Copeland to Churchill: a malting barley transition

Ward Oatway farms near Lacombe, growing both malt and feed varieties of barley.

A longtime grower of Copeland, Oatway has tried switching to other barley varieties before, but is finally happy with CDC Churchill.

So tell me a bit about the Oatway farm.

Where are you located and what crops do you grow?

Yeah, we're Oatway Seed Farm.

We're just east of Lacombe, Alberta, near a little town of Clive.

We're about 1,200 acres, and we grow Churchill malt barley and Durango feed barley for seed.

And I understand you did used to grow, uh, Copeland.

So when did you start growing Copeland?

My, my family going back, you know, we started with Metcalf and then moved on to, um, well, Harrington was in there too.

And

then,

and then, uh, uh, Copeland and yeah, we started growing Copeland quite early on.

Um, it wasn't too long after it was released.

I know we didn't grow the breeder seed or anything like that for it,

but,

uh, we, we, we adapted it to, to it fairly early.

Um, you know, there was, it's funny, we, we lived really close to a couple of, um, well to one malt plant, but it doesn't seem like getting malt in our area is very easy.

So it's, uh, it's, it's one of those things that you've got like, ah, come on, we're so close, but yeah, it doesn't work out that way.

But yeah, we grew Copeland for quite a few years and then, you know, we, we went out of it and we tried, uh, two, two different up and comers that never made the market.

So it was like one was Fraser.

Well, it's on the market now, but now when we first, uh, got into it, it never went anywhere.

And then, uh, There was one, yeah, I can't think of it off the top of my head, but it never got picked up by the malt companies, so it died too.

So I think we went back to Copeland for a few years until I decided to jump into Churchill later.

Okay, so when did you jump into Churchill, and then what did you see as the pros and cons versus Copeland?