Loss of Rudy – Friend, Mentor and Partner

• By Chris Knight
• January 5, 2022

As many of you know, we lost our great friend and business partner Rudy Zubler almost two years ago.  Rudy was a pioneer in Organic farming in this area and was both a resource and an inspiration for many of us in the Organic farming world.  I knew Rudy for over 20 years.  We worked together for many of those years sharing equipment and knowledge back and forth as we lived and farmed close to each other. 

Rudy and his family came to Canada from Switzerland in the 1990s and became well respected cash crop and Organic dairy farmers.  We have always had beef cattle.  In 2013, Rudy approached us about partnering on the beef side of things as he and his wife Barb were looking to slow down a bit.  The life of a dairy farmer literally never takes a break.  They work 16-hour days, 365 days a year without a day off. This partnership worked out marvellously for 6 years until his sudden death in January of 2020 from cancer.  Barb and I continue to work together but there will be changes going forward as we both re-evaluate our lives without Rudy.

We both feel that partnerships are the only way small farms like ours can exist and refuse to give in to the corporate mentality that currently prevails in the industry.  We continue to raise our cattle the same way with a grass and pasture-based system but have made the switch to non-GMO grains for the last couple months of an animal’s life before it goes to the butcher.  This is because without Rudy’s help and the lack of available manpower due to COVID-19, we need to find ways to be efficient with our time.  We will also look for other small local farms that raise cattle the same way we do and share our beliefs just like we do already with the small Organic pork farmer we work with.