Meet Our Producers
Ed Hincliffe (Hudson Bay Herefords)
Ed Hinchliffe tells of a time when he and his partner Jake Zust drove cattle by foot up the highway from Jake’s place on Old Babine Lake Road to Ed’s farm on Eckman Road. It was October and they had run out of grass so Jake suggested they herd the cattle up to Ed’s property. Ed thought it wise to start out at six o’clock the following morning but Jake was sure the cows would follow easily and convinced Ed to get started that afternoon.
By the time they got half way up the highway it was getting dark and they had thirty-nine cows going thirty-nine different ways. Some ended up across the road, some went all the way back to Jake’s farm and three disappeared all together, into the bush at Hug’s family farm. All said, it took three days to move those cows. Taking them home was easy though and every time after, it only took an hour or so because they knew the way. Who says cows are dumb?
Later in 1979, Ed and Barbara established Hudson Bay Herefords, a 110-acre cattle ranch on Babine Lake Road. Up until a few years ago the ranch paid it’s own way. After the BSE scare in 2003 cattle prices dropped about forty-five percent and it’s never really recovered. Currently the 72-year-old rancher uses his old age security pension to subsidize the farm.
As a founding director of the Northwest Premium Meat Cooperative, Ed has invested a great deal of time to improve those returns, not just for himself but for all farmers and ranchers in the Northwest. “It’s been a struggle,” he tells me, “but I feel good about it.”
Changing the way livestock is marketed and sold in the Bulkley Valley is a lot like driving cattle down an unfamiliar path; it takes a certain quiet determination to break trail. Its Northwest ranchers and farmers like Ed Hinchliffe who are forging the way toward steady, fair prices for quality meat from close to home.
Hormone free, grass-fed and grain finished, Hudson Bay Herefords breeds Angus-Hereford cross on their 110-acre ranch just minutes outside of Smithers at the corner of Hwy 16 and Babine Lake Road. Ask for their beef by name at the Northwest Premium Meat Co-op.