Beef farmers Chad and Sarah Hunt had never worked in an abattoir when they decided to buy one. The couple, above, inside Farmersville Community Abattoir. (Charles Summers photo)
Charles Summers
Farmers Forum
ATHENS — Chad Hunt always knew that he wanted to be a farmer, and he always farmed with all of his might — but the financial realities of agriculture made it a morning/evening/weekend lifestyle rather than a full-time occupation. That all changed three years ago when he and his wife Sarah quit their day jobs and embarked on the challenge of a lifetime. Talk about timing: on the eve of COVID, February 13, 2020 — without a clue of the ensuing shortages, plant shutdowns and empty shelves to come — they purchased the defunct Farmersville Community Abattoir in Athens, north of Brockville. Their lives haven’t been the same since.
Chad, Sarah and their five children farm in Pakenham with his brother Corey (wife Glenna and son Corland) and their father, Mervin. Working together, they steward over 1,000 acres and call the operation Corad Farms. The families have 400-some Limousin cattle of various classes and manage a rotation of hay ground, corn silage, and cash crops with plenty of pasture on the bits unfit for the plough. Traditionally, their calves went (and some still do) to the Cookstown auction, where they were sold for backgrounding. “The Mennonites just love our Limos,” Sarah tells me. Seeking to expand and diversify their revenue streams, Sarah began direct marketing their finished beef at the Carp farmer’s market outside of Ottawa.
Their business steadily grew and they eventually reached a tipping point, where the local capacity for custom processing was being outstripped by demand for their product.
A client on Facebook suggested they look into the old slaughterhouse in Athens. They’d never heard of it, but it was a cheaper turnkey option, compared to their own plans to build a facility. The catch: it’s exactly 100 kilometres from their door.
Despite the distance, the Hunts made up their minds, and with the help of the Business Development Bank of Canada, embarked on something few of us would have the nerve to do. Without a stitch of experience in a butcher shop, Chad and Sarah took control of their business and became price makers rather than price takers.
Now, Athens used to be called Farmersville and is in the middle of a great patch of ground. At some point the town elders changed the name, no doubt owing to the marble-lined streets, monumental architecture, olive trees and the sea of philosophers amongst its citizenry.
However, one man still represents the practical, hardworking spirit of old Farmersville, and that is Bernard Barber. Bernie started the abattoir over 30 years ago, and in one way shape or form has had his finger in the pie since. His guidance and experience made Chad and Sarah’s bold plunge possible.
He grew up butchering and with 55 years in the meat industry, he was eager to share his life’s work with this brave couple. Bernie’s 18 years as a provincial meat inspector also gave Chad and Sarah the inside track in terms of navigating regulation.
Did he enjoy being an inspector? “No! I can’t just watch people all day, I like to WORK! It was all I could do not to get in there and pull the hide off myself.”
Farmersville is the only slaughterhouse I’ve visited that doesn’t have even a whiff of that smell. When someone told Sarah the joint was as clean as a hospital, Bernie was taken aback: “I hope it’s a damn sight cleaner! It’s easier to keep a plant clean than to let it get dirty and then try to fix it.”
Bernie’s to-the-point nature has made him a wonderful teacher. It also lends itself to a unique form of customer service when neophytes ponder aloud why their meat doesn’t look like the cookbooks, or if Farmersville can’t somehow cut their T-bone steaks bigger.
“That’s your job – my job is to cut it right: this here is a knife, not a magic wand.”
Chad and Sarah Hunt bought the Athens abattoir three years ago when the COVID pandemic shut down the economy. (Charles Summers photo)
Bernie’s tutelage was essential to Chad and Sarah’s succession into the business of abattoir ownership, but nothing could have prepared them for the onslaught of customers ushered in during the chaos of COVID. Their shop went from a three week waiting list, to three months, and then quickly, a year. They managed to handle the influx, and the additional opportunities and cashflow were a welcome gift to the new owners.
Today, on the other side of the disruption, they are faced with the aftermath: drastically increased operating costs on every front, and the tightest labour market we’ve ever seen.
So how do Chad and Sarah make it all work? To an outsider, it seems overwhelming: the travel, the extensive farm, and the management of the slaughterhouse — which not only contains human elements, but a variety of material expenses and ongoing mechanical and structural maintenance issues. They lost a cooling compressor in the first four days of assuming the business. In the first month, a customer’s steer was loose in the yard and was shot with a deer rifle. Prices go up, employees come and go. They’ve gotten some cameras and have their reefer units monitored by their phones now, but how do you handle that? Attitude.
Chad is one of the most even-keeled people I’ve ever met. Modest and soft spoken, he is also completely committed to the enterprise, finds tremendous satisfaction in his work, and is grateful for the opportunity he’s made for himself.
Like so many successful couples, Sarah is the gravy to his potatoes: gregarious, eager to share and openly enthusiastic, while also absolutely transparent about the challenges they face. What underlies this positive energy is a commitment to producing a quality product, and perhaps even more elusive: cultivating and maintaining relationships. The world turns on agriculture and so much of what goes on here is based on trust and confidence. The Hunts are willing to earn it by serving their community.
An abattoir is a bit of grisly business. It rattled Sarah a bit when she was confronted with the reality that the calves that they breed and gestate, and birth and ween and feed ultimately get their heads cut off and hung on a rail. Not once or twice, but week after week: she shed tears for months.
Today, she’s proud to stand in the cooler and show off the fruits of their labour that will soon end up on someone’s plate. Life is messy but it’s also beautiful. Chad and Sarah lean into it without fear.
Charles Summers owns Salt of the Earth Farm, a direct-to-consumer operation selling vegetables at the roadside, near Lyndhurst, Ontario.
