MEMBER PROFILE
Dairy farmer
Marianne
Parvais
Farming and determination are
in her genes
BY JACQUIE NICHOLSON When Marianne Parvais’s
daughter was six years
old, she was given a school
assignment to “draw a
picture of your mother’s
responsibilities.”
The portrait Madeleine brought home is one
that Marianne still treasures three years later. It
features two long-haired stick figures in blue coveralls,
moving a tiny herd of cattle into a pen. The
stick figures are Marianne and her sister Isabelle,
the owners of Parmarisa Farms, a 100-head dairy
operation just south of Holland.
The drawing, Marianne says, puts her whole
farming career into perspective.
“They’re the reason I do this,” she says, of
Madeleine and her older daughter, Sophie. “When
it gets hard or when I feel discouraged, I remember
that they’re watching and it keeps me going.”
Both farming and determination go back generations
in Marianne’s family. Her grandmother,
Madeleine Lemercier Parvais, grew up on a farm
in Belgium and couldn’t imagine any other life. But
when she was in her late twenties, she was told her
older brother was getting married and taking over
the farm, and it was time for her to go and make her
own way.
She was determined to farm, but opportunities
to start from scratch were scarce in Belgium.
She travelled to France, where the Second World
War had decimated the agricultural landscape and
there were farms to rent for next to nothing. She
brought her stonemason husband with her, two
small children, and the first of her livestock: a baby
boar she smuggled onto the train.
“She tickled him while he slept to keep him
quiet and calm while the German officers walked
up and down the aisles,” Marianne says.
“Her story is such an inspiration for me.”
Marianne’s farm came into her family in
1978, when her parents immigrated from Belgium,
acquired an old PMU operation and bought 30 milk
cows from a neighbour who was selling off his herd.
Her sister Isabelle was three years old at the time
and Marianne was two.
Looking back, she says it was never really a
decision for her to farm.
“Our playpen was four square bales in the
barn,” she says. “Our mom was an immigrant; she
didn’t know anybody who could watch us, and she
didn’t have daycare. So when she went to the barn,
we went to the barn.”
When the girls were older, they started to take
on work around the farm. At age six or seven, they
would come home after school and ride a pony out
a half mile to bring the cows in from the pasture.
From there, they learned to help with milking and
other tasks in the barn.
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Manitoba Farmers’ Voice § Spring 2019 § 3