September 2009 Archives
Doug and Cheryl Livingstone and family have been producing grain and purebred Hereford cattle on their Vermillion, Alberta area farm for many years. But, as Doug recently noted, speaking to the Canadian Farm Writers Federation conference in Edmonton, “food doesn’t gain any real value until after it leaves the farm gate.”
So the Livingstones have recently embarked on a venture that makes use of the natural advantages found on their 2,200 acre Val Terra Ranch. They’ve gone into the hospitality industry.
The farming family has recently opened Red Feather Ridge Lodge. Built on a hill overlooking a natural pond and wooded area on the farm, the Red Feather Lodge is a banquet and meeting facility that can handle both small and medium-sized gatherings, with banquet facilities for up to 160 people. Next year they plan to have three cabins ready for overnight accommodations for up to 12 people.
Cherly Livingstone has long been in the catering business, and son Robert is a trained chef who worked in the restaurant industry in Calgary for a number of years.
Since it was becoming more difficult to pencil out a profit selling beef cattle, the Livingstones looked at other business options that could make use of their ranch as well as their skills.
Red Feather Ridge, which just opened in recent weeks, can hosts groups ranging in size from six to 160. The lodge is ideal for any business or association looking for a place to hold a day long seminar or staff meeting, or families looking for a location for a reunion, birthday party or wedding.
With Doug and Cheryl and Robert and his wife Audra actively involved in the Red Feather Ridge, they plan to scale back on both beef and crop production. “We looked at our options and we can’t do it all,” says Doug. “Likely the grain and some of the cattle will go and will put our efforts into the new venture.”
A website for Red Feather Ridge is in the works, but not yet operating. In the meantime for more information contact the Livingstones at (780) 763-2385 or email: valterra@telusplanet.net .
(Accompanying photos are courtesy of Lori Henry, a travel writer based in Edmonton).
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Power generating wind turbines are appearing everywhere across the country, but I bet Alberta still holds the record for having winds that can push round hay bales around.
Oddly enough these pictures were sent to me by my brother-in-law, Walter, who lives in Carp, Ontario (just outside Ottawa). Supposedly they are aerial photos of hay bales near Medicine Hat, Alberta that rolled during a recent wind event. The email didn’t say which windy day, so it could have been when Hurricane Edna swept western Canada in ‘ought 3’,but I’m guessing it is more recent.
As Walter noted, this is more interesting than crop circles. Good thing I wasn’t walking in the field that day. I could have ended up in Swift Current.
I think there is a lesson to be learned from these photos. Think about what you're doing in the privacy of your forage stand. You never know who’s watching.
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After months of planning, I have now completed my H1N1 (Swine Flu) Management Strategy. Here it is: “If I get it, I will probably feel sick for a few days until it is over.” The End. I just hope it works.
I know these may be my “famous last words’, but my alarm level over H1N1 is just about nil. The flu is out there, I may get it and I may not, but if I do, I do and I’ll take it from there.
Among some world industries there appears to be a need to stoke panic over this impending flu season. In past years I remember watching the nightly news and the fact the flu season was approaching was essentially treated as “well it’s that time of year again…” You know, one of the seasonal things like snow, gardening, camping, baseball, hockey, football, back to school, diet time and federal elections and the like.
But the nightly news reports and daily headlines on the H1N1 flu appear to epitomize ‘the sky is falling” thinking. A few months ago, yes the world didn’t know what it was dealing with. But now researchers and scientists appear to be saying the H1N1 isn’t that spectacular.
In fact, just last night, during a national news update on the flu and another death somewhere, which is indeed unfortunate, one of the world health observers said “the N1H1 flu doesn’t appear to be any worse than other seasonal types of flu”….
But somehow that statement gets lost in the overall report. And of course if we can use the word pandemic to describe it, it doesn’t just mean the flu is spreading over a wider area of the world (which is all it means) it is also construed as being 200 times worse than any other flu ever imagined.
The Centre for Disease Control estimates the regular seasonal flu kills about 36,000 Americans every year and between 250,000 and 500,000 people world wide annually. Those are significant numbers to us all and certainly to those people and families affected.
But, people die from a lot of things. Here are some figures from the World Health Organization. About eight million people die worldwide annually from high blood pressure, another five million die from smoking-related illnesses, another four million from high cholesterol, and nearly three million from obesity.
In the U.S. 435,000 die from smoking related diseases, about 365,000 from being overweight, 43,000 die annually in car accidents and more than 30,000 from gun-related events. Drugs and alcohol kill more than 20,000 people a year.
The point of all this is that the N1H1 flu has to be kept in perspective. There are a lot of people dropping like flies around us (the world community) every year/every day and it largely goes unnoticed. I don’t think the Swine Flu is any more serious than many diseases, and a lot less of a societal issue than many others. More than anything it is a hot topic to report on during a slow news period.
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