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“I was throwing bags of seeds before I probably should have been and had crazy core strength. I didn’t know anything about lifting weights. What’s a bench press?

“The booze was kind of the idea of my wife, Kyla. She saw how things were going coming off the concussion and told me I needed to have a dual life like I had with football and farming. So she bought me a still.”

Not every wife would buy her hubby a still and not every neighbour in the beekeeping biz would get involved.

“Barry Yaremcio, his brother, Dave, and two sons Dustin and Mike got into honey. They did a half million pounds last year. That’s a lot.

“We started to make mead and wine and realized we weren’t any good at that. The hangovers were horrible.

“When my wife bought me the still and went down that road, it gave birth to our brand, Section 35, because we’re on section 35 of the land.

“My spice rum we’re calling Concussion.”

Photo by Supplied photo

In there somewhere, it went from being an illegal still to a legitimate operation.

“The RCMP showed up one day, and it wasn’t like you might think. They were having an RCMP Ball in Tofield and heard about my booze. Being such a small town, I was giving out jars all the time because I wanted feedback on whether it was good. The RCMP asked me if I could provide some booze for the ball.

“I told them that it would be illegal. So they said, ‘Get legal.’ So I did. We were able to do it quickly because of law changes that Rachel Notley and the NDP brought in. That’s why you suddenly had so many little distilleries start up. And it’s been a blessing. About 70 of us got legal. When COVID-19 hit, we were the perfect people to ask to start making sanitizer.