June 2009 Archives
The Canadian Agricultural Safety Association hosted 56 Progressive Agriculture Safety Days in 2009, mostly in the months of May and June. Remaining dates for 2009 are listed below. If your community would like to host a farm safety day in 2010, you have until July 15 to apply.
A CASA report says, "If you’ve been thinking of “doing something” to improve safety awareness and teach safety skills, this is the package for you."
"Once accepted, co-ordinators are trained and provided with resource materials and ideas for involving the entire community in a day that can truly make a difference to the safety of your kids," the report says.
The photo, taken at the Progressive Agriculture Safety Day in Dominion City, Manitoba on June 3, shows Neil Enns of Manitoba Farmers with Disabilities talking with students from Roseau Valley School.
Safety Days for summer 2009:
|
Lipton, SK |
Monday, June 29, 2009 |
Robin Anderson |
robin.anderson@rqhealth.ca |
|
Shawville, PQ |
Wednesday, July 01, 2009 |
Ivan Hale |
ihale@upa.qc.ca |
|
Brigden, ON |
Thursday, July 02, 2009 |
Tracey Cross |
tjcm@netrover.com |
|
Lawrencetown, NS |
Tuesday, July 07, 2009 |
Loretta Sherman |
kurtsherman@eastlink.ca |
|
Woodslee, ON |
Tuesday, July 14, 2009 |
Bonnie Popov |
bonnieblue2you@yahoo.com |
|
Ridgetown, ON |
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 |
Janet Richards |
janetphi@sympatico.ca |
|
Amherst, NS |
Saturday, August 01, 2009 |
Loretta Sherman |
kurtsherman@eastlink.ca |
|
Fairview, AB |
Friday, August 14, 2009 |
Gertrude Sorensen |
gertys@telusplanet.net |
|
Florenceville, NB |
Tuesday, September 15, 2009 |
Perley Brewer |
perley.brewer@ws-ts.nb.ca |
|
Port Elgin, ON |
Saturday, October 03, 2009 |
Darlene Noble |
safecomm@bmts.com |
|
Ayer's Cliffe, PQ |
Friday, October 23, 2009 |
Ivan Hale |
ihale@upa.qc.ca |
I was in Manitoba's Interlake last week, where at least half the acres will not get seeded this year because of too much rain. This is the third year in the past four years that have been like this for them. Many other parts of the Prairies have too little. Ron Settler, a regular contributor to Grainews, reports on the dry conditions on his farm near Lucky Lake, Sask.
He writes:
Our weather has been drier than usual. I took this photo (to the left) about June 1 and since then the slough has dried up completely. It's usually full year round. There were a couple of despondent ducks paddling around in the puddle the day before, but they didn't stay around for my picture the next day. A couple of blackbirds posed for me however.
We've been comparatively lucky for rain. We had a good snow cover over winter, half an inch of rain in May and almost an inch in June so far. The forecast is for another half to an inch today (Sunday, June 21) but it hasn't got here yet. We received three quarters to an inch June 6 to 8 and it was a great help for germination. There have been rumours of a bit of reseeding of some of the early crops however.
To the west of us it is not so good. Kindersley has received only seven tenths to date. I heard of some farmers from Eatonia (south of Kindersley) whose last good rain was July 2008, and they had Little snow over the winter as well. Some of the winter wheat they seeded last fall still has not germinated. In the Eston-Elrose area (40 to 80 miles west of us), I heard some of the farmers were hoping for another 10 days of dry weather then they could write the whole crop off and summerfallow everything for next year. The heat and drought has apparently damaged the crop enough already that good rains may not help much.
Even with the rain we have had we are still dry. There are areas of our yard where the grass has not really greened up yet. We also have gumbo cracks in our lawn up to one inch wide that have been there since last fall.
The Farmer's Prayer
Ron wrote this poem which, if you read his articles in Grainews, fits with his practice of buying older equipment and keeping it running with his own mechanical savvy.
My equipment is old, I shall not want.
It seeds my crop
And harvests it in the fall
And does all the jobs in between
Give me this day my daily breakdown
(But please make it small)
And forgive my haywire fixes
As I forgive those haywire fixes done before me.
Lead me not to dealer’s showrooms
And protect me from payments I cannot afford.
For this is my way of farming
It keeps me seeding and combining
And fixing and fixing
For ever and ever
Amen
Ted Meseyton, the much loved Grainews columnist, and I went for supper in his home town, Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, on Thursday. After supper, we went by his garden. It takes up a whole city lot at the end of a cul-de-sac on the north end of town. Plants are just getting going — isn't that the way this year — but there wasn't a weed in the place. It's a huge job.
While at his garden, Ted said, "Do you have time to see an important site?" I did. So he led me through the trees on the north side of his garden. Immediately on the other side was a crisscross of railway tracks. "Have you ever seen the diamond shape made when two sets of tracks cross?" I don't think so, I told him.
At that very spot were four main lines — CP to Vancouver, CN to Vancouver, CP to Edmonton, and the CN northern route that eventually goes to Churchill. There are two diamonds within a hundred feet of each other. Ted says maintenance crews are there every day checking to make sure the diamonds are holding up. "They take a pounding," Ted says. "We get 40 freight trains a day through here, and most of them are two miles long."
Ted doesn't actually live in the same place as his garden — good thing — but many people do. And these trains come through at all hours of the day.
Ted's gifts
As I was leaving, Ted gave me two tomato plants plus a castor bean plant. He featured castor beans in his column a few times in the past 12 months. Thanks Ted!
The Singing Gardener also shared the lyrics to his aptly named song, "Plapman Diamonds." PLAP is short for Portage la Prairie. Ted has "Plapman" on his car license plate. Here is a sample:
In west end Portage, where the rails cross over,
CN and CP share jewels on prairie flatland,
Nestled securely, two rail bed diamonds,
Provide an awesome, helping hand.
Massive engines and rail cars break silence,
Wheels bang and very loud they squeal,
Plapman Diamonds, percussion music,
Interpret rhythm of the steel.
REFRAIN
Got the Plapman Diamonds unto myself,
Not a ring on my finger and none to sell,
Got the Plapman Diamonds unto myself,
History daily making, what a story they tell.
Saskatchewan Pulse Growers $5,000 scholarship
Deadline: July 31
Saskatchewan Pulse Growers (SPG) will fund five Undergraduate Scholarships for first-year students enrolled at the University of Saskatchewan in a program associated with the pulse industry or agriculture.
The one-time scholarships, valued at $5,000 each, are available to applicants who are or whose parents are registered Saskatchewan pulse producers. (They have sold or grown pulses in the past two years.) The applicant must show an interest in pursuing a career related to agriculture, while having completed Grade 12 with a minimum average of 70 per cent based on official transcripts. The applicant must also demonstrate leadership within their school and community. Applications must include an essay (maximum 500 words) on career plans and how applicant plans to contribute to agriculture industry, situations where the applicant has demonstrated leadership, and contributions the applicant has made to school and community life.
For more information on the SPG scholarships, click here.
OYF $1,000 scholarship
Application deadline: June 30
Canada’s Outstanding Young Farmers (OYF) program has a new scholarship for a young Canadian pursuing a post secondary education in agriculture. The $1,000 scholarship was established in memory of the late Martin Streef, recipient of both Ontario’s and Canada’s Outstanding Young Farmer awards in 1996.
The OYF Memorial Scholarship will be awarded September 1. Nominations are open to any individual in Canada pursuing a diploma or degree in agriculture at a Canadian institution. Applicants are required to submit a short essay on “Why are you passionate about agriculture in Canada?” Applicants must also supply a current transcript of their marks, a letter confirming their involvement in agriculture from a non-family member, and a character reference letter from a non-family member.
Click here for full details and application forms.
I get the weekly newsletter from CUESA, a San Francisco-based farmers' market and much more. I've posted below an article from the latest newsletter about a butcher named Ryan Farr and his chicharrones — a snack made from pig skin. I spent some time poking around Farr's website and blog today, and learned some of his brining and smoking techniques, particularly for pork. The photo, from his site, shows a pig's face rolled up and ready for curing. Click here to see photos and explanations for the whole process.
Consumers are getting a little more educated and little less squeamish about eating all parts of the animal — in the name of reducing waste and reducing food costs. My grandma used to make chicken heart soup, which I don't really care if I eat again, but I do love the chicken liver appetizer from Ichiban restaurant in Winnipeg. I've eaten sweetbreads and oxtail, but not pig's face or feet. And while we did get the tongue whenever we butchered a steer, I don't remember my mother ever cooking it. I think after a year or more in the freezer, the tongue eventually went to the dog.
If you know of any butchers in Western Canada who specialize in turning offal and skin and feet and testicles into delicious food, I'd like to meet that person and taste his or her product.
Here is the CUESA article about Ryan Farr
Now that 4505 Meats' chicharrones are such a runaway hit, their creator, Ryan Farr, can look back on the early challenges of selling and marketing his version of fried pig skins with an air of amusement.
“If you’ve never had our chicharrones, you might have a bad taste in your mouth from eating pork rinds in the past,” he says, “so getting people to understand that pig skin can be a beautiful thing did take some initial effort.” Farr hails from Kansas City (a meat-loving town if ever there was one) and made a name for himself cooking in San Francisco restaurants such as Fifth Floor and Orson. Now he's known as the visionary behind 4505 Meats, a new addition to the upcoming Thursday market.
Farr keeps his chicharrone recipe under wraps, but he does disclose the fact that they're fried in rice bran oil, making them extra crispy. Or as Farr lovingly says, “like porky funyuns that melt in your mouth.” Beyond the drive to develop “crunchy crack-in-a-bag,”* Farr says the idea to start making chicharrones was born out a larger dilemma.
"We had all this extra skin left after buying whole pigs and using every other part, but there’s not a lot of use for pig skins,” says Farr. Now, the demand for Chicharrones has outpaced his need for the other parts of the pig, says the chef. So in recent months he’s been buying skins from the same local farms he’s always gotten pigs from — Marin Sun Farms, Prather Ranch, Devil’s Gulch Ranch, and Niman Ranch, to name a few.
As Farr sees it, smart, resourceful butchery is the only viable option at a time when eaters are becoming increasingly aware of what it takes to put a piece of meat on a plate. And he owes a lot to his peers. “What Chris Cosentino [from Incano and Boccalone] has done to educate people about offal is just amazing,” he says. “Suddenly people really care about what they put in their bodies; it’s about where it comes from, not what [part of the animal] it is. Everybody’s excited to be learning more about things like pig skins and pig hearts and buffalo testicles.”
Speaking of guts, striking out on your own in an economy like this takes more than a solid product and sustainable practices. But making 4505 Meats his primary obsession since leaving Orson has allowed Farr to create a kind of persona in the world of slow and sustainable food.
“I’ve always been really big into butchery, so I feel blessed that people are excited to learn how to butcher a whole animal and make sausage,” he says.
Farr’s classes and demos have been selling out consistently for months and the blogosphere can’t seem to get enough. A Google image search reveals a grid of similar photos of this chef carefully dismantling, categorizing and explaining one pasture-raised pig after another. In each photo, Farr is focused squarely on the animal — and it becomes clear that the popularity of his products is no accident.
Sharon Ramsay, media contact with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, sent out the summer tour schedule for Manitoba and Saskatchewan today. Click the attached file to see complete details. Here is a summary:
June 29, Swift Current centre, grazing and forage field day
July 15, Swift Current centre, mustard day
July 15, Scott, Sask., Scott Research Farm field day
July 16, Scott, Sask., Saskatchewan Weed Council tour
July 17, Melfort, Sask., Melfort Research Farm field day
July 21, Indian Head., Sask., crop management field day
July 21, Winnipeg centre, Prairie Oat Breeding Consortium meeting and tour
July 22, Scott and Glaslyn, Sask., Glaslyn Project farm tour
July 22, Morden, Man., special crops field day
Based on the current situation in Western Canada, the U.S. and around the world, the global supply of milling quality wheat will be "tight," says Bruce Burnett, the Canadian Wheat Board's director of weather and market analysis.
Burnett presented his outlook today. To see the complete summary, click here. The board will also have the webcast available at www.cwb.ca.
Here are a few highlights:
—Manitoba has been excessively wet, delaying seeding. Alberta and western Saskatchewan have been cold and dry, greatly reducing the yield potential. And while frosts have hit hard and often this spring, each day of delay increases the risk of frost crippling the late crop this fall. Crops are, on average, 10 days to two weeks behind.
—Here's a summary from the CWB news release: The CWB projects "a western Canadian wheat, durum and barley crop of 29.7 million tonnes in the 2009 crop year, down almost 20 per cent from last year's 36.7 million tonnes and significantly below the five-year average of 33.9 million tonnes. The all-wheat yield estimate announced by the CWB today, at 33.4 bushels per acre, is the lowest initial projection in seven years."
—"World wheat crop will be down significantly from last year's record production of 682 million tonnes, particularly given a substantial drop in production in key U.S. winter wheat growing areas," the CWB release says. In his presentation, Burnett quoted USDA figures that estimate a drop of 26 million tonnes, putting global wheat production at 656 million tonnes. Australia looks to rebound after a few years of terrible drought, with good rains earlier in their growing season. Argentina, on the other hand, is having its own drought, so the improvement in Australia's wheat production outlook is balanced with a drop in Argentina's. Milling wheat areas in the Northern U.S. face the same soggy conditions as Manitoba.
We've had a few articles in Grainews about alternative grain storage systems, including grain bags. We keep learning more about them. Kevin Beernaert of Hartney, Man., has an Akron grain bagger and extractor (made in Argentina, hence the Spanish website) that he bought last year in partnership with another farm in the area. His local retailer is Tweed Farm Equipment in Medora, Man. He filled about eight bags in 2008, with 8,000 bushels in each. In general, he really likes the system. “I think you can have too much money tied up in bin storage,” he says. “For surge capacity, the bags are a lot better than buying more bins.”
And because you fill them right there in the field, they improve harvest efficiency. You do need a grain cart to dump into the bagger, so that is another cost if you don’t already have one. But with the cart and bagger at work, you can keep combines going without having trucks racing back and forth to keep up. In one field, Beernaert had been hauling 12 miles back to the yard and the combine often had to wait for the truck to return. By switching to the bags and filling them there in the field, the combines didn’t have to stop. The only time it stopped was when the combine operator had to help put a new bag on. It takes three people about 10 minutes to switch bags.
Another benefit to bags is that if you’re the only one on the farm with a class one license and you’re also the combine operator, your hired help or family members can run the cart and fill the bags without having to go out on the road. You can deal with trucking the grain after harvest is complete. Beernaert got the elevator to pick up grain from the bags, so he didn’t have to move the grain at all. The extractor can load a super B faster than an auger, he adds.
Beernaert's tips
Having said all that, Beernaert did have a few problems in year one that he plans to correct for 2009.
1. He emptied one bag last week and found water had entered in through the ends. He thinks it was because the operator filled the bag too full — it was 3 a.m. after a long harvest day — and there wasn’t enough bag left to create a good seal. As recommended, he uses two 2-by-6 boards nailed together then nails the bag to the boards. He said it would be better to have enough bag left over to roll the bag around the board three times before nailing it closed. He didn’t expect to leave this bag until June, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. Water had entered through the end and trickled quite a ways down the bag. Grain at the bottom was wet, but because there’s no air, the grain wasn’t moldy.
2. Beernaert put his bags near approaches to the fields, again expecting that to be the most convenient place for winter unloading. But next time he’d put bags on the highest hill to keep them dry — just in case the bags have to sit a few months longer than expected.
3. “Don’t put bags near the bush,” he says. One of his other bags went on a field edge near the woods. Wild turkeys pecked holes in the bag to get at the oats inside. This attracted deer, and then in spring, a herd of cattle got out and wandered over to the bag, cleaning up what the deer left behind. Bags beside the bush are more likely to attract wildlife damage, Beernaert figures.
Gerald Pilger farms near Ohaton, Alta., and is a regular contributor to Grainews. It has been a terrible spring on his farm, with repeated frosts and no rain. Here is his crop update from this morning. Any other farmers who want to share their crop situation, feel free to email me or post a comment on this blog.
Gerald writes:
Frost and drought have severely damaged canola crops in central Alberta. Even wheat and barley show damage and are way behind. This morning (June 9) it was minus 3 C at our farm and that was the fourth night in a row of frost with temperatures as low as minus 5 reported in the area. (Our covered tomatoes and begonias even froze.) This is on top of lots of nights of frost in May and basically no rainfall since the snow went. Furthermore, we were going into the season with next to no subsurface moisture. In our fields, the canola plants that have survived the frosts and drought to this point are flat on the ground today and only time will tell if any survive. The date, continued cold, and especially lack of moisture make reseeding as risky, if not more so, than leaving the canola that is left and praying for a miracle.
I bought back my fall canola delivery contracts just after the elevator opened this morning and was the fourth person to do so today.
We wrote off our hay fields last week. The only green growth at all was along tree lines and dry slough bottoms. Cattle guys in east Alberta are desperate. This year makes 2002 look like a great year as far as the cattle guys are concerned (and even the grain crops at this time of the year were much better in 2002 than the are this spring.)
Very little has been sprayed in the Camrose area except a few fields of peas and early Roundup applications on RR canola. Edge applied to a canola research plot we are hosting on our farm did not control the weeds that managed to germinate — likely because of the cold soil tempertures. The researcher then applied a full rate of Poast and it has had little effect on the wild oats and volunteer barley. The weeds are so hardened off it is debateable how effective herbicides will be, even if one chose to spray, given the cold temperture and lack of moisture. Two local chem reps I spoke with recommended waiting until there is no more risk of frost and we receive rain, but niether of these conditions are likely in the short term. Furthermore, I am very worried about the application of any product with any residual action given the drought. The lack of soil moisture could lead to carryover next year. And really, there are not enough weeds in many fields to justify spraying at this time. It is a real Catch 22.
However, ever optimistic farmers now looking to 2010 crops and the fact their fertilizer requirements are going to be way down.
For the past 23 years, the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (www.asabe.org) has selected its top 50 innovations for the year. To qualify for an AE50 award, innovations must be for agricultural, food, biological and related systems and must be available on the market. Prototypes are not eligible.
AE50 award winners for 2009, based on 2008 launches, include Harrison Ag Technologies’ Smart Nozzle, which we reported on in the April 20 Grainews, and Seed Hawk’s Sectional Control Technology, which we wrote about in the March 2 Grainews. I got news releases this week from New Holland and from Claas to highlight their winning products.
One of the Claas winners is the Lexion Quantimeter yield monitor, shown in the photo. The Claas release says: “Using light-emitting measuring (LEM) technology to accurately measure the real time yield performance is made possible through a beam of near-infrared (NIR) light. Harvested grain volume is measured and displayed in real-time (bushels per acre, tonnes per hectare, etc.) via the Lexion Cebis in-cab monitoring system. Primary yield monitor calibration efficiency is improved as the Quantimeter utilizes a single volume or single batch calibration method versus multiple loads at different rates of travel used to simulate different flow rates." You can add Quantimeter to any Lexion combine.
John Deere also has a bunch on the list. Click here to see the complete list. Let me know by email if you see something you’d like more information about. I’ll get an article into Grainews.
I have not taken time to set out my goals. Maybe I should. I was catching up on some reading this week, and read through FCC's AgriSuccess Journal from January-February. It had a few articles about goals. Kevin Hursh, editor of the FCC magazine, quoted Michelle Painchaud in his article "Is goal setting really worth the effort." Painchaud, head of Painchaud Performance Group in Winnipeg, says "Vision without action is hallucination." It's not enough to set goals. You have to act on them.
Hursh's article had recommendations from farmers who are part of FCC's Vision Panel. Here are a few samples:
—Most success comes from planning and knowing where you want to be and what you want to do.
—After writing down goals, reference them regularly to check progress.
—Goal setting has helped open communications between my husband and me.
—Before setting goals, we were floating and just making decisions in the moment.
I will write more about goals in an upcoming Grainews. In the meantime, if you have set goals and you'd like to share how they improved (or didn't improve) your business, please email me.
A friend sent me a New York Times article about troubles in the U.S. organic milk business. Turns out people will stop buying organic when money is tight. The graph, pulled from the article, is based on U.S. Department of Agriculture numbers.
Katie Zezima, the author, quoted one Vermont farmer, Ken Preston, describing how a good thing — more demand than he could handle — turned, well, sour. “I probably wouldn’t have gone organic if I knew it would end this way,” he said. Click here for the whole article.
