skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Well after a full week of rain the sun finally came out for our Asparagus Festival. The yard was still muddy and the road to the field was soft but at least it wasn't raining. On Saturday we had lots of people show up and enjoy all the things to do. We had our petting zoo, a bale fort, an large sand box filled with dry peas a lots of toys. We had hand water pump duck races for adults and the kids. At the children's area there was story time, coloring, and they could even plant a bean to take home. In the adult education area you could look over a large grain combine, look taste, and feel different kinds of grain, hay, straw, and silage. You could even taste some malted barley that was ready to go to the brewery to be made into beer. They also had a lot of samples of good from the grocery store that were made with commodities made on the farm (for example" Smarties") We had the head chef Andrew and his wife Jen from River Cafe in Calgary cooking Asparagus on an open wood fire. We also had several different artisan booths selling every thing from wooden bowls, paintings, ceramics and even homemade perogies. You could watch the asparagus being sorted, bundled, and washed in the processing shed. The Bowden Sunmaze had a bale maze for the kids to play in. The wagon ride was a popular event and allowed everyone to go to the field, watch the asparagus being picked. You could also bend pick and eat a fresh asparagus spear right from the field.
Wow what a cold calving season!!!
I can never remember such a cold calving season in the last 36 years of doing this job. Even when we calved in January we would get the odd warm spell to let us catch our breath and catch up. This year it just doesn't seem to want to warm up.
We have been calving for about the last 2 weeks and have about 45 calves. We have 130 cows to calve so we still have a ways to go yet.
When the weather is cold we check our cows about every hour in the daytime and every 2 hours, at night. If it is warm we only have to get up once in the night at about 3:00 AM after checking them at 11:00 PM and then again at 6:00 AM. We have not had that luxury this year. All things considered everyone in our family still seems to be in good spirits even while running on very little sleep.
We have had very good luck with hardly any problems other than the odd calf that gets a chill and we have to them in our "hot box" to warm them up. This box is an home made box with a large hot air blower on the bottom to warm them up and dry them off and an infrared heater shinning down from the top to allow the calf to bask in the warm heat rays. An hour in the box and the little guys are warm as toast and ready to go back with their mothers.
The temperature and the wind chill have been so cold that we have had to put "ear muffs" on our little guys for the first few days or up till an week of age. If we don't these young calves just can't seem to be able to keep warm enough. Elna and Keri have made a lot of these ear muffs and we have been very pleased with how good they work.
We do have room in our heated barn for 4 cow calf pairs and for about 7 pairs in the unheated part of the barn. After that they then go to outside pens with open front sheds for the calves.
Tonight was Elna and my first look at the new Calgary Farmers Market building and our stall. After listening to all the naysayers about how bad every thing was about this new market we were really impressed with the whole thing. It has a lower ceiling than the old building which gives it a different look, but as with anything when you get to do things a second time you certainly improve on the old one.
Our booth is right across from a large coffee booth and is right around the corner from the food court. There will be at 2 main entrances and we are quite close to the south one. We still have three stalls as before but they are each a bit larger so we will more space in our new booth. We also have a small garage door on the back side of our booth that opens up onto a patio outside to display even more product when the weather is nice in the summer.
One of the concerns has been parking and access to the market. The manager of the market told us this evening that they have 644 paved parking spots on site and another 200 within a half of a block of the market. They also have secured summer parking for the vendors at a school parking lot right next door. The market as part of their development permit with the city has had to put in a new right turn lane on the street leaving the market and the city will also be changing one of the access roads to one way to improve traffic flow. Hopefully they know what they are doing but so far it sounds like they are the right track.
We see a lot of the old vendors are at this market with many of them expanding their stalls. Also we see some new vendors coming in adding more excitement to the market.
The plan is to open on February 4th if every thing falls into place. Presently there is some issues about getting some parts for the electrical service, but if that comes through every thing should open on time. If the parts are delayed there could be a delay in the opening date, but right now everyone has their fingers crossed. We all would like to be back at the market taking in money rather than spending money as we are now.
Today we are in Leduc doing a coaching session for Alberta Agriculture. We are doing one on one mentoring with individual entrepreneurs about Internet marketing and on farm sales.
Pictured is Pierre Roy from Edson in our first session of the day. We took this picture and posted this post to demonstrate how we do our blog.
This was quite a challenge for us as we had a wide range of people all the way from the ones who just got their first computer this Christmas all the way up to operations that are exporting product to China.
This was a great challenge for Elna and I and we always grow and learn from these experiences.
