Mat Bradley

Mat Bradley

“Thanks to Moveover I spent a year working in Canada doing a wide range of different jobs in the Agricultural Industry. I’m originally from a small dairy farm in county Durham. I left school at 16 and spent 2 years studying agriculture at Askham Bryan collage where through a talk I met the Moveover crew. My dad had spent a year working in Canada when he was young and a lot of my neighbouring farmers have also worked abroad all coming back and saying it was the best experience of their life. Which now I can also say! As a small boy I’ve always watched combines running up and down the field and always wanted to learn how to run one. Coming from a dairy farm wasn’t exactly ideal for doing this so after watching a lot of YouTube videos at collage with my mates I realised how much of an amazing the Canadian experience it looked.”

What about the job?

My first job in Canada was working for a brilliant family farm of 3000 Acer of arable. Although small for Canadian standards the machinery was still huge. I started out on the grain truck for a few days and then I started to run one of the two 35 foot combines for the rest of my time there. I worked there for 2 months till the end of harvest and from there I moved north and helped a 10000 acer arable farmer where I ran a combine in a team of five. This was a truly amazing experience of the Canadian harvest running the machines all day and all night on occasions. From there I moved south for the last 8 months of my experience to another family farm of 5000 acers of arable and 500 head of bison which was another amazing experience. Here I survived the longest coldest winter I’d ever experienced seeing temperatures fall as low as -40 and snow for 6 months. I spent the winter feeding the bison, hauling grain, exploring snow mobiling and enjoying rye whiskey in my spare time. When the spring came I got probably the most amazing experience of all – running a 60 foot drill on a 600 horse power tractor. From then we started to make hay for the bison where we made 1500 bales.

What do you remember most?

I have so many memorable experiences like running all the machinery, working with the bison and getting through the harsh winter but the best part has to be meeting all the fantastic people who went out of their way to help me and make me feel extremely welcome.

How was the Moveover experience?

I have learnt so much through my Canadian experience I can now run any machine from Lorries to tractors and combines and these skills will hopefully stay with me for life. Moveover Recruitment were brilliant throughout the experience placing me on 3 different farms and organising 2 fantastic trips to Banff. Without Moveover’s help and work there is no way I would have even made it across the Atlantic. Banff was of the most brilliant sites I have ever seen and to experience it with 20 other English lads was an excellent social experience to.