October 2009 Archives

It has been a big socially connected week for me. I had about 20 birthday greetings from Facebook friends, I received an email from Prime Minister Harper, another from Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach and an inspiring 'Performance Matters' video clip from Canterra Seeds (see website below).

 I had Facebook birthday wishes from friends and family across Canada, parts of the U.S. and from as far away as Norway. I happened to be out, but my mother called from Ontario and left a voicemail greeting.

The Prime Minister and Premier didn’t send me birthday greetings (I’m not that old), they just wanted to consult on matters of state and public policy. And I am always glad to share my thoughts.

As Ed – I mean Premier Stelmach – pointed out in his note yesterday it is a new era of communications.

“Times have changed quickly,” writes the Premier. “A mere decade ago, there was no Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or YouTube. Google is not much older. Yet many Albertans regularly use these sites to get information and stay in touch with their friends, relatives and colleagues. I have already set up a Facebook supporter page and a Twitter account and now I hope you will read these emails from me so we can stay in touch.”

And aint that the truth. When I was a kid, at the dawn of time, there were three basic tools to keep in touch with friends and neighbors – pickup the phone (and hope the party line was free, or quietly listen in until it was free), write a letter, or if you happened to see your neighbor as you were going from one field to the next, stop your tractors on the road and have a visit. That was how most connection was made. (My mother still keeps a pretty close eye on the kitchen window at the farm house to see who is going up and down the road.)

Today, I still use the phone a lot, but email is huge. Man, if email went down today, my goose would be cooked. I’m sure I process at least 100 emails a day. Some of that is staying connected with family and friends, but much of it has to do with work. I can connect with farmers and agribusiness when I am working on stories. All the columns and photos that appear in Grainews and Cattleman’s Corner come and go via email. For someone like Christoph Weder, who appears to be still searching for a homeland, I can receive his column whether he is on the ranch at Spirit River in Alberta Peace River region, from his hotel room in Munich, Germany, or at a food trade show in Dubai. Wayne Burleson, range management specialist from Montana recently sent me a column and photos from Malawi, Africa, and Kim Nielsen, with the ag service board in the County of Clearwater in central Alberta, used email to keep us all posted on his Australian adventure earlier this year.

When it comes to email communications, distance and time zones are meaningless. (The other day I was researching some information on seeding systems and I came across a website for TAKA Co. which is the largest agricultural implement manufacturer in Iran. I sent them an email to see if they have any Canadian dealers yet. But, who knew?)

I still haven’t got any real sense of the value of Facebook and Twitter yet. I joined the networks, because they are there and I felt I should see what they are about, but I can’t say they’ve made a huge difference in the quality of my personal life, or benefited my work.

I exchanged a Facebook message with Alberta farmer/writer Gerald Pilger the other day. He admits that he joined up because he kept getting messages from people on Facebook urging him to join, but on the day we chatted I don’t think Facebook was helping him in his efforts to move grain so it wouldn’t heat.

And I had a short Facebook chat with Harry Sugimoto of Lethbridge yesterday. Harry is retired, but he was an ag specialist with the Royal Bank for many years. He admits he isn’t a very good Facebooker yet, either, but felt he too should check it out.

But now that Premier Ed has opened Facebook and Twitter accounts, that means I will have another tool for getting my input on provincial matters directly to his ‘in box’. The province should be running much more efficiently in the near future. Steveo (PM Harper) hasn’t invited me to be a Facebook friend yet, but I’m sure it is coming. 

Aside from ‘the value’ of all this social networking, the other big issue for me is time. When the heck do you find time in the day for all this social networking???

Back to the message from Canterra Seeds. It has nothing to do with Facebook or Twitter, but I thought it was a clever and funny commercial for their products. It is good to see a company with a sense of humor. Check it out www.performancematters.ca

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Spots are still open for the November 2009 and May 2010 Canadian Beef School at Olds College, Olds, Alberta. It is a great learning experience for anyone involved in the Canadian beef industry – whether you are a producer, or feeder, or processor or involved in a related service industry, such as the animal health industry.

The school isn’t about how to produce beef, but is all about what happens after it leaves the farm gate. How it is fed, processed, graded, and then cut and wrapped for the retail counter.

I attended the two-and-a-half day school last year and even though I just write about the ag industry, it was a great eye-opener and learning experience. There were about 20 in my ‘class’ last year that included cow/calf producers, backgrounders and animal health company reps.

I think everyone learned something, but there were a few cow/calf producers interested in developing their own farm-gate markets for beef, who found it particularly of value.

The school covers a lot of topics, that include both classroom sessions as well as hands on experience at grading carcasses and later in cutting sides of beef for retail sale. The school is led by Jim Hansen, a beef specialist with Alberta Agriculture and Brad McLeod, an instructor with Olds College with years of practical experience in the meat cutting business. They bring in guest speakers to talk about specific topics, there’s a fair bit of myth busting that goes on, and lots of discussion with instructors, as well as a good exchange among the various attendees.

It is well worth the price of admission and it is two-and-a-half days well spent. You get a great binder of reference material to take home (and if you don’t act up in class you might even get a great souvenir sweat shirt, as well).

A few spaces are still open for the November school, Nov. 25 to 27 and a few more spaces for the May 2010 school, May 5 to 7.  For more information contact Jim Hansen at 403-653-5132 or email jim.hansen@gov.ab.ca or Brad McLeod 403-556-4792 or email: bmcleod@oldscollege.ca . You can visit the college website as well: www.oldscollege.ca

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When I first received a news release this morning, announcing that Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers is preparing for the complete dispersal of Northern Black Angus ranch at Kamloops, I thought, ‘oh, oh, here’s another ranching operation fed up with the economics of the beef industry and getting out.’

But I was wrong. Trevor White is closing down Northern Black Angus, a purebred Angus operation which he has owned for the past 13 years, but he sees it is only a temporary exit from the beef business.

Fact is Trevor, who has been in the logging and road building business for many years, has a great logging business opportunity on Vancouver Island he wants to pursue for the next five years and he says he can’t do it all.

“It is a great opportunity on Vancouver Island, I don’t want to pass up, but I can’t run the ranch at the same time,” he says. “We have really enjoyed the beef industry – my wife, sons and daughter have all enjoyed it as well – but we decided we’d have to leave ranching for now.” The family has all been involved with the B.C. Angus Association, with Trevor currently serving on the executive. 

The Whites still own a 1,000 acre farm at Smithers, which they will keep, but the ranch at Kamloops, lock, stock and barrel, is all on the auction bloc October 15, at 10 a.m.

The other thing that caught my attention is that Ritchie Bros. is handling the sale. I always think of them as auctioneers of heavy machinery and industrial equipment, but fact is they do handle farm and ranch sales, as well.

All details on the sale can be found at: http://www.rbauction.com/property/2009547_kamloops_bc/index.jsp , but in brief Northern Black Angus consists of 375 acres of land, some irrigated, just north of Kamloops. It is in two parcels. They are also selling 114 head of registered Black Angus cows, calves, yearlings and herd bulls, along with some beef genetics. And a full line of machinery is being sold too.  If you are looking for a turnkey ranching operation, just bring your cheque book.

Every item will be sold to the highest bidder, with no minimums or reserve prices.

Trevor says once this project on Vancouver Island is complete, he hopes to get back into the beef business.

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If you are like me, you probably cruised right through World Rabies Day without even noticing. It was September 28.

When I first saw a notice about this from University of Calgary, I thought ‘you’ve got to be kidding’.  For anyone who watches The Office sitcom on TV, they had an episode last year where they did a charity run to raise funds for rabies awareness. It was hilarious.

But in all honesty, rabies isn’t something to joke about. It certainly isn’t a major animal or human health concern here in Canada, but there’s a website that explains about 55,000 people globally die from rabies every year. That’s one every 10 minutes. Most deaths are in Africa and Asia. I don’t know much about it, but my understanding is, it isn’t a pleasant way to go.

I remember as a kid on the farm in Ontario, there was always a warning to watch out for odd behavior in skunks and bats (even foxes but there weren’t many of them around in those days). I remember once my Granddad had a mid-day battle with a bat that was flopping around in the yard. Grandpa’s brome or shovel won out.

And there was a neighbor woman, too, Doris, who farmed just down the road. She apparently was exposed to rabies at one time, and the story as I recall was that she had to get injections in the stomach with some treatment for about two weeks. Apparently the needles were about eight inches long. That’s the story I remember anyway. According to the website current treatment is relatively painless and isn’t much different than getting a flu shot in the arm.

Other than that, my life has been pretty well rabies free. Of course who can forget what happened to Old Yeller and after watching the movie Cujo many years ago, I still don’t warm up to St. Bernards. Any dogs we’ve had over the years have always had rabies shots.

I’m not sure if we need a day to mark rabies awareness, but on the other hand why not. There’s a DAY for just about everything else.  If there had not been a day, I wouldn’t have been aware of how many people actually die from the disease every year.

Again it is just a good reminder of how lucky we are here in Canada and North America that so many routine threats faced in other parts of the world, aren't really a concern here. And we have the resources to either prevent or treat those conditions if they do appear, albeit rarely.

I guess the message is, be on the safe side. Have your pets vaccinated against rabies, watch out for odd behavior in wild animals, and never take anything for granted. And if your spouse, weird Uncle, or a neighbour is acting peculiar consult a medical professional long before you try to settle them down with the business end of a round pointed shovel.

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I attended Cliff Flauknor’s funeral in Calgary this week. Many of you may not know Cliff, who was a long-time writer for Country Guide Magazine. In fact, I didn’t know him very well either. I had met him, knew him by reputation mostly, but he had retired from Guide a decade or so before I started. (As a bit of background Country Guide, Canadian Cattleman Magazine and Grainews are all part of the same publishing group)

Ultimately when I joined the company in 1988, I took over a field editor position with Country Guide in Calgary that Cliff (photo at right) had held from the late ‘50s to 1974.

He was a long time writer and character and continued writing books and working on

 other projects long after he retired. Perhaps since I didn’t know him well, I decided to look back at some of the stories he had written for Guide. It is always amazing, when I open those old volumes of 30 and 40 years ago, to see how many of the same stories and same topics writers like myself are still chasing. The people may have changed but many of the topics, problems, issues and successes written about are very similar.

Cliff’s last story in Guide appeared in October 1974 and it was about a young dairy farmer in Creston, B.C. (the Creston Valley is about five hours west of Calgary), who started in the dairy business with minimum cash.

Wayne Adams was 20 years old in 1970, he and a partner at that time Ernie Adams (no relation), decided to start dairy farming at Creston. Wayne had owned about 30 head of beef cattle at Chilliwack before he decided there was no money in beef (where I have heard that before), so he sold the cattle and moved to Creston with about $4,000 to start a dairy farm.

He and Ernie had limited resources, most banks laughed at them when they went to borrow money. A former boss of Wayne’s loaned the two young men 10 Holstein heifers for two years at no cost. Finally, the local CIBC bank manager William Lloyd had enough confidence in them that he loaned them $11,000 to buy 10 more cows and quota. The next spring they bought 15 more cows and 600 pounds more quota at a time when quota was worth about $10 a pound.

At the time of Cliff’s interview with Wayne in 1974, things had progressed. Wayne bought out Ernie’s share of the farm, after Ernie had become ill, Wayne had married Eileen Phillips and he was milking 48 head of Holsteins in a six-place milking parlor with a total herd of 100 head. Land at the time was selling for about $1,750 per acre.

I talked to Wayne today, October 1, 2009, to see how things were going. He’s still milking cows. He and Eileen operate Wayleen Farms. They had five children, a son Keith, 31, is at home joining them in the dairy business. They built a new dairy barn on the Creston flats about three years ago. They milk 200 head twice a day, in a modern double-16 parallel DeLaval parlour. 

With dry cows and replacements they have a total herd of about 350 head. And they crop about 430 acres of mostly forages and some grain for the farm.

Land in the area is now worth about $6,000 per acre and although it varies, dairy quota is trading for about $100 per kilogram of butter fat.

One dream Wayne had in 1974 was to one day have a hired man, and that goal was realized as well. They actually have two full time employees.

What’s different about dairy farming today compared to 1974? “Not much,” says Wayne. “Yes, we have more modern facilities and much more automation, but it’s still a lot of work and it seems like you run into the same problems and hassles today that we had 35 years ago.”  Life is good, but the cows still have to be milked twice a day, 365 days of the year.

We all get older, and eventually we all pass on. Cliff was 96 when he died and still sharp and active almost to the end. Us young fellas, like myself and Wayne, are still doing much the same today as we did 35 years ago. This item is first appearing on a blog and when I started in the business I had not even an inkling of what a computer was, let alone something called the Internet, or a form of communication known as blogging.

But dare I say it, in putting this little piece together, it is clear over the span of 35 to 40 years, as much as things change, the more they stay the same.

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