In the Beginning

In 1907, S.A. Early started a hay, grain and feed store in a small frame building on Twentieth Street East, just east of the former location of the Saskatoon Star Phoenix.  In addition to running his feed store, in 1909 he joined his cousin, J.H. “Hunter” Early, in a fruit and produce sales operation. Hunter Early managed the wholesale fruit business for a few years but later ventured into the automotive business, establishing the J.H. Early Motor Company located at Third Avenue, presently the site of the Sturdy Stone Government Building.

In 1910, the feed store re-located to a site on Wall Street just south of 22nd Street near the present site of the YMCA. From the very beginning, the company developed a “Customer Satisfaction” policy that is still in existence today. S.A. Early pioneered the way for growth and diversification and quickly established the ability to expand with the growing needs of the major move in 1914, when the company relocated to 198 Avenue A South (Idylwyld Drive across the street from the Saskatoon Fire Department Headquarters). S.A. purchased one-half acre of land on which he constructed a grain elevator in addition to a new feed store.

The company continued to keep pace with the general growth and development of Saskatoon and the surrounding area and in 1928, constructed a second elevator adjacent to the existing building. The two elevators facilitated the company’s venturing into livestock feed manufacturing and seed grain cleaning business. While the depression years, known as the “dirty thirties”, were not conducive to growth in the seed business, Early’s forged ahead, pioneering its way into the garden seed packet trade. In 1942, S.A. Early & Co. published its first Spring Catalogue which contained products for sale such as grains, grasses, feeds, poultry and livestock supplies, vegetable and flour seeds, pet food and pet supplies and something new – baby chicks, which were a product of Early’s own hatchery.