Shifting focus has paid off for the Found family. Pictured from left, David, Brad, Stan, Mary Ann. Katharine and Stephen.
Nelson Zandbergen
Farmers Forum
DURHAM REGION — The Found family has embraced change at their fourth-generation farm. In just the last few years, they shifted from beef and hog production to become one of the province’s larger lamb producers. At around the same time, they even shifted the farm’s entire address, relocating from the outskirts of Oshawa to rural Tyrone, about 16 km away.
It seems like the very definition of being “progressive,” one of the prime criteria for being named as Durham Region’s farm family of the year (an honour the Founds received in October). Ironically, Mary Ann Found initially didn’t think the operation was progressive or innovative enough to qualify for the award from the Durham Farm Connections organization.
“But looking at the history of the farm, I realized there are things that have happened down the generations,” Found said.
Her husband’s grandfather saw the family farmhouse go up in flames in 1900. Nearly a century later, a devastating barn fire in 1997 “wiped us out,” she said. As in the past, “it was the determination to carry on, and combined with the support and love of the agricultural community, that we got over that,” she said. “Down through the ages, when things got tough, you made decisions to change and try and make it better.”
Those decisions included historical investments in innovative technologies. Her father-in-law was one of the first in the area to own a sprayer and a combine. “I look at that as decisions made to live on hope for the next generation.”
In the modern era, the Founds prevailed through the BSE crisis, pork-price fluctuations, and increasing urbanization around the original 82-acre home farm in Courtice — on the east boundary of Oshawa. Development pressure made it difficult to run a hog and beef farm “with 1,400 homes on our fence line,” Found observed. Housing also gradually displaced some additional land they had been renting.
So they made the difficult decision to sell the original farm in 2018 and bought their current 500-acre spread in Tyrone. Lambs became their new livestock speciality because son Brad, who was raising lambs independently, also lost his Oshawa-area rented land to development at that time. He was officially brought into the Found farm as partner — on condition that hogs wouldn’t be part of it. “He hated pigs from the time he was a toddler,” his mother chuckled.
Today, in addition to cash cropping, the family runs a 120-ewe operation, soon to be expanded to 800 ewes. They strive to produce 1.6 lambs per ewe annually, for the Trillium Lamb Co-op, and a new barn to accommodate the expanded flock is nearing completion.
Mary Ann and Stan Found have also invested in a broiler chicken operation near St. Mary’s. They are partners with their daughter, Katharine, and her husband.
