we got this field about four or five days ago.

We farm right beside it and it's only 10 acres, but it's never been farmed for eight years, so it's been empty.

So I thought it would be great to turn it into organic land 'cause it's, hasn't had any chemicals on it.

Ripped it up last night and we're just ripping it up again today.

I actually really do like this kind of ground because first of all I'm not taking land from my neighbors.

When I first started farming, I had ground I would get and it would be farmed from 10 other farmers and the ground quality in the fertilizer and the organic matter would just be pretty much nothing there.

And I used to get poor yields for that's what would happen.

So this kind of ground's very nice, low and I like things rotting.

So it's nice to work over that green material and, and, and get it all in and leave it, let it rot, hit it again with the turbo tool, mix it up, let it rot again.

You know, I'd rather farm 50 acres and get 45 bushels instead of farm a hundred acres and get 15, 15 20 bushels.

Just, it's just, it's just affordable and it works.

This year has been very dry.

We, we started irrigating some of the, the market gardening 'cause it's so dry With the land.

We have this bit, this five, 10 acres here we got, I thought it would be interesting or cool to try and do an organic market garden here.

And it is hard keeping up on it.

We've had four or five family members helping.

So basically I figured to turn it into growing vegetables and it's my first year.

I'm going to see how it works out.

We have some tomatoes, we have garlic onions, we have squash, we have watermelons down there.

Nice.

It's really good dirt.

We had to replant some of the stuff just because the weeds came in so fast and we couldn't get control of it.

So we've been rototilling in between the rows, but some of the rows had to get replanted irrigated yesterday on this.

The dirt's nice and wet.

So my, pretty much, my biggest goal with the sweet corn is I want to do at least, well I like to do a hundred acres of sweet corn.

I, I, I like to, I like to get into the wholesale, right?

Like, I like the cash and I think just, I just think it's better to have different crop varieties and just different rotations and just something else to do in the summertime.

Right?

In the summertime all I grow is winter week.

I just like to do something else and I like to get into wholesale.

Like I wouldn't want to go too much over a hundred acres but fix up the barn and have an actual store where people can buy actual local stuff.

Once I get a customer base going and then people actually want to like know me and it'll come far away, then I'll grow like a lot.

That's why I bought this picker.

It's, this is a ox bowl CP 100 corn puller.

It's not called a corn picker, it's called a corn puller.

'cause it pulls the corn off the stalk so it doesn't get damaged.

The ends don't get damaged.

The top of the stalk goes in here and the bottom of the stock gets cut off.

Then it goes to those two rollers and it pulls the cob off, then it falls onto the next tray and then gets dumped into a trader.

It's a big game changer 'cause having two stains, we need to keep up with the corn and that's the only way to do it unless you have 10 kids.

So I'm excited to use it this year.

I never used one and this one looks pretty sick, so I'm excited to use it.

- All right, Shane.

Hey, how's going?

Yeah, it's - Good to see you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

How are you doing All - You now in the sweet corn - Business?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I'm in there.

I'm, that's what I'm doing now.

Yeah.

- My name's Rob Manning.

I'm the business and lending advisor for the Grand Erie Business Center.

We're based out of Cayuga, Ontario and we're one of over 200 community futures development offices throughout the country.

We have clients such as, as Shane McLeod, and again, our, our mandate is to assist in whichever way we can.

And again, our success is measured by the success of our clients.

So Shane, you know, you've invested all this extra time and effort and energy into sweet corn.

Yes.

You know, thousands of dollars of crop inputs.

Yes.

So is this something you're going to continue to embark on in the future, or is there something you're going to change?

- I'm going to keep going, but this year I kind of got ahead of myself and I planted too much and, but you know, I'm still, I'm still going to do it.

I don't think I need as much as I planted this year.

I just have to planted and space out the planting better.

Right.

But yeah, no, we're going to just keep going.

- So would you be kind of like doing two acre Yeah, pretty much Yeah.

Kind of thing than one big plastic.

Yeah.

- We're, we're going to stick to just two varieties and we're going to do Yeah.

What you pretty much just said.

We're going to do about eight acres next year and go two, two acres.

Wait, couple weeks, two acres, wait, couple.

- Always better to sell out than to have waste.

- Yeah.

Right now we've been donating a lot to Salvation Army in Good Shepherd.

- So, you know, you've got into the sweet corn thing and I mean it's, it certainly you're dealing, it's different because you're dealing it now with the the end user.

Yes.

Right.

Whereas what types of corn are you actually types of sweet corn, pea, peaches and cream.

And then, I mean, peaches and cream was always big, but - There's, there's a few different varieties like serendipity there's delectable, there's two, those are the two main ones that we use, but they're all peaches and cream.

Most people, when they come back, they don't know that they just actual peaches and cream.

Right.

But we are using a new corn that came out.

We only did about three acres with it and that's the stuff we're cutting right now that stays sweeter.

Cobs are a bit shorter.

It's peaches and cream, but it's madly sweet.

That's what people are, we have returned customers now the last two, three years and that's, that's what they're coming for.

Which is, but I, I do love interacting with people and getting to see what people want.

It goes back to my snowplow stuff and even my farming stuff.

Like I didn't come from a farm background.

I started out with pretty much nothing.

I started out with credit card debt.

I, I didn't have any money.

And I, I'm a people's person.

- I think of Shane's strengths is, is he's committed.

He's a ton of energy.

He's passionate about what he's doing and he comes from the school of hard knocks.

So in other words, he's lived it.

He is not just book smart.

He is life smart.

What's, what's in the fu in the future for you?

What do you are going to do something different?

- You know, when you go to a pop machine and you put a dollar in and you pick what pop you want and it comes out at you, it'd pretty much be like that.

Like an automat.

It's, it's going to be cool.

The corn will be in a cooled.

- Oh, okay.

- Area contained.

The other thing I like to do is I like to keep the corn stand open 24 hours a day.

Right.

Because, - You know, catch people driving home, - Serve from people coming from Dover.

People stop at the farm at 9 30, 10 o'clock at night.

Yeah.

And they buy corn every day, seven days a week.

No problem.

You want corn at one o'clock in the morning.

Come on - Over.

You make sure you have a precooked for 'em.

Yeah, - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

- It's just fantastic.

You've created something out of basically nothing, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You start, like you said, you started with a $10,000 Yeah.

Line credit card.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And an old truck and a blade, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And now look, look where you are now.

Yeah.

A successful business.

Yeah.

You got a growing family.

Yeah.

And look at you're happy.

Yeah, - Yeah.

No I got, I got a hot wife and I - And this is post Covid.

So how many stories do we have that are like that?

Yeah.

Right.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- Again, well done.

- Yeah, no problem.

Thank - You.

Good job.

I appreciate - It.

I'm not sure what people like about it.

What I like about it's, I like the taste of it.

I think people like it summertime, it's just, I think it's a good food to go with with summer.

I think it's a good food to go with barbecues and I think the sweet taste, I think that's what it is.

It's, you know, everybody loves summer and it's on a cob.

It's like old school.

Let me, let me see if I can find one.

'cause he plants some deep, it might take me a sec to find this.

It might be an inch and a half deep.

I don't like, I hate searching for sweet corn.

It is so hard.

I'm like, man, because the seeds are a lot smaller than regular corn.

1, 2, 3.

So here's one here and you can see the sprout is on it.

It's sprouted.

And this was plain on Saturday, which was about four days ago.

It's really nice ground here.

It's really mellow and it breaks up nice.

So, but yeah, no, it's, it's coming along good.

It's just hard to find this corn seed for some reason.

But the other corn seed, I final prom, I go into town, get some supplies and some parts and I'll be back.

- Alright, we'll - Come with you.

Alright, come on, let's roll.

- Farmer - Is the man, farmer is the man.

He lives on his credit until fall where his pants are wearing thin his condition is a sin and the taxes on the farmer feed us all.

- Let's take a look.

Let's go over to the truck.

It doesn't say where it's going, but it wasn't here 'cause there's no, there's no sweet corn growing around here yet.

Pretty nice color.

Small cob.

I can do better than this.

I can do a lot better.