Growing the Future

What Does Farming Look Like When Two Sisters Run It?

Episode Summary

Cassandra and Stephanie, sisters who farm several thousand acres in Manitoba alongside their father and run the online platform The Tulepps, talk through the realities of a difficult 2019 harvest and how they divide the operational work of running heavy equipment together. They discuss building an audience that blends farming and fashion to reach an urban, non-agricultural following, their advocacy for better women's workwear, and their father's legacy as the inventor of the industry-standard U-trough bin unload system at Springland Manufacturing. The conversation also touches on mental health in agriculture and their family's volunteer work with a certified therapy dog.

Episode Notes

Cassandra and Stephanie farm several thousand acres of malt barley, canola, and soybeans in Manitoba alongside their father, and they built an online platform, The Tulepps, that blends farming, fashion, and family life for a following that reaches well beyond agriculture.

Both sisters hold professional degrees, business and graphic design, and both chose to come back to the land and run the equipment themselves. This conversation covers the operational reality of a brutal 2019 harvest, finishing soybeans in the snow in late November, and the choices that make their operation work: who runs the sprayer, who handles seeding, and why they took over all their own equipment maintenance the year they had no hired help.

What's Inside

• How Cassandra and Stephanie divide seeding, spraying, and equipment maintenance between them, and why they took over all of it themselves this year
• What it took to finish harvesting soybeans on top of snow in late November 2019
• Why the sisters built a following by blending farming and fashion, and what that does to close the gap between urban consumers and the people growing their food
• Their advocacy for better designed women's workwear, and the specific gaps they've run into with what's currently available
• Their father's invention of the U-trough bin unload system at Springland Manufacturing, now an industry standard
• Why they use their platform to talk openly about mental health in agriculture, including their volunteer work with a certified therapy dog
  
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