Watering Cows with a solar waterer

We don't keep our cows up in our yard for the winter as exercise makes for healthier cows. The problem with this is they need water when they are out in the field. We solved this problem some 10 or 15 years ago by building a solar water that works all year round. Our local county had a field tour to some other farms in the area. One of these farms had a system similar to this ours. We took these ideas and build our own system. Back then there was hardly any of these systems around and the commercial systems were few and far between and not yet very refined. This system will water cows at 40 below with no problem, and has been very reliable, although when we first built it we had to get all the kinks out of it. So far we have only had it give trouble once this year when the switch on the door became misaligned. Some years during the shortest days of the year we run short of power because of cloudy days, but this year has been very good.
The system consists of an old kitchen sink mounted on top of a 24" culvert standing vertical in about 3 1/2 meters of ground, down below frost level. The culvert is insulated with Styrofoam to keep the water reservoir in the bottom from freezing. The water comes from a dugout located about 7 meters away. The reservoir is kept full by a horizontal pipe buried below the frost line from the dug-out to the culvert.
For the cows to drink they push their nose on the door above the sink which in turn moves a switch that turns on a small pump located in the bottom of the culvert. The water is then pumped up to the drain in the sink where the cowthen drinks to her hearts content. When she is finished drinking she backs away from the sink, the door falls closed, moving the switch which shuts off the pump. When the pumps shuts off, the water then drains from the sink back below the frost line in the same pipe it came up.
With a system such as this we are able to completely fence our dug-outs to keeps the cows out which allows for a healthy riparian area for the wild animals and birds. A healthy riparian area keeps the water quality much better.

Feeding Cows

One of the daily rituals on the farm is feeding our herd of 125 cows. Pictured to the right is our cows on Boxing day (Dec 26). I actually took a picture on Christmas morning but it didn't turn out as it was still too dark in the morning when I took the picture. Each day we either take out 3 bales of hay or pea straw or a load of silage, depending on how cold it is out, and what the cows requirements are. As you can see we have lots of snow on the ground now. Our cows get lots of exercise the days walking through the snow, this keeps them in good shape in the winter so they are ready for calving season. It seems that cows that have had lots of exercise have less problems at calving season. Usually our son-in-law Randy does the feeding but I volunteered for a couple of days so he could be with his family for Christmas.

Getting ready for Christmas

Yesterday afternoon we went for our Christmas tree. We went over to Elna's mothers place for our tree. She lives about 6 miles from home and has lots of spruce trees in her pasture. This is one of the pastures that we keep our cows at in the summer. There was lots of snow in the pasture this year, so Randy took the tractor over to plow snow ahead of the truck. Keri, Elna. Megan, Makayla and I went over in the truck.

After we got our trees home we loaded up the grand kids and went to our local Church for their annual Christmas craft evening with supper and then making ginger bread houses, lots of other crafts, and even a scavenger hunt to end the evening.

Terra Madre Day

To celebrate Terra Madre Day Elna has been working hard to prepare a feast with locally grown food. She has been busy trying to perfect her recipes so she could get every thing just right. Just a few of the local suppliers were Eagle Creek Garlic and Potatoes, Chinook Honey and Meadery, Hamilton's barley flour, Nixon's Honey, Beck Farms Vegetables, Sylvan Star Cheese, Flavour of the Foothills BBQ sauce, Highwood Crossing wheat flour, HolmeHus Eggs, and of course Edgar Farms.


We had our good friends Stan and Liz over, along with their son John Mills who went to Tara Madre last year. Our son in law Randy was quite disappointed that he had to miss this meal as he stayed home with a sick daughter although Keri and our grandaughter did get to enjoy the evening. John was a bit late getting here as he had gone to Calgary with a truck load of Innisfail Growers produce to the market. Pictured here is a picture of him sampling his home grown garlic that Elna slow roasted and placed on her home made crackers . Also John's friend Rayell missed out because of other commitments. All in all it was a great feast and was enjoyed by all.

Preg. Checking our Cows

Yesterday we had our local veterinarian out to the farm for our cows annual check-up. He checks each cow to see if she is in calf, and for any other health issues. It was minus 21 degrees Celsius at 8:00 AM when we started with the cows so we had lots of clothes on. We ran 125 cows through the chute. If you look behind us we even had our patio heater set up to provide a little heat right by the chute, but the best way to keep warm was just to keep moving.

Tourism Alberta Alta Awards

Wow what a surprise!!! We were selected as one of the finalist for the Tourism Alberta Alto Award. This particular award recognises "Creative Marketing that encourages travel in Alberta" The category we were selected as finalist for was "Marketing Excellence with a budget of under $5000" This was for our Asparagus festival. A lot of our advertising was hand delivered promotional cards, meaning our total cost for the event was $1100. We hosted over 1500 people on our farm to see our operation first hand.
There were three finalists in the under $5000 category, with the others being the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village from Edmonton and Radar DDB for Banff Lake Louise Tourism.
Although we didn't win, just to be recognized with other such prestigious tourism groups was such an honor. After all we just wanted to invite our friends to the farm to see how we do things, not to be a tourism destination.

CKGY and KFC Meals in the field.

Our neighbor and good friend Brad Dallas happened to win the "meal in the field" draw for our local radio station CKGY and Kentucky Fried Chicken. As it happened he was helping one of our neighbors combine the day they brought lunch out to the field. Luckily we were also in the same field helping combine, so Brad says, come and enjoy lunch on CKGY with the morning hosts Greg and Tara Lee.
The DJ's even got to drive the combines and do a live report from the combine cab. I'm thinking they were suitably impressed with 4 combines, 3 semi-trailer trucks, and 3 reg. grain trucks.
Pictured above is Greg driving our combine, Tara Lee also got to drive Brads combine.

Canada Malt and Molsen Brewery tours the farm

Last week we had an unexpected group of 20 or 30 people from Canada Malt and Molsen Brewery drop in to the farm. Elna was combining peas. I was hauling them home from the combine. I was also drying our malt barley. Ryan Dodd the country operations manager for Canada Malt was touring these people around. At the last minute he thought he would just stop at the farm and see if we were doing anything with malt barley. He was in luck as we were drying our barley. Keri and Randy were at the farm working with the vegetables when they arrived. They toured the group around the grain bins and showed them how we handle our crops. This was very interesting for the processors of the barley we grow as they don't get a chance like this very often. There was people from western and eastern Canada and from the United States. After the tour of our facilities they wanted to shop for veggies and preserves in our farm store which was a plus for us. Talking with Ryan the next day he claimed this stop was a big hit especially for the brewers.

Combining Dry Field Peas

We have been combining for the last several days. We finished Elna's mothers place on Tuesday. We had malt barley there that was badly hailed, about 60%. We hauled it home and dried it as was still tough but starting to shell out and fall on the ground. We then moved to our yellow pea field and did that. These peas yielded quite good and they were dry so we could put them straight in the bin. These peas will be sold for split pea soup and may even be exported out of Canada as peas are great source of protein in many countries around the world. Pictured is Elna, standing in front of her combine just before finishing the field.

Getting Firewood for winter

A couple of weeks ago, we went out west of Caroline for our winter firewood. We stopped at Caroline Supplies to pick up our permits that allows us to cut dead spruce trees for fire wood for ourselves. We then drove to a small fire burnt area that we new of. We then proceeded to fell dead trees, block and spit firewood. It was then stacked neatly inside our cattle stock trailer. We made a full day of it meaning we needed lunch. Elna packed a picnic lunch complete with hamburgers and lots of veggies to eat. We even brought along our portable BBQ to cook the hamburgers. They were Edgar Farms hamburger patties of course. With our lawn chairs to sit on it was a wonderful lunch indeed. As with any job "many hands make light work" so with 7 of us it went very well getting enough fire wood to last more than a year.

Video: Witching Stick Water Finder

The other day a photographer from the Edmonton Journal newspaper called. His first comment was that it "was a slow news day" and he wanted to do some photo's on witching water wells. When he was out at the farm a couple of years ago, we were telling him that Keri and Randy had just drilled a water well that they had witched. We had also successfully witched the last water well that we drilled on the farm. This photographer lives on an acreage outside of Edmonton and struggles getting enough water at his home, so maybe that's why he remembers the conversation. Being a good delegater, I thought who best but Keri and Randy to do this, so I just gave him their phone number. He came down on Thursday took lots of pictures, several videos, and we showed him how to witch his own well. Keri's picture was in Saturdays journal with a link to the video. Check out the video.

Video: Witching Stick Water Finder

A close call for a local landmark

We were very fortunate to have not lost out local community hall this month. It all started when a couple of kids decided to do some camping out under the spruce trees by our local hall. They lit a fire under the shelter of the spruce trees to keep warm. We think that they put the fire out when they left but didn't realize that the fire had gone into the roots of the trees. After about one week of smoldering and traveling along under the trees the wind came up fanning the flames creating an intense grass fire. Luckily one of our neighbors Mark Mountain was driving by, noticed the flames. If he hadn't noticed it then in about 5 minutes the grass fire would have travelled the 50 feet and reached the 113 year old school house and the rest would have been history. This hall has many special memories for me as the spruce trees were planted in part by my Grandfather Wilfred Edgar under the supervision of my Greatgrandfather William. Wilfrid took all his schooling there, as did my father, my aunt, and all my uncles as well as many of the people in the community. They closed this school in the spring of 1958 and I started school in the fall of 1958, so I just missed going to school there. After closing the school this building was then turned into a community hall, a gathering place for many seasonal functions such as the Christmas Concert. This was the place where I first met Santa Clause In those days we only saw him once per year so it was indeed a memorable time. Not like now where he is in every mall and on every street corner.

Covering the Silage Pit

Today we covered our silage pit with plastic and tires. To keep the air out of our silage we have to cover the pile with heavy plastic. We then place old used tires on top of the plastic to keep the plastic tight to the silage and to keep the plastic from blowing away or whipping in the wind and tearing. We carry the tires to the edge of the plastic with the tractor and then hand place them on plastic. We then unroll more plastic, place more tires until the job is done. We then place a couple of rows of round bales at the base of the pit to keep everything in place. This little job only took an hour and a 1/2 . As long as the wind doesn't blow and with enough people it goes quite easy.

Cutting Silage

Yesterday was silage day at Edgar Farms. We hire a silage cutter, and a couple of extra trucks for the day to put up our silage. In one day we we put up close to 1000 tons of silage. After the crop is swathed into windrows, left to dry down for a day we then go through the field with a silage chopper that cuts the plants into approx. 1-2 inch long pieces. The machine then blows these pieces (silage) into the the truck travelling along side the chopper. The truck then travels back to the farm yard where the silage is then dumped into a pile in front of a large concrete storage facility called a silage bunker. We then push the silage with a large tractor up into the bunker spreading it out evenly. We then drive the tractor back and forth over the silage to squeeze the air out of it so the silage will ferment and not spoil. Similar to fine wine. Once the bunker is full and completely packed we then completely cover it with heavy plastic to keep out the air. We eat our noon lunch on the go in our vehicles and our daughter Keri made us a great meal for a sit down supper before returning to the field. Doug's job is to drive the push/packer tractor and Elna drives the tandem truck picking up silage and bringing it home. This is an older truck that we bought new years ago but is still in very good shape. The problem with this truck is it has the old style transmissions in it which makes it difficult to drive. It has a 5 and 4 transmission meaning it has 2 transmissions giving you 20 forward gears. There is a complicated series of combinations of gears between the two transmissions to shift to operate this truck. Elna does very well shifting these manual transmissions even sometimes not having to use the clutch on certain shifts. I tell her it was my good teaching ability that allows her to do so well.

Swathing Silage

My father used to say "the problem with this country is, there is 6 months of winter and 6 months of getting ready for winter". Sometimes I wonder if maybe there was some merit in what he was saying. For the last week or two we have been putting up silage (a form of cattle feed) for ourselves and other neighbors around here. This is a picture taken on the 2nd. day of swathing silage for our neighbor who farms just east of Innisfail. He had a great crop of barley and silage peas. It was some of the worst cutting I have done in a while, but I did persevere and did finally get it finished. We also had to drive this swather down the Cottonwood Road to Innisfail, across the overpass and down a gravel road to his place. The problem is that this unit is approximately 27 feet wide, so it does take up the whole road. Fortunately I can pull over, put two of the wheels in the ditch, stop and wait for the traffic to pass, although it does seem like you're stopped a lot of the time. After we moved home from these fields we did some of our own, and it went extremely easy compared to the peas and barley mix of our neighbors.

Elna's Birthday

Today is Elna's birthday. Her day starts as normal just before 6:30 getting the pea picking staff started for the day, finding the right spot in the field for everyone, gathering up containers from the market etc. and it's only 8:00 AM yet.
Her busy day continues till 4:00 when her granddaughter gets home on the school bus and she has to have a family birthday party for her Grandma. At Elna's birthday party her mother came over with a present and to share a piece of cake. We opened her presents from everyone and she blew out her birthday candles (only 5 of them) A present from our daughter Angie even arrived today in the mail just in time along with my e-bay present for her that came just in time. Right after we were done opening birthday presents and eating cake she had a phone call from a Cheryl, a very close friend of hers from Chilliwak B.C. just to wish her happy birthday and try and find a time they can get together a visit. The day will then continue by her delivering peas to Innisfail growers, then attending a weekly Innisfail Growers meeting and then hope full home by 10:00. Just another day on the farm.

Hand Picking Beans

For the last while we have been picking beans. ALL OUR BEANS ARE HAND PICKED. Right now we have lots of green and yellow beans. We only pick them in the afternoon after the dew has dried off. If we pick them when they are wet they get rust marks on them. These marks don't hurt anything but they sure don't look appealing. If we don't have them at a particular market, it was probably to wet to pick because of a rain shower or a heavy dew. We also have our favorite, french fillet beans which are a small tender bean. Due the freezing temperatures on the night of July 1 these plants have been suffering all summer. We will have a limited supply.

New Pavement to Edgar Farms

Over the last few days the County of Red Deer has been putting 2 new lifts of hot mix payment on the Cottonwood Road which goes from the QEII highway to Edgar Farms. This will be a big improvement for our road. Yesterday the crew was doing one of their passes right in front of our gate and Elna took this picture.

Keeping things running

Lately we have been just going along keeping things going, getting ready for silaging and harvest as well as picking peas and beans. Yesterday as we were servicing some equipment my cell phone rang, with Shelly B. on the other end letting me know that one of our cube vans wouldn't start. Luckily the van was only 2 miles away and finished for the day. This van had just came back from Millerville near Calgary and previously was at Sherwood Park near Edmonton and was slated to go to Calgary the next day. How lucky can we get that it broke down at the end of the day back at home, rather than stranding us in Edmonton or Calgary.
Randy and I jumped in the service truck and went over to have a look. After some investigation, we found a faulty solenoid that was hard to see because it was buried down underneath (as per usual). On Sunday we will be sending a different truck to Calgary and on Monday we have to try and find some parts to get this truck back on the road again. Monday is the only day of the week that we don't go to markets and we usually wash and service our trucks then.

Picking Peas in the Rain

The last few days we have received quite a bit of rain and it has made the field very muddy. Even though it is raining we still keep on picking. The only way we can get to the field is with our quads or our old John Deere AMT that has to be about 25 years old and still going. We don't use it a lot but in this weather it works perfect.
This morning it was +10 degrees at 8:00 when they started work and warmed up to +11 for a high of the day. Our loyal employees just put on more clothes, complete with thin cotton gloves with plastic gloves over top for their hands, then pull up their hood and get to work. What a difference a week makes compared to +30 last week.
Pictured above is Cheri with a big smile for the camera picking peas, and Valente and Martin heading back to the field with some empty containers to fill with more peas.

First Day of School

Today was our oldest granddaughter's first day of school. Grade one this year.
In Innisfail they are fortunate to have what they call "Year Round Schooling" This means a different school calendar than the traditional one. They still attend school the same number of days per year, but summer holidays are only for the month of July, then back to school before they forget everything learned last June. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter holidays are all about 3 weeks each giving the students longer breaks throughout the year

The other picture is of her graduation from kindergarten. I never got to go to kindergarten but I am sure the kids that did, didn't get a cap and gown for their graduation picture, if they even got a grad picture.

Edgar Farms Open House

This weekend we hosted our open house at the farm. On Saturday we hosted both Innisfail Growers Customer Appreciation Day and Country Drive.ca guests to our farm. On Sunday we hosted Country Drive guests. We set out an sample table so you could taste some of our products we grow on our farm. We had our Asparagus relish with cream cheese on a cracker, Sugar Snap peas that to eat you just pop in your mouth pod and all, Beef jerky from our butcher who just won the best in Alberta award for his beef jerky, Asparagus pickles, and our newest product, an Asparagus dip similar to guacamole but much better.
We had the petting zoo for the children and the adults alike. One nice lady from Calgary told me she got to pet a frog and a chicken in the same day, something you can't do in the city. We had free kittens to give away. There was the same bale fort that we had in the spring as well as the Edgar Farms temporary tattoos for the kids and grandma's alike. Tours to the bagging shed were available to show people how we package and chill our peas. On Saturday we had tours to the field with everyone in their vehicles following one of our quads to the asparagus field for a look at the fern and then off to pea field to pick some peas. On Saturday evening we had 4 tenths of an inch of rain so on Sunday we set up a hay ride behind the tractor and did the same tour.

Picking Garden Peas in the heat

We are picking peas full speed these days as with the hot weather they are coming on too fast. Here is a picture of 2 of our pea team picking team sitting under their umbrellas to keep out of the hot sun. We have had these umbrellas for many years and some years we seldom use them, but this year they are getting lots of use. We usually start picking at 8 am but then we started picking earlier at 7am because of the heat. We are now starting at 6am just to take advantage of the cool temperatures. We also find that peas picked at a lower temperature are sweeter. This heat is also hurting the upcoming crop, a couple weeks from now because there will be fewer pods with less peas in them.

Pictured above is Cheri and Helen. Cheri is attending university in the winter months and trying to make and save money in the summer months. She has been working extremely hard for us this year working all the hours she can get so she can buy another text book or reduce her student loan. Helen besides working hard picking peas also works the farmers market for Innisfail Growers selling our peas. Her daughter Sam also works with her at the farmers market.

Baling Hay

Today we were baling hay. It was +30 degrees today so I was lucky to be able to be in a air conditioned cab while I baled hay. At about 6 this evening Elna brought the camera down to the field and we took some pictures using the tripod and the self timer. The picture to the left is one of the ones we took. It sure was nice to get back in the cool tractor after being outside.

The hay crop yield was not that great, but the quality was very good as it was nice fine short hay with no rain on it, and baled totally dry. Some years we have lots of hay, but it always gets rained on before we get it up and some times we have to put it up a bit damp as it will get rained on again if we don't.

Asparagus Staff Appreciation Evening

Last Saturday evening we had our staff appreciation evening. With over 40 people on the payroll this was a big evening. Not all of our staff and spouses were able to attend but with almost ideal weather conditions it turned out to be a very nice evening for both us and our staff.

Pictured is Keri putting on BBQ sauce on the steaks and Randy holding up a cooked steak.

We borrowed 4 extra picnic tables from John at the Bowden Sun Maze, and along with our own tables everyone had room to sit and enjoy the evening.