By Angela Lovell
With a willingness to innovate and a constant commitment to land stewardship, Brady and Lindsay Funk were recently awarded the 2025 Saskatchewan Outstanding Young Farmers title and will represent the province in the national finals in Ontario this November.
“I am intrigued with new technology and if it’s going to provide us an opportunity to better ourselves and our farm, then we need to take that seriously and not be scared of change,” Brady Funk says. “I like thinking about new ideas and opportunities to vertically integrate into our farm to help provide generational family farm success and sustainability.”
A prime example is the Funks’ subsurface drip irrigation project, the largest of its kind to date in Canada. Although the investment in time, energy and learning to install the system was high, the Funks estimate it is saving them about 30 per cent in electricity, water and input costs annually, and will pay for itself in a few years.
How it all began
The Funks both grew up on family farms: Brady near Consul, Saskatchewan and Lindsay at the fourth-generation Hildebrand farm near Swift Current. After high school, Lindsay graduated as a registered nurse working in mental health, and Brady trained through John Deere as an agricultural mechanic.
“We felt it was important to spend some time away and learn new skills that could be an asset to our generational family farm, but the goal was always to come back to the farm,” Funk says.
In 2013, Brady became the third partner, along with Lindsay’s dad, Marv, and her brother, Jordan, in the Hildebrand family farm, but the couple soon realized they would need to expand if they wanted to provide the opportunity for their children to grow up on the farm.
“Being able to raise our family in a rural setting is such a neat opportunity,” Funk says. “They learn so much. It’s our goal to teach the skills that we’ve learned and pass that on to the next generation so that they can essentially carry that torch if they choose to follow in our footsteps.”
Searching further afield
After dealing with many years of drought, the Funks were looking for some land with irrigation potential, but local prices had skyrocketed, which is why they had to look further afield, eventually purchasing 923 acres one-and-a-half hours away near Lucky Lake, Saskatchewan.
“The land came up for sale and it had an old irrigation pivot on it that was worn out,” Funk says. “So, I knew that there was irrigation potential, but we weren’t stepping into a functioning irrigation farm.”
While they continued to farm the family operation at Swift Current, the Funks incorporated their own farm under the name of Braylin Acres in 2015. After doing soil suitability testing and getting approval from the Water Security Agency, they received the go-ahead to implement an irrigation project on their new site at Lucky Lake, but weren’t really sure what that would look like. The inspiration for the chosen subsurface irrigation system came from a Bible verse.
“We were led to this verse in Genesis 2:6 in the Bible that says ‘In the beginning there were springs that came up from beneath the water of the surface of the Earth’,” Funk says. “From that idea, we started investigating and touring different farms, and that led us to subsurface drip irrigation instead of above-ground pivots.”
It was a daunting endeavour, not least because they had to install all the infrastructure needed, including three-phase power, nine pumps ranging from 50 to 200 horsepower, and miles of pipe to deliver water from the South Saskatchewan River to the field. Water arriving at the field edge is then put through a high micron filtration system to remove any debris that could plug the lines, at which time the Funks can add different nutrients into the water stream.
“We don’t front load all of our nutrients up front,” Funk says. “As the plant is growing, developing and maturing, we insert different moisture probes and do soil and tissue testing to formulate how much nitrogen and other nutrients we need to apply, as we irrigate, for plant optimization.”
The system pulses the water vertically to the top of the soil and stops irrigating when soil moisture probes register adequate moisture levels, which helps reduce disease risk.
“A pivot system waters from the top down and that introduces disease into the plant because the plant is always wet,” Funk says. “With our system, the root system is wet but the above-ground foliage is not wet, so our disease pressure is significantly lower, which means a reduction in fungicide applications and savings in diesel from not having to spray.”
The system is drastically more efficient than an above-ground pivot because there is no water loss through evaporation, which reduces overall water use, and saves on electricity costs thanks to the variable frequency controllers that shut the pumps on and off as needed.
The entire system is connected through wireless radio frequency and can be controlled from a mobile device anywhere in the world.
Core values
It’s not just the cost savings that motivate the Funks, but also their role as stewards of the land.
“We are called to nurture and care for the land to the best of our abilities, and we take that seriously,” Funk says. “It’s an annual challenge for us to continue to improve the soil health and the production of our current operation.”
They also believe in surrounding themselves with talented people, something that has been essential as they have developed the irrigation project.
“One of our core values is to surround ourselves with great people, so we work with a team of agrologists and have an irrigation specialist on-site at all times,” Funk says. “It took a tremendous amount of time, energy and capital, but we learned so much and developed some cool relationships. I value good people; we’ve built a good team, and that’s important for long-term generational success.”
That team includes both of the couple’s parents who have been supportive and cheering them on in their farming career and their ambitious irrigation venture. “We wouldn’t be in this position without both sets of our families believing in us and giving us the freedom to chase this opportunity,” Funk says.
An eye on diversification
Now that the irrigation project is complete, the Funks plan to spend a couple of years optimizing and tweaking things but are planting the entire acreage of their irrigation project to black beans this year and trying a one-acre vegetable trial with the idea of using their system to diversify into larger scale vegetable production going forward.
“There are many commodities that would thrive and shine with our infrastructure such as romaine lettuce, cucumbers, watermelon, pumpkins, green beans and sweet corn,” Funk says. “It’s baby steps at this point. It is a lot of work, time, capital and energy to pivot into vegetable production because the equipment line is different, and you need a lot more people to harvest, but probably the long-term goal would be to phase out of commercial cropping and divest into vegetable production.”
The Funks have three children, Hudson (8), Roman (7) and Avery (5) and believe they are lucky to do what they love and live their biblical values.
“We put an emphasis on giving back and sharing what we’ve been blessed with,” Funk says. “We do that by giving to different organizations or giving back to our community.”
The family is looking forward to heading to Toronto in November for the national Outstanding Young Farmers final.
“We are grateful for the opportunity to represent Saskatchewan on a national level and look forward to meeting some incredible producers and the other nominees,” Funk says. “We look forward to building friendships and learning about other operations. It’s a unique and inspiring community.”
