Skúli Sigfússon worked in various agricultural jobs after he arrived in the Lundar settlement from Iceland in 1887. He worked for Icelandic and English farmers for the first few years as he was still a teenager and had little experience. He mostly worked with his brother Jón, who early on decided that cattle breeding was a safer profession than grain growing because there were examples of severe frost damage to farmers’ wheat fields in Manitoba and west on the plains during their settlement years around 1890.
Agriculture in North America during the Western migration period of 1870-1914 was primarily about production for the market, the need for all kinds of food during these years when millions moved west annually to the United States and Canada was enormous. Cities sprung up in all the states of the United States and the provinces of Canada, and farmers had to bring their produce to market there. The governments did a lot of work in planning transport routes which relied mostly on railway companies. In both Canada and the United States, immigrants had to be brought west to the plains, and as the years passed and the farmers had mastered farming and raising cattle, the same railroad companies transported produce to market in the big cities of the east. The railway companies did not receive much money from the government for track construction, the payment to them was the land adjacent to the railway which was naturally the most valuable and immediately sold at a high price. Farmers closest to the railroad had the easiest route to market.
In 1886 it was decided in Manitoba that a railway would be laid from Winnipeg east of Lake Manitoba all the way north to Hudson Bay. This decision was very important to the settlers and determined Jón Sigfússon’s decision to set aside land in the area where the planned railway would be laid. Work began on the construction of the railway from Winnipeg, but in 1888 it was stopped, and the construction of the track was postponed indefinitely. Oak Point on Lake Manitoba was an early site in the history of the fur trade in Western Canada. The Hudson’s Bay Company had settled there in the early 19th century. The 1870 census of Manitoba lists people in Oak Point as born there in 1810. The company set up the fur trade and built a trading post. The first cattle were bred there, and in the middle of the century there were once 500 oxen. These oxen were used to transport pelts all the way south to St. Paul on the Mississippi River in Minnesota. North of Hudson Bay was another trading post, York Factory, where pelts were transported by boat along Lake Winnipeg and down the Nelson River, which was always considered extremely dangerous due to rapids. The Canadian Northern Railway finally completed the track to Oak Point in 1904 and to Lundar in 1911. A trail ran from Winnipeg northwest to Lake Manitoba and along the lake northward. This is called the Colonization Road, which was used a lot.
Skúli Sigfússon saw an early opportunity in cattle breeding and trade in animals. He himself started with 42 animals, but at his peak he had about 230. He put a lot of emphasis on breeding and continued to test himself with various breeds such as Herford, Gallaway, Short Horn and Aberdeen Angus. He himself drove his animals to Winnipeg and sold them there. Many Icelandic settlers who had livestock farming took advantage of Skúli’s business and sold him surplus livestock, so every year he drove a handsome herd to the south and had the help of cattle herders, and the business often reminded of a similar business in the “Wild West” with the associated calls and herding dogs. Entrepreneurs in the west of the plain heard about Skúli’s company and approached him about the purchase of animals. Skúli reduced his own production in the early 20th century and in 1908 he started a large-scale livestock business. Farmers far north in the settlements by Lake Manitoba thought it was good to do business with Skúli because he was considered fair and approachable in business.