-SP Peter Wilson
Farmer plants business seed with golf course addition
By Peter Wilson of The StarPhoenix
PERDUE – It takes a lot of energy and planning for a farmer to seed 9,000 acres.
Add in development and maintenance on a new 20-hole golf course to the land base and a producer would really have his hands full.
Fortunately, Jim Scharf has pretty strong hands, not to mention a loyal family and large work crew; otherwise even this human dynamo might begin to wind down.
“We’ve already decided to plant most of the farmland to lentils and wheat, the only two crops that haven’t seen much increase in price,” the 54-year-old farmer said recently. “It’s remarkable that feed wheat has doubled in price while wheat has barely moved.”
He’s not sure he shouldn’t be following the production trend, but he says that at least playing the contrarian means the cost of seed will be cheap.
But it’s not just his agricultural land that’s on his mind these days. Casting an eye across the snow-covered links of the Oasis Golf and RV Park on the edge of this small Prairie community, the Perdue-area farmer thinks back a few years.
Just a 33-minute drive out of Saskatoon on Highway 14 toward Biggar, the golf course and clubhouse fits the rolling prairie landscape like a comfortable glove. It wasn’t always like that.
“The soil on this land was pretty thin, too thin to be much good for growing crops, but it turns out golf courses love this kind of soil,” he says.
Not that there weren’t problems with the transition. Initial seeding attempts were disasters. Three times they tried to seed and three times the unforgiving wind blew the seed right out of the ground. Scharf came up with the simple, but brilliant idea of planting wheat alongside the grass seed. The wheat held the grass in place. As both crops began to spring to life, Scharf mowed the crop, essentially killing off the wheat and leaving the grass intact.
With the grass problem solved, it was time to get serious about trees. Over the four years of transforming prairie fields into a deluxe golf course, the employees have planted several thousand trees on the property. That’s no mean feat where nothing taller than wheat grew before.
“It was a lot of hard work, but our two sons and a nephew have contributed an awful lot to the development of the project,” he said in a later winter interview. “We spared no expense building this place; in face we overbuilt, putting in back-up pumping systems and a state-of-the-art irrigation system.”
Last year was the first year the golf course was fully operational and Scharf, an admitted non-golfer, was thrilled by the response from Saskatoon and rural golfers who played the course.
“We received a lot of praise for what we had done, and the clubhouse, pro shop and restaurant also proved popular with players. I guess we must be doing something right.”
Scharf is no stranger to success. Back in 1986, he and his wife Bruna began manufacturing E-ZEEWRAP, the phenomenally successful plastic wrap dispenser they market around the world. Working out of their basement, the couple managed to expand the family farm while at the same time branch out their entrepreneurial skills on the domestic and sports markets.
These days, his array of enterprises can employ more than 30 people during the peak summer season.
With a new metal E-ZEEWRAP dispenser now in the production stage, Scharf is obviously not content to rest on hi laurels and is keeping up with the latest design innovations in kitchen appliances in today’s marketplace. He’s also a man who likes to stay busy.
“We have an excellent team working for us and I’d say we’re pretty efficient.
“Me I like to kick around ideas and bounce them off other people,” he said. “I like to think I’m pretty good at motivating people.”
pwilson@sp.canwest.com
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