River Cafe and off to the Airport

Our daughter Angela was home for the last few days. She and her husband Steve drove down to Edmonton where we picked her last Sunday.

She was to fly back home on Thursday evening when out of nowhere we had a violent spring snow storm. They closed the highway to the airport that evening so she had to reschedule her flight for Friday. We drove to Calgary Friday and saw her off just outside of the security doors. We hadn't even got back to the highway when she called on the cell phone to say her flight was canceled because the plane wouldn't be able to land in Fort McMurray. She then booked a flight on the next available plane on Sunday afternoon.

It was unfortunate she missed her flights as she missed both her baby doctor specialist appointment and the start of her pre-natal course. It will be another 2 weeks before she can reschedule her doctors appointment so she has to go back to her regular doctor for her checkup.

On the plus side we had time to go to River Cafe for lunch before going to the airport on Sunday. This is by far our favorite restaurant in Calgary. For anyone that hasn't been to River Cafe it's a great place that actually cooks your food not just reheating processed food like a lot of the places do. The service is great, the staff all enjoy your company and really make you feel welcome. It was the first time for Angie at River Cafe. She has travelled a lot all over the world in her 30 plus years but had never seen a waiter come and refold my cloth napkin when I went to the washroom. She commented on how great the food tasted, how clean and shinny the glasses were and all the other little things that they do. It's so nice that when you taste your food it actually has flavor, along with the excellent presentation and ambiance.

We then dropped Angie off at the airport and drove home. Once we got home Angie phoned from the Fort McMurray airport letting us know she arrived safely.

Learning how to make buns

Today was bun making day at our house. Grandma Huntly is definitely an expert at this and both of our daughters wanted to learn this art. At about 9:00 AM Grandma and showed up with all her ingredients to make buns. She has to have her own special four, vegetable oil. She did use our cookie sheets but she did comment that they weren't as good as hers (and not as old either).

Making buns is an all day affair, Shortly after arriving she started organizing her ingredients. Angie was the head note taker and took two pages of notes to share with her sister and mother.

One of the big challenges was getting the measurements of all the ingredients as Grandma doesn't measure, she just pours and mixes. During the day they had to stop Grandma and get her to measure each ingredient and then document it and make a real recipe.

After all this at at about 4:00 pm the first batch was ready and I had to be on hand for the taste testing. Of course they we just as good as always.

We had fresh buns for Angie's birthday supper along with all the other great food.

Getting Ready for Spring

With the warmer weather lately we have been able to work out side and get some maintenance done for spring. Several years ago I built a machine to drag across the hay fields to level out the humps and bumps caused by moles, a small rodent that lives in the fields. This machine has worked very well, but has become worn quite badly. Last Friday my nephew Kyle a journeyman welder was out to weld new plates on the bottom of this machine. Pictured here is Kyle in the middle of welding the plates on. Also while he was doing that outside I was in the shop working on welding on a hitch on our manure spreader.

Working the Fields

Today I was discing the field where some of our garden peas will be planted this year. I disced the field twice with the tractor used for our grain farming and then Elna was out in the afternoon with her seed drill planting peas.

Discing is not practice that we do on our grain farm. With the advances in seeding equipment we direct seed most all of our field crops. For the garden peas discing warms the soil and will help kill the weeds in the garden.

This is the second planting of the season as we planted on row last November 8 just to see if fall planting of peas would work. So far they look good but it is still too cold for them to germinate.

In the afternoon I harrowed the other field where our garden peas will be planted this year. This field can be quite wet some years, but this year it very dry meaning we are about a month earlier getting on the field compared to normal. Not good as we need moisture!!