Agriculture has always been a family affair for Doug Manning. He's the latest generation to raise crops alongside his children in the Flathead Valley, where his lineage homesteaded back in 1889. 

Producing wheat, barley, peas, lentils and canola, Manning farms 3,200 acres, most of it leased land. When he was growing up on the Fairmont Road farm, Manning worked alongside his father, raising more livestock rather than planting crops. He helped on the pig farm and spent time doing a lot of manual labor, like baling hay by hand.  

He wanted to be an engineer in high school, then pursued financial planning in college, but time in the city led him to miss the farm back home.  

After stepping into the industry his family has been part of for generations, Manning started growing the farm in accordance with a changing Flathead Valley by planting more and leasing land from local family farms that were retiring or changing hands.  

Having a bigger operation is a survival strategy in farming. Manning said his father made a living off of 400 acres, where he struggles to make it off of 3,200.  

"If we can get big enough just be competitive, you know? And I say that because we can get the acreage. But there's smaller fields — fields are getting broken up into smaller sizes. And just being able to get across that in an efficient manner, that's a big challenge. Subdivisions and traffic, you know, it's tougher to move stuff around through here,” Manning said.   

But there’s a reason Manning has stuck with it for all these years. He enjoys planting and watching crops grow, and he loves that it’s still a family activity, working with his six children. Though they keep livestock still, farming doesn’t require as much individual hands.  

“That's changed from when I started because the equipment's gotten bigger. My dad used to turn me loose out the field on the tractor and I couldn't hurt anything that much. Now equipment is bigger, and we're usually applying fertilizer or seed, and so it has to be placed well and you can't afford to make a mistake,” Manning said.  

There’s a sense of accomplishment that comes with wrapping up another season. From April all the way to October, he keeps crops alive to reap the reward.

But, no matter how many years of experience he garners, he knows the only constant every year is the inevitability of something not going as planned.  

“Each year, you don't realize which struggles you're going to have. You think you're going to have it figured out this year, and something else will hit you with a curveball, and so that's part of it,” he said.  

Reporter Taylor Inman may be reached at 758-4440 or [email protected].    

    Doug Manning walks to a blooming canola field off Holt Stage on Tuesday, June 24. (Casey Kreider/Daily Inter Lake)
 Casey Kreider