Why push papers when you can drive a flock? Matthew Fleguel is far from chained to a desk when running his small business: a thriving sheep farm on Waupoos Island in Ontario’s scenic Prince Edward County.
It may be hard to think of a farm as a small business. In Canada we often hear about small family farms that are struggling to stay afloat, while the model of successful farming is a multi-million-dollar, factory-like operation with a regulated supply arrangement in place—in essence an expensive government “license to produce” its milk, eggs, meat or wheat. To an extent, Fleguel confirms this picture.
“To work yourself up to an average-sized milking herd in Canada is somewhere in the range of a million dollars, and that’s before you actually buy the cows or build the barn,” he says. “Building a pig barn or buying a large combine and large tractors to be able to grow crops—there’s hundreds of thousands of dollars necessary before you’re even buying the animals or buying the seed.”
For this reason, Fleguel says, “It’s a very ‘old boys’ club’ kind of thing. If your dad’s not in farming, then it’s very hard to get into.” But fear not, enterprising young people with dreams of life on the range: with sheep, those barriers disappear. Because there is no supply arrangement required, “you actually only need to buy the flock… It’s much more free-market. So for that reason, you can have a small sheep farm. Having a small dairy farm is a bit of an oxymoron. But there are lots of people who get into sheep, and they have another job, they grow their flock a bit more and more, and then eventually they quit their day job,” he says.
That said, Fleguel is something of an “old boy” himself, coming from sheep farming stock on both sides. His father grew up on a farm in eastern Ontario, and his mother on a farm in New Zealand. They met and married in New Zealand, later returning to Canada, and began renting land on Waupoos Island in 1980. The sheep they raised there were the family’s chief source of income for over three decades, eventually allowing them to buy the land in 2007.
“We do a little bit of cash cropping—we grow some oats and some wheat—but I’d say if you split it up by income then the sheep make up at least 95 percent,” says Fleguel of the farm he runs today with his wife, Elizabeth Johnston. The sheep’s wool is sold in bulk to the Canadian Wool Co-op located in nearby Carleton Place, but the majority of the farm’s income comes from selling lambs for meat. The lambs are transported live to Toronto and butchered there; Fleguel says the demand for fresh, high-quality Canadian lamb is great, as it’s prized in the cuisines of many ethnic communities.
However, like many a smart small business owner, Fleguel has moved on opportunities to diversify. As well as a successful recent trial run with a small herd of goats—he has about 30 now, and plans to acquire more—he has also taken advantage of Prince Edward County’s popularity as a tourist destination known for its top-notch wineries. When his family bought the property, it came with several cottages that hadn’t been used in years, despite great waterfront locations. They needed renovations, but the potential was clear. “So we kind of got thrust into tourism,” says Fleguel.
A family friend helped develop a website (www.waupoosisland.com), but marketing for the resort has remained deliberately low-key, through online ads on Ontario cottage rental sites as well as a booking agent. “Because both me and Elizabeth are so busy in the middle of the summer with the sheep, we haven’t really been pushing to book it solid,” says Fleguel. “We’ve considered hiring on some experienced staff to actually manage the place so it could run at capacity, but I’d say we’re closer to maybe 50 or 60 percent now, by design.”
Guests choose Waupoos Island for a number of reasons. “A lot of our renters will get a ride off the island for the day to take one of the wine tours—a lot of companies offer wine tours to different wineries, and also [trips] to Sandbanks Provincial Park, which is a big draw down in this area,” says Fleguel. But many guests are enticed by the experience of farming life. They are welcome to explore the grounds, watch sheep being herded and sheared, and ask lots of questions.
Some people even come to get their hands dirty: the farm participates in the volunteer-based Willing Workers on Organic Farms (WWOOF) program, which Fleguel describes as “an online community of travelling workers who work for room and board on different farms… During the summer we get quite a few volunteers coming through, and we set aside one of the cottages for them to live in.” He says they’ve had a great experience with WWOOF and plan to continue.
When asked about job satisfaction, Fleguel cites the simple things. “Because the whole farm is pasture-based—the vast majority of the feed for the sheep is pasture—we spend a lot of time moving sheep. It’s kind of like a miniaturized version of a cattle drive. Driving them to fresh pasture, with the four-wheelers and the working dogs, I enjoy very much,” he says. “Also I feel very lucky to be farming on the water. Basically my workplace is where most people would like to be able to put a cottage, know what I mean?”
