A farm family based near Oak Lake, Stan Cochrane along with his wife Pat and their sons’ families were honoured at the Royal Manitoba Winter Fair. The Cochranes were one of five families to receive the BMO Farm Family Award.
Cochrane said the award was significant to him because it was a family award.
“We’ve got two sons - all their kids, they all live on the farm, they’re all in 4-H, they work with the animals. I think that’s what it was all about.”
He said the award highlights the fact that there are still a lot of family farms.
“People get the idea farming is all corporate now – it’s not.”
Leadership
Stan Cochrane has impacted southwestern Manitoba as a municipal politician for Sifton, helping with sports teams, and supporting organizations in the Oak Lake community.
His gravel business, begun on marginal pasture land, now employs 10 people to provide gravel for rural people and nearby municipalities.
Early in the 1970s, he and his wife Pat established Cochrane Stock Farms which has grown to a cow herd of about 300 with a feedlot of 1500.
Pat worked as a community health care professional as they raised their family and grew the agricultural business.
In conjunction with the Brandon Experimental Farm during those early days of the 1970s, Stan and his father Sanford Cochrane began using Limousin genetics imported from France with his Angus cows, to improve beef performance. Cochrane has received recognition over the years from the Limousin Association.
Helping Brandon fair
But it is Cochrane’s work on the board of directors of the Provincial Exhibition of Manitoba that stands out in light of the family’s award at the recent Royal Manitoba Winter Fair.
Brandon’s winter fair has become a point of contact between town and country in an increasingly urban and virtual (digital) society. Kids, in particular, enjoy contact with real farm animals. They are introduced to what goes on in agriculture.
“It’s important as Ag education,” says Cochrane of the Brandon fair. We have one room that’s pretty well dedicated to that. It’s an opportunity for city kids to see the animals…”
While the horse events are entertaining for the audience they also bring competitors together.
Cochrane was nominated to Brandon’s fair board by a fellow cattle producer who wanted to see that industry represented on the fair’s board.
The time was right
He has been a member of the Provincial Exhibition Board of Directors for about 18 years.
“I waited until the kids were grown up before I got involved,” says Cochrane. “You have to be there a few years to work your way through the system. I ran for vice president, that’s a two year term; then president, a two year term; and as past president you’re on for another two years.
“On the executive, all of a sudden you have put in six or seven years – half of what I’ve done.”
He has met countless people outside his own community, as a volunteer with the Provincial Exhibition.
“You make a lot of friends. It’s a way of getting involved with something different.”
With Cochrane on the executive, the decision was made to redo the old “dome building” and he went on to chair the Restoration Committee for the Dominion Exhibit Display Building.
“I said I was going to stay around until it was done.”
The long anticipated Heritage restoration project is due to be completed this May.
