Canadian girl out and aboot

I spent last Thursday and Friday in Calgary at the Alberta Farm Writers Association conference. First off, I have to congratulate myself for my success in driving around Calgary. I still don't know the city that well, and in my mind, it is a big mess of urban sprawl. But I was able to drive around and only got lost once!

On Thursday, I drove myself to the hotel to meet up with the other farm writers. There were about 40 of us on the bus, and we took off the Cattleland, a feed yard with about 25,000 cattle. It had rained and snowed a lot, so the feedlot was kind of gross looking and the cattle were walking around in mud. They do a lot of fairly interesting experiments with private companies at Cattleland and we drove around the feedlot on a bus while the owner talked to us about what he does in his operation. It started to rain a bit during this portion, but we were warm and dry. From there, we went to Fieldstone fruit winery where we sampled 4 fruit wines and learned about fruit wine making. Apparently, you have to use 75% Alberta grown fruit in Alberta fruit wineries. This is to protect the Alberta industry and ensure that people are making Alberta made products. Some of the fruit wines were quite delicious. From there, we went to the Strathmore station, which was an old railway station converted to a restaurant. The food there was pretty great and the ambience was fun.

After that, we went to SemBios Systems, which is a biotech firm that is working on genetically modified organisms. They are making safflower plants that can produce insulin. This was a very scientific part of the tour and some of the info went over my head. We did get to look at lots of safflower cultures and bits of plants. We also toured their sister company, Botaneco, which is completely natural. This company extracts safflower oil for cosmetics and the product can be found in Burt's Bees and Spectrogel.

After this, we went back to the hotel for the banquet and got to listen to a speech and have a question and answer session with Ag Minister Jack Hayden. This was pretty interesting, and he's definitely a better speaker than the previous ag minister. The highlight of our meal was definitely the Vodka Caesar soup, which had a great tomatoey taste and was like a Caesar but in soup form. I would definitely have that again.

The whole day was a great opportunity for me to talk to other ag writers, network, meet new people and learn a whole lot of info. This year I will be going to my first Calgary Stampede, and I now know a lot of people on the ag media organizing committee. Networking with others really made this conference valuable for me. I'll write more about the second day of the conference in a bit.

It seems that I am going to multiple workshops in May. This weekend was Edmonton media camp. It was the first one ever and was attended by about 180 people. The event was free and was held at the Shaw conference centre downtown. My friend Darrell drove down from Grande Prairie, so I got a chance to chat and hang out with him, which was cool.

The workshop was attended by numerous journalists, PR people, communications people, bloggers and all sorts of new media people. It started off with a panel discussion, then we jumped into the "unconference." I've never been to an "unconference" before, and think that the format could work well for other subjects. What happens is that people pitch their topics and write them down on big sheets of paper. Then these pitches are compiled into groups. So then you pick a topic that is of interest to you and go discuss it. I sat in on sessions about "creating a local food movement website", "how can we convince executives to use social media to market", and one on "change and new media." All interesting stuff. I met a lot of people and thought it was a good opportunity for media people and journalists and PR people to get together and learn from each other. We were encouraged to livetweet the event, so I did. All in all, it was a good event.

I spent most of last week being sick with a bad cold, which sucked. This is my first cold of 2010, and it's still going away. I wasn't able to go to dance class on Friday last week, but I should be able to go again tonight.

I also spent part of last week at the Alberta Agricultural Economists Association conference, which was highly academic.

In other good news, I won a spot at a beekeeping workshop! So I'll be spending part of next weekend learning how to take care of bees.

This Saturday, I went to the Edmonton Permaculture convergence, which was hosted at a local community hall. The day was supposed to give participants a taste of permaculture and only cost $35. I've heard of permaculture due to some of my food security courses and wanted to learn more.

Here's a brief definition Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that mimic the relationships found in natural ecologies. It was developed by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren and their associates during the 1970s in a series of publications.
The intent is that, by rapidly training individuals in a core set of design principles, those individuals can design their own environments and build increasingly self-sufficient human settlements — ones that reduce society's reliance on industrial systems of production and distribution that Mollison identified as fundamentally and systematically destroying Earth's ecosystems.

I am mainly interested in the food security components of the concept. I was expecting about 30 people to be in attendance, but I walked into a room of about 120 people! I ended up sitting at a table with the keynote speaker, who is known as The Urban Farmer . He conducts workshops on how to grow food in your backyard, and also hosts tours to Cuba to learn more about organic agriculture or permaculture in the country. I found out that there is funding available to handle the costs of one of these tours! I also talked to a landscape naturalizer, a dance artist who was creating a memorial garden, and lots of other interesting people. The sheer number of people was simply overwhelming, as I wasn't prepared for it, so I spent a lot of time listening to the other people around me.

There were sessions on backyard chickens, keeping and maintaining bees, food projects and gardening in schools, picking fruit trees for urban backyards and creating eco-sustainable communities. All in all, it was a very informative day.

I should also mention that there was a potluck and everyone had to bring a food item, clearly labelled with ingredients. As a nut allergic person, I can't say how much I appreciated this! I'm going to ask for this at any event that I organize. Anyway, the food was phenomenal. I had some cold soba sesame noodles and spent part of yesterday looking for the recipe so I can duplicate it at home.

I've been feeling a little overwhelmed and here's why-

1. I've been working and driving a lot since the end of January. This is the busy season for ag conferences and so I've been on the go a lot. In the past 2 weeks, I have been to Leduc 3 times, Red Deer, and to a variety of meetings in Edmonton. Next week I'm in Morinville and Red Deer. The driving and the hours of listening do take their toll. However, I'm learning a great deal and it's hard not to get excited about my work and some of the things I do. Last week, I learned about the possibility of pennycress for biofuel. This plant is a weed, but produces better oil than canola, making it immune to the food vs fuel debate. The plant also has phytoremediative characteristics and can take metal out of soils. It's already been proposed as a growing project for Detroit. Actually, Detroit itself is very interesting right now. The destruction of the auto industry in the city has resulted in many opportunities for growth in urban agriculture. I'm going to keep my eyes and ears to the ground on this one.

Similarly, the urban sprawl in Calgary has also resulted in a variety of opportunities. I met a producer who is in charge of helping with the organization of a new farmers' market for Calgary- the Kingsland market. I'm going to do a story or two about it and am very excited about the project. So work is good, even though it's crazy busy.

2. My parents are in China. They flew there on March 16. My dad took a netbook with him, but I didn't hear from them for a few days, which made me a tad worried, mostly because my mom had a cold and I wanted to know that she was able to get into the country without getting quarantined. I wasn't sure if Dad could get through because of the Great Firewall situation. However, he managed to email from his gmail and he is getting emails from my hotmail, although he is unable to open my friend's Picasa photo albums. Parents are having a lovely time in China. However, it's weird to have so much limited contact with the parentals. I'll confess- I talk to the parentals almost every day. This is partly because they are my good friends and partly for security reasons. Since I live alone and travel all around the province by myself, it's good for at least one person to know where I am. When I go on long road trips, I call my mom when I am leaving and when I get back, so that she knows I am safe. I also email my parents frequently and send them links to interesting articles, youtube clips, etc. I feel like a bit of a baby because their absence definitely has an impact on me.


3. My computer has still not been fixed. It's with another tech and hopefully the problem should be resolved, but it does give me more challenges for working and I have a few deadlines that I need to meet. I might end up spending some time at an Internet cafe to get all these things done.

4. I need to sort everything out for my trip to Toronto, figure out what to where etc. This is a very cool opportunity, but it's basically a version of "So you think you're a poet" and I want to give a great performance and knock the judges' socks off.

5. One of my checks was extremely late. I was fretting a bit because I could really use that cash when I'm travelling to Toronto and have some expenses related to my dance recital and dance classes. Fortunately, it arrived and things will be good.

6. I have to acculturize Fergus to Henry and Mari. We went over there last week, and the two dogs were not best friends. Fergus is a very timid guy and Henry is extremely friendly. He jumped all over Fergus and Fergus growled, but as time went on, they sort of ignored each other and Fergus found some comfy places to sleep and hang out. I know that Mari will take very good care of Fergus and I hope that he does not cry too much when I leave him. He's a bit of a suck and a rather timid little guy, but I'm sure it will be fine.

Just writing this all out made me feel better. I'm also going to have a peaceful day alone, do some work, walk the dog, watch some DVDs, and go to the market. Tomorrow I teach my teen writing group and then I'm going to see Shanghai Express, which I've been trying to see for years. This is the movie that defined the concept of "dragon lady" and made Anna May Wong into a star.

I haven't updated because I have either (a) had company or (b) been company. A came into town for work earlier than planned, so he was able to attend a Pecha Kucha night with me. Pecha Kucha is a Japanese word meaning "chit chat" and it's a global movement that allows for informative presentations of about 6 minutes each. These presentations bring young global creatives together. Mari was doing a presentation on Winterlight at this one, so we went to sit in the balcony to watch and offer moral support. This Pecha Kucha was a little uneven, but still rather interesting. A lot of bloggers said that it was the weakest Pecha Kucha that Edmonton has ever had, but I still thought it was pretty interesting and I'd go to another one.

Other highlights of our time in Edmonton- taking A to Barb and Ernie's, where they make pancakes the size of dinner plates and bake the bacon in them. (Good if you're into that sort of thing)

We then drove to Calgary. Around Red Deer, we heard a radio ad for I need a wife , a personal assistant service for people living in the Red Deer region. This is one of the most sexist, stereotypical ads that I have ever heard in my life and I was dumbfounded. We checked out the website and found out it is legit!!!

A few other random highlights- I drove in Calgary! I was nervous driving into town, but this is partly because my memories of Calgary were shaped by my childhood. I went to Calgary a lot as a kid, and the highway always seemed really fast and intense. So I was a bit nervous, but since I've been driving around Edmonton for a year and a half by myself, it wasn't that scary, especially since I had a good navigator. The day after that, we even drove to the Calgary Farmers' market, which reminded me of a cross between Granville island and the Old Strathcona market in Edmonton.

So I spent New Year's at my friend Mari's. We had grand plans to get to several parties but we never got there in time. Mari had received a creme brulee set from her bf's mom, so she ended up making us creme brulee. It was my first time having creme brulee. I'm not sure how that happened. The creme brulee set even came with a little blow torch so Mari's bf torched the creme brulee, while her roommate Stephanie stood by with the fire extinguisher. For those of you playing along at home, all these events actually went down at Todd Babiak's since Mari and Stephanie are housesitting for him while he is in France. In hopes of embarrassing him, I scoured Todd's bookcases looking for shameful items, but he doesn't seem to have any. He must hide them.

During this time, I tried bourbon, discovered that I don't like it and drank some Vampire wine instead. I'd seen the Vampire wine in the offsale here and was eager to try it. It's actually not bad. However, I don't think I could actually take it anywhere, as then I'd be the crazy goth girl who showed up with the vampire wine.

At midnight, I kissed Henry, Mari's Boston terrier. Then Mari and her bf went to the Artery to meet up with more peeps, and I went home to sleep.

The next day, I did a lot of nothing and watched a lot of Glee on DVD. Love! On Saturday, I did a bunch of errands then went down to the Black dog bar to see a free set done by a guy I know named Doug Hoyer . I met Doug at a bbq at my friend's and we always chat when we run into each other. His music is pretty cool; he's got great lyrics and wonderful melodies and some really catchy songs. I actually think his music could become quite popular if it fell into the right hands. Anyway, I met up with a few more people and then Doug and I chatted in between sets and at one point, he gave me a copy of a chapbook written by a few local poets/musicians.

On Jan 3rd, I went for my first ski this year, and skied around Hawrelak park. My goal is to ski all 9 of Edmonton's parks this year. I'm up to 3 so far. Then I had a slack afternoon and went for supper with [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com], who has just moved to Alberta.

My week is going to pick up in a big way by tomorrow. Today is just another working from home day, but tomorrow I head out to a meeting of the Wild Rose Agricultural Producers (NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH THE Wild Rose Alliance political party of conservatives, shudder.). The Wild Rose Agricultural Producers are a group of Alberta farmers who get together to discuss provincial issues affecting farmers. It should be a good meeting, and it's at the Fantasyland hotel in the West Edmonton Mall. I've been to a few conferences there; they have a good conference rate and decent food.

Then I'm going to the opening of the Winterlight festival . I've got a few friends involved with the festival and Mari is the festival blogger and social media coordinator. So that should be cool.

I made a very good choice when picking my apartment. The amount of natural light that comes in my main room is lovely. It really makes a HUGE difference in the winter. When I move, I'm definitely going to have to pick another place with big windows.

I've been busy this week, which definitely helps with the winter blahs. On Wednesday, I went to the launch for a cookbook. Two local artists and a local chef wrote a cookbook celebrating the products of local producers. You can see the cookbook here . The launch party was a blast! There were producers, hipsters, media types, artists and chefs in attendance. I missed most of the food (as I arrived late), but was still able to chat with a variety of lovely people, including people who were fans of Alberta Farmer , which pays me the money I need to eat.

On Thursday, I did a variety of things around the house, then went to a cool event called There's a heifer in your tank . This event is put on by Animal Science 200 students at the University of Alberta. They used to do skits, but now they made youtube videos answering questions about agriculture, like "why is ham pink while pork chops are white?" and "what is colostrum?"

It was a hilarious event, well attended by over 200 people. The students were incredibly enthusiastic and happy and I had a good time.

I finished revising a short story that I've been working on and did a bit of work on Friday before going over to my friend Caitlin's. I've been very social this week and I think it makes a difference in combatting the winter blahs. Fortunately, I don't have to travel anywhere for work until December 10, and I am over the moon about this. I've been working A LOT and need some downtime.

This week's schedule has been- work, watch movies, etc. Really that's about it. I did two days of work related writing, and then spent a day at the alpaca conference at Farm Fair. I attended some really in depth presentations about birthing alpacas and ended up looking at pictures of alpaca placenta and afterbirth. I'm not joking.

My publishers were in town to release a new book of poetry and so I got a chance to chat with them and meet author Hiromi Goto , whose work I have long admired.

In my exhausted stupor, I watched the Rolling Stone documentary "Shine a light."

This weekend I attended two films at the Global Visions international film festival. This documentary film festival is the longest running documentary film fest in Canada! I saw "Hair India" which about the hair trade in India. Pilgrims travel to temples to have their heads shaved, then the temples sell the hair to international agencies. Working class women go through the hair before it is shipped to international centres, like Rome, to be processed into hair extensions. In the film, an Indian woman in Mumbai had her hair treated and got extensions done. It's a really weird look at culture, hair and social class. Prior to this film, we watched a short film called "Namrata". This film was based on the life of the woman who was the inspiration for Deepa Mehta's "Heaven and Earth." I was very struck by this film.

Today I saw "Transit Dubai", which is about the transitory nature and social classes in Dubai. I've had many friends visit the city and one of my friends is working there now. I thought this film really showed some of the class structure and problems with the city.

I also got a chance to go for brunch with some friends. We just got a Cora's in Edmonton. Cora's is a chain started in Quebec. It has since slowly been spreading across Canada. They serve breakfast food with lots of fresh fruit. We had to wait quite a while to get in, but it was worth it.

I've been really busy, but with good stuff. On Thursday, I drove out to a myotonic goat farm. It took me a long time to find it, as I got lost on the way there. However, I finally got there and got to play with the goats. The owner had about 100 goats on site. She normally has about 70 goats but she was boarding some for her uncle. She had pygmy dwarf and dairy goats as well as the myotonic. Myotonic goats are pretty rare. They originated in Tennessee and are also known as Fainting Goats or Tennessee fainters. When the goats are startled, their muscles stiffen up and they tend to fall over. The condition lasts for about 10 seconds.

We didn't make any of them fall over, but I took lots of pictures of them, and learned about them. Apparently they were used for meat and because they are friendly and easy to raise.

If you want to watch them faint, you can watch this video here . It's quite funny.

That evening, I decided to attend a Lit fest event. Dr. Gabor Mate is a doctor who combines psychotherapy into his medical practice. He is currently the resident doctor in the Downtown East side, where he works to give medical care to addicts. This is Canada's poorest area, where there is a lot of homelessness and drug abuse.
I had yet to pick up my volunteer pass for lit fest, so I decided just to go and take my chances on a ticket. It turned out that there was actually a huge lineup to see Dr. Mate, and I stood in line, taking my chances. I started talking to the woman behind me, who was a Cree woman and a psychiatric nurse. We got into a fairly interesting discussion and I could tell that she was a pretty cool lady. She was at the event with her 16-year-old daughter. We weren't sure if we could get it, but then a man came and offered us 3 free tickets to go inside. We considered it fate and took the tickets and decided to sit together and kept on chatting.

The crowd that came to see Dr. Mate was so big that they had to give people a refund for their tickets and turn them away, with the promise of another scheduled event. Dr. Mate came out and read to the packed auditorium. He read from his book and then we watched a film about Vancouver's supervised injection site. The film had previously been on television, but I hadn't seen it. After that, Dr. Mate came out and we were allowed to ask him questions. Most of the questions were pretty interesting and the audience discussion was enlightening. Dr. Mate's theory is that anyone who has any sort of addiction is acting in response to hurt or trauma in their lives. He said that every single addicted woman that he has ever treated in the Downtown East Side had been sexually abused at some point.
Anyway, it was an enlightening evening and I recommend seeing Dr. Mate if he comes to your city.

Today I drove two hours to the north east area of the province. I had never been up to that area, and it was a lovely day. It was about 27 C and sunny and the leaves were starting to turn red, yellow and orange.

I drove up to visit the En Sante Winery . I had talked to the Chrapko family a few times and just managed to get out to their place today. The Chrapkos have been long time organic farmers. In fact, they started farming organically back in the 1970s and were awarded a provincial award for Farm Family of the year back in 1993. Sadly, Victor Chrapko, the patriarch, was killed back in 2008. He was delivering a load of organic hay to someone in central Alberta and his truck was hit by another truck.
Victor's death represented a huge loss to the organic community in Alberta. There has been talk of nominating him for the Agricultural Hall of Fame.

Since I had never written about him before, I really wanted to make sure that my story encompassed some details about his life and legacy. Apparently, the family started growing fruit trees back in the 1990s. They had excess fruit and wanted to use it for wine and started experimenting with recipes. However, there was no legislation for people to have wineries in Alberta, so Vic started with the government to bring about the legislation to make that happen. By 2006, he and his family were selling wine.

The Chrapkos were the first to have an orchard in north eastern Alberta and they tested and grew many varieties and tried a lot of new apple varieties. (I liked this part) They also worked with the horticulture department at the University of Saskatchewan to test new fruit varieties to see what grew well on the prairies.

They now have 8 varieties of wine. including an organic apple wine called Adam's Apple that I just love. I've also tried the Calypso rhubarb wine (tasty) and Raspberry delight. I haven't tried the saskatoon or the cranberry wine, and didn't like the alfalfa wine which is called "Green Envy."


Anyway, it's a great story and I had a nice time talking with Vic's daughter, Xina. However, she did get a bit teary talking about her dad, so I said to her, "Don't worry, this is heavy stuff."

Her dad really made an impact in the organic and food and wine industries in Alberta and was also really active in his community. He campaigned against the development of a hazardous waste facility in his area, arguing that the hazardous waste could potentially seep into the prime agricultural land and water in his area. It turns out he was right. That same facility in now in another location, which is experiencing significant environmental damage.


After we talked, we walked around and Xina showed me how to pick an apple correctly. I didn't know there was a proper way to do it. You turn the bottom part of the blossom (bottom part of the apple) towards the sky and bend it off.

I learn something new every day ;)