Thursday, September 24, 2009

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.

Friday, September 4, 2009

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.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

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.