Canadian girl out and aboot

By Monday, I was starting to get a little stir crazy. The weather in Edmonton had been frightful and we had had multiple storms and one storm warning. When there's a storm warning here, it's best to stay in because it might be a crazy storm or a tornado.

So by Monday, I was getting a little down, mostly due to the weather. I drove out to do an interview only to find that my interview subject was in the hospital and the family had forgotten to tell me. It wasn't a far drive, so it wasn't any skin off my teeth. I just hopped back in my car and came back home.

To get out of my house, I decided to go see "Julie and Julia", which I found very inspirational and uplifting. As one of the reviewers wrote, "It's nice to see a movie that isn't about a woman chasing a man or having a baby." The movie is really about the creative lives of two real-life women. And Julia Child had a fascinating life!

Following this, I went out for dinner and then went to my belly dance class. I'm in level 2 now, and it was a great decision to move up. The moves are more challenging, but I can definitely do them.

Tuesday was chef's tour day! I had to get up at an infernal time (6:00) to get ready and drive across town to meet the bus. The bus contained the organizers, about 38 chefs, the foodwriter from the Edmonton Journal, and yours truly. Our first stop was at Happy Acres, a U pick operation near Spruce Grove. The owner had the world's cutest miniature horse (I took LOTS of pictures). The horse acted more like a dog and followed us around. We took a tour of the garden and she fed the chefs ratatouille and crepes, coffee and mulled cider. From there, we drove to Sundog Organics, where we got another garden tour and a talk about organic farming. From Sundog we drove to Riverbend Farms, which is a huge operation. We took a wagon ride around the farm and then had a lunch featuring produce from a number of the farms. It was insane! I took pictures of the food, but the highlight for me was a carrot pie that tasted like pumpkin pie.

Following this and a talk with various other farmers, we drove to Prairie Gardens, where we toured the farm, walked through a corn maze and shot off a pumpkin cannon. (No word of a lie). All in all, it was a fantastic day and I learned a lot about some of the local farms in the area and some of the needs of chef. I came home incredibly exhausted. I lay on the couch and watched "Hannah and her sisters", which I absolutely loved. Then I went to bed early. I've been having incredibly vivid dreams and last night's included a bear, a mountain, skis and blueberries. Yikes.

Was great, but damn exhausting. I spent one day driving out to High Prairie, to visit an apiary. Rachel and I were surrounded by bees as I conducted the interview. She married into the family and has decided to expand and change the family business by creating honey related body care products for sale. I have some of her lavender honey balm and it's really great. It's in a solid stick so I can easily spread it on my skin.

The following day, I took off for Peace River. On the way to Peace River, I stopped in at a farm to do a story about leaf cutter bees. These bees are necessary for alfalfa pollination. The bees basically make little nests out of leaves and lay their larvae in there as part of their life cycle. Then they fly about and pollinate the alfalfa and lay more larvae. They are smaller than honey bees and don't produce any honey. It was pretty interesting. Then I had to stay in Peace River for several hours before I had my second interview of the day. This interview was with a young couple who have decided to convert their farm into a tree farm. They plant trees as people buy carbon offsets. They've done the work and have a great business plan and a lot of connections to promote their business. It's a neat succession plan.

Since I had to interview them in the evening, this meant that I got back to GP very late at night. Fortunately, my interview was cancelled, so I had a day off and watched Harry Potter 6 and wrote some stories for work.

I then got to eat at the new Chinese food place in GP. They had real Chinese food. Let me repeat- REAL CHINESE FOOD. And dim sum! It was amazing! I would have cried with joy if it had opened while I was living there.

I spent the last three days staying with family friends, which meant I got to cuddle their Yorkshire terrier and spend a lot of time catching up. Laura, the female half of the couple, is a professional artist and she teaches at the college in GP. She is doing a very cool art project about bringing green back to the parking lot. She has created greenhouses in four cars which are placed on a lot in GP. The cars are filled with dirt and native species of plants. It's really quite amazing, and people's reactions to the cars was fun to watch.

On Thursday, I drove back to Edmonton. I was happy to arrive home, but had a ton of work to catch up on when I got back. I'm still shovelling myself out from the pile of work and chores.

I returned from Rocky Mountain House yesterday and am on my way to Grande Prairie later today. I'm a little stressed out. I'm waiting for a courier and he/she hasn't arrived yet. I also had to just do a lot of planning to organize my trip to the Peace. I'll be visiting a lot of farms. Friends have yet to be scheduled, but I am staying with 2 of them, and already have plans to see a few more tomorrow.

I'm also attending the Grand Opening of the new library, and am very excited to see the new building and visit with a lot of my writing/library/arts related friends. I think it'll be a good trip. I bet that Grande Prairie will have changed a lot in the year and some since I left.

On Saturday, I drove out to Barrhead to attend an Alberta Organic Producers Association meeting. This actually turned out to be a bit of a bust, writing wise, as I didn't really turn up any stories. I did have a good time visiting with many people and learned a few things. I also ate an amazing homemade dinner bun that practically made me cry.

Later than afternoon, I toured an oat mill. Can-Oat milling has three operations in Western Canada and mills about 30,000 to 40,000 tonnes in Barrhead each year. For people safety, and food safety reasons, I was unable to bring my camera or any other electronic devices inside the mill. I was also not allowed to take my pen or notebook in. It was at this point that I gave up the idea of writing a story, and just succumbed to the idea of being on a tour. They divided us into groups of five for the tour. We had to wear lab coats, closed shoes, hairnets, safety goggles, ear plugs and hard hats. We climbed to the top of a five story area where we saw all the tools for removing the hulls from oats. The machines were loud and noisy, and the whole place was quite hot. The tools take the hull off the oats, break the pieces open, steam them and then eventually turn them into flakes. Oats and barley are much harder to rip apart than wheat, due to the thick hull. All in all, it was pretty interesting, but pretty much a bust from a writing perspective.

On Thursday night, I had to go to a dinner celebrating Women in Agriculture. My boss thought it would be an excellent networking opportunity for me, and it was within walking distance so I trundled over there. It turns out that the event was hosted by an agricultural women's fraternity at the University of Alberta. The fraternity, which is known as Ceres, is a North American fraternity for women with agricultural backgrounds. Who knew? I'm surprised by the number of fraternities and sororities at the University of Alberta. I've never had a great deal of interaction with these types of organizations before and they're quite foreign to me.

The dinner was quite nice, and it was pleasant to be in a room full of young women involved in agriculture. I did make some contacts and got to spend time talking to a few people I'd already met.

First things first- I finally had a dream about farming. I think it was because I was reading a book about bees and their impact on agriculture. Anyway, I had a dream and there was a tractor involved. I was so horrified by my dream that I woke myself up and stayed away for over an hour.


Last night I went to see the Joni Mitchell ballet The Fiddle and the Drum at the Jubilee Auditorium with my friend Mari. The first version of this was a shorter ballet, but the longer, full-length work features four new pieces. It's a really gorgeous ballet and features modern dance, lots of lifts, a video installation, and a non-traditional, non-classical ballet. The video screen and backdrop were excellently used, and the costumes featured a lot of green, and wispy outfits. Joni had a great deal to do with the performance, and the result was a ballet which encompassed hip hop and African dance, as well as some of Joni's politics about the global environment and politics. THe ballet didn't feature a lot of her famous songs- just "Big Yellow Taxi", "Woodstock" and "Charlie Angel." The dances focussed on many of her lesser known songs, which I think was actually a wise choice. Anyway, it's a great show and I'd recommend it, but only if you go into the show expecting a very non-traditional ballet.

Yesterday I drove out to Red Deer for a Bison Producers meeting. I admit to being completely fascinated with the bison industry. It's such a niche market,and such an interesting heritage animal. One of the women involved with the administrative centre said, "If you're a rancher, you want to be different. If you're a bison rancher, you want to be REALLY different."

I believe this is 100% true. I sat through a number of presentations including one about food safety and security, which involved discussions about knowing and tracing all animals in case of a disease outbreak. I also learned that needle breakage is a major concern in the meat industry. Basically, if you break off a needle in an animal (which happens every once in a while), you have to fill out a bunch of reports to ensure that that needle does not get into the food system. If it gets into an order that is going to another country (like Japan), this could be catastrophic and could shut down trade.

Following this presentation, I sat through another on bison as conservation animals. This should have been a fascinating presentation as it was led by a guy who was a biologist on musk ox and bison in the North West Territories. Sadly, it wasn't. I did learn that there are two cattle for every person in Alberta. Huh. There's also a movement to bring bison back to the plains, but I don't think that this will really happen as there are just too many other groups who want to use land, and I can't picture herds of wild bison just running across prairies filled with oil workers etc.

I sat through presentation on building websites to market your bison products, and marketing lessons from the Bison industry, both of which made me really excited.

The more I learn, the more I don't believe that the whole eat local campaign is completely sustainable. I definitely believe in supporting local industry, and in trying to buy local. But the infrastructure of food systems is already too dependent on imports and exports and it's way too integrated into the global system. Sure, eat local, try to support industry and keep the money in your community, but don't ever expect that international trade is going to disappear any time soon. For example, the cattle and bison industry in Alberta was hit hard when the international borders closed in 2003, due to the BSE outbreak. Many bison producers got out of the industry because they just couldn't exist without the US market. This all happened even though there was not a single case of BSE found in bison, and people aren't even sure if bison can contact the disease. Alberta, as a province, is a net producer, which means the province produces more than it can consume. People sell local, but they also depend on exports to make their living. So yeah, local food is super important, but I don't think it will solve all the problems.

Lacombe's city slogan is "Alberta's sweet spot". I find this slogan rather disturbing because it sounds sexual to me. Then again, I'm a dirty pervert.

Yesterday I drove out to Lacombe to visit the Crop Research Station. That turned out to be pretty interesting. I had a good interview with a crop scientist who helped breed a new strain of malt barley. I learned all about plant cross-breeding, and how you create new genetic species. After this, the scientist took me around the research station to show me various work stations, including the area where the crops are processed, where seeds are stored and where they keep the cross-breeds. I also learned about the new shocu project. Shocu is a type of malted liquor that is brewed for the Japanese. Alberta Agriculture is currently working with a Japanese brewing company to make and market this liquor, which is pretty interesting.

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After my tour, I checked into my hotel. I would not recommend the Lacombe Country Club Inn. The room was clean and inexpensive, but there was a fly buzzing around and the front room of the hotel reeked like bad cheap cologne. It took a long time for my room to heat up, which was frustrating. But I sat in my hotel room, and read and watched tv and called [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] on my cell and talked to her for a while.

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This morning, I got up fairly early and drove to the downtown for breakfast at the Hidden Bistro, which was pretty cute. The town of Lacombe has a population of about 11,000 and reminded me a lot of Moose Jaw. The downtown has been redone and there are a lot of cute little stores. Their cultural complex is a bit odd; it's called the Lacombe Memorial Centre and I actually thought that it was a funeral home the first time I drove by.

The meeting was in the Memorial Centre and I sat through a bunch of lectures on barley and canola. At one point, I ducked out to take a break and refresh my mind and energy. I was done by about 3:00 and drove back this afternoon to snowy Edmonton. I saw a few people skidding on the way home, and was happy that I had put the winter tires on my vehicle.

I got back from Stettler at about 5:30 last night. Staying in a hotel was kind of nice. I had a leisurely drive down on Wednesday and checked into my motel. I had supper in a restaurant and then wandered around downtown. Stettler's nickname is "The Heart of Alberta" because it is in Central Alberta. It's obviously got an oil and gas industry and I saw a lot of big trucks.

The sheep seminar was interesting. It was held in a big rec complex with a library, arena, and swimming pool. About 98 people attended the seminar. I ended up sitting next to a nice couple, who generously answered any questions I had. We sat through a variety of seminars, one about a new food safety program, and another about coyote attacks. I learned the various ways that coyotes attack different animals, which I found completely interesting.

There was one complete wingnut at the sessions. In one lecture, he commented on how the Canadian
N*gg*rs were obviously bringing money down south. There was an audible gasp from the audience. In another session, he commented on his fear that bits of Chinese tapeworm would infect Chinese dogfood and mutate on Canadian shores. I had a hard time not looking horrified and shook my head every time he opened his mouth. Fortunately, I was not alone in my feelings, and I could share sympathetic glances with others in the room.


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A few days ago, I watched "Control", the bio-pic about Joy Division. I thought it was a great bio-pic and it's got me interested in Joy Division. Yeah, I missed out on them, but at least I'm on the bandwagon now.

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My family and family friends are attending the huge gala for Bikes for humanity in Saskatoon. I thought about going, but it's a long drive and costs me a lot of time and money to go. I'm trying to find a few fun things to do this weekend, which is good. I think it may be a peaceful recharging weekend, which I welcome.

Yesterday I drove out to Red Deer to attend a Lead the Farm conference, which was a one day session for young farmers between the ages of 18-30. The average age of a Canadian farmer is about 54, so there's a real shortage of opportunities for young people to network and meet each other. This group was a preliminary conference to the Rock the Farm conference, which is a three day conference for young farmers. At that conference, participants will learn about financing their business and farm succession. The organization which leads the conference, Future Agriculture Business Builders, was started about 4 years ago to give younger farmers a chance to learn and connect with like-minded individuals. One participant came from Saskatchewan. He had joined the Future Agriculture Business Builders facebook group and decided to come to the conference to meet other young farmers.

I haven't been to Red Deer in years and was surprised at the number of restaurants on the main drag. The restaurants didn't specialize in one type of food either; there was a Pho restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, a Japanese restaurant and a Mexican restaurant, which seemed unusual for a city of about 75,000.

The day was a lot of fun. I got to meet a lot of interesting young agricultural professionals. Some of them weren't working directly on the farm, but were involved with agricultural businesses, like AdFarm, a marketing companies which deals specifically with agricultural businesses. There were a couple of guys from up near Grande Prairie, and I had a good time chatting with them. Most of the people in attendance were educated, and had travelled. At one point, the speaker asked how many people had been to Australia and about half of the 30 people in attendance were able to say that they'd been there.

The conference featured a speaker by the name of Dave Howlett. Howlett gives lectures on networking, building a reputation, and knocking down barriers in business. He was a very charismatic and informative speaker, and I stayed for the entire afternoon, as I was enjoying myself and was learning a lot of useful information.

As I said to some of the women in attendance, it was very nice to attend a farm event with people my own age. :)