Moving our Blogs

We have now moved our blogs to our EDGARFARMS.COM web site. This will keep everything in one place. 

Calving March 2012

March is calving season at Edgar Farms. I thought I would do a pictorial story of a calf's first few hours of life.

This was taken on March 15,2012. That day we had 7 calves so this was just one of the seven.

This is a first calf heifer meaning this is all new to her. Everything that happen is all instinct on both the cow's and the calf's part.






This picture was taken at 7:10 PM. If you look closely you can see two white feet of her calf poking out for the first time.



















This picture was taken at 7:25 PM. You can now see the nose of the calf.






















This picture was taken at 7:30 PM. Once the head comes out the rest of the calf slides out with only one or two pushes.




















This is what a newborn baby calf looks like. He doesn't look very pretty being soaking wet, having opened his eyes to see the world around him, just being separated from his mother's umbilical tube, and having to breath all on his own. What a big change in his life, in only one minute!!

This video was taken at 7:35 PM. The calf is now lifting his head and getting his bearings. The background noise is the engine of our quad as we are about to give him a sled ride to the barn.



This video was taken at 7:45 PM. In this video the calf is learning to stand and walk



In this video the calf is learning to walk and look for lunch




This Video was taken at 8:10 PM. The calf is now 40 minutes old and nursing very strongly. If you listen you can hear the calf smacking his lips as he drinks.

This picture was taken the next day at about 3:00 PM. Notice his hair is all dried off and he is actually basking in the sunshine.





























Not all calving go this smooth and trouble free. As with anything there is a multitude of things that can and do go wrong, everything from inclement weather, unco-operative mothers, malpresentations. All thing things are just another hurdle we face every day and night during this busy season.

Asparagus festival 2011 Saturday

Well after a full week of rain the sun finally came out for our Asparagus Festival. The yard was still muddy and the road to the field was soft but at least it wasn't raining. On Saturday we had lots of people show up and enjoy all the things to do. We had our petting zoo, a bale fort, an large sand box filled with dry peas a lots of toys. We had hand water pump duck races for adults and the kids. At the children's area there was story time, coloring, and they could even plant a bean to take home. In the adult education area you could look over a large grain combine, look taste, and feel different kinds of grain, hay, straw, and silage. You could even taste some malted barley that was ready to go to the brewery to be made into beer. They also had a lot of samples of good from the grocery store that were made with commodities made on the farm (for example" Smarties") We had the head chef Andrew and his wife Jen from River Cafe in Calgary cooking Asparagus on an open wood fire. We also had several different artisan booths selling every thing from wooden bowls, paintings, ceramics and even homemade perogies. You could watch the asparagus being sorted, bundled, and washed in the processing shed. The Bowden Sunmaze had a bale maze for the kids to play in. The wagon ride was a popular event and allowed everyone to go to the field, watch the asparagus being picked. You could also bend pick and eat a fresh asparagus spear right from the field.

Calving season

Wow what a cold calving season!!!
I can never remember such a cold calving season in the last 36 years of doing this job. Even when we calved in January we would get the odd warm spell to let us catch our breath and catch up. This year it just doesn't seem to want to warm up.

We have been calving for about the last 2 weeks and have about 45 calves. We have 130 cows to calve so we still have a ways to go yet.

When the weather is cold we check our cows about every hour in the daytime and every 2 hours, at night. If it is warm we only have to get up once in the night at about 3:00 AM after checking them at 11:00 PM and then again at 6:00 AM. We have not had that luxury this year. All things considered everyone in our family still seems to be in good spirits even while running on very little sleep.

We have had very good luck with hardly any problems other than the odd calf that gets a chill and we have to them in our "hot box" to warm them up. This box is an home made box with a large hot air blower on the bottom to warm them up and dry them off and an infrared heater shinning down from the top to allow the calf to bask in the warm heat rays. An hour in the box and the little guys are warm as toast and ready to go back with their mothers.

The temperature and the wind chill have been so cold that we have had to put "ear muffs" on our little guys for the first few days or up till an week of age. If we don't these young calves just can't seem to be able to keep warm enough. Elna and Keri have made a lot of these ear muffs and we have been very pleased with how good they work.

We do have room in our heated barn for 4 cow calf pairs and for about 7 pairs in the unheated part of the barn. After that they then go to outside pens with open front sheds for the calves.

The new Calgary Farmers Market

Tonight was Elna and my first look at the new Calgary Farmers Market building and our stall. After listening to all the naysayers about how bad every thing was about this new market we were really impressed with the whole thing. It has a lower ceiling than the old building which gives it a different look, but as with anything when you get to do things a second time you certainly improve on the old one.

Our booth is right across from a large coffee booth and is right around the corner from the food court. There will be at 2 main entrances and we are quite close to the south one. We still have three stalls as before but they are each a bit larger so we will more space in our new booth. We also have a small garage door on the back side of our booth that opens up onto a patio outside to display even more product when the weather is nice in the summer.

One of the concerns has been parking and access to the market. The manager of the market told us this evening that they have 644 paved parking spots on site and another 200 within a half of a block of the market. They also have secured summer parking for the vendors at a school parking lot right next door. The market as part of their development permit with the city has had to put in a new right turn lane on the street leaving the market and the city will also be changing one of the access roads to one way to improve traffic flow. Hopefully they know what they are doing but so far it sounds like they are the right track.

We see a lot of the old vendors are at this market with many of them expanding their stalls. Also we see some new vendors coming in adding more excitement to the market.

The plan is to open on February 4th if every thing falls into place. Presently there is some issues about getting some parts for the electrical service, but if that comes through every thing should open on time. If the parts are delayed there could be a delay in the opening date, but right now everyone has their fingers crossed. We all would like to be back at the market taking in money rather than spending money as we are now.

Coaching Session

Today we are in Leduc doing a coaching session for Alberta Agriculture. We are doing one on one mentoring with individual entrepreneurs about Internet marketing and on farm sales.
Pictured is Pierre Roy from Edson in our first session of the day. We took this picture and posted this post to demonstrate how we do our blog.
This was quite a challenge for us as we had a wide range of people all the way from the ones who just got their first computer this Christmas all the way up to operations that are exporting product to China.
This was a great challenge for Elna and I and we always grow and learn from these experiences.

End of an Era

On December 23, with bittersweet feelings, after the last market at The

Calgary Farmers Market at Currie Barracks, all of us Innisfail Growers took down our booth after vending at the Currie Barracks since it opened. Picture to the left was taken in our booth after we finished removing all of our bunkers, etc.

As always, we are very aware of the environment so are now busy rebuilding our bunkers and display units to reuse in our new stall. We are also constructing some new ones as required.

Posing L-R John,Corry,Blaine,Carmen,Jose,Shelly,Rod,Elna,Doug.

We are very excited about the move to the new market

and are really looking forward to our new location at Blackfoot and Heritage. Our booth will be a lot more spacious and will have lots more checkout space for quicker processing of your purchases.

The parking is going to be much larger and more convenient to the building. There is much easier access right off of Blackfoot Trail.

Red Deer Advocate - Asparagus harvesters

Check out the Red Deer Advocate newspapers video of our festival this last weekend

Red Deer Advocate - Asparagus harvesters

River Cafe and off to the Airport

Our daughter Angela was home for the last few days. She and her husband Steve drove down to Edmonton where we picked her last Sunday.

She was to fly back home on Thursday evening when out of nowhere we had a violent spring snow storm. They closed the highway to the airport that evening so she had to reschedule her flight for Friday. We drove to Calgary Friday and saw her off just outside of the security doors. We hadn't even got back to the highway when she called on the cell phone to say her flight was canceled because the plane wouldn't be able to land in Fort McMurray. She then booked a flight on the next available plane on Sunday afternoon.

It was unfortunate she missed her flights as she missed both her baby doctor specialist appointment and the start of her pre-natal course. It will be another 2 weeks before she can reschedule her doctors appointment so she has to go back to her regular doctor for her checkup.

On the plus side we had time to go to River Cafe for lunch before going to the airport on Sunday. This is by far our favorite restaurant in Calgary. For anyone that hasn't been to River Cafe it's a great place that actually cooks your food not just reheating processed food like a lot of the places do. The service is great, the staff all enjoy your company and really make you feel welcome. It was the first time for Angie at River Cafe. She has travelled a lot all over the world in her 30 plus years but had never seen a waiter come and refold my cloth napkin when I went to the washroom. She commented on how great the food tasted, how clean and shinny the glasses were and all the other little things that they do. It's so nice that when you taste your food it actually has flavor, along with the excellent presentation and ambiance.

We then dropped Angie off at the airport and drove home. Once we got home Angie phoned from the Fort McMurray airport letting us know she arrived safely.

Learning how to make buns

Today was bun making day at our house. Grandma Huntly is definitely an expert at this and both of our daughters wanted to learn this art. At about 9:00 AM Grandma and showed up with all her ingredients to make buns. She has to have her own special four, vegetable oil. She did use our cookie sheets but she did comment that they weren't as good as hers (and not as old either).

Making buns is an all day affair, Shortly after arriving she started organizing her ingredients. Angie was the head note taker and took two pages of notes to share with her sister and mother.

One of the big challenges was getting the measurements of all the ingredients as Grandma doesn't measure, she just pours and mixes. During the day they had to stop Grandma and get her to measure each ingredient and then document it and make a real recipe.

After all this at at about 4:00 pm the first batch was ready and I had to be on hand for the taste testing. Of course they we just as good as always.

We had fresh buns for Angie's birthday supper along with all the other great food.

Getting Ready for Spring

With the warmer weather lately we have been able to work out side and get some maintenance done for spring. Several years ago I built a machine to drag across the hay fields to level out the humps and bumps caused by moles, a small rodent that lives in the fields. This machine has worked very well, but has become worn quite badly. Last Friday my nephew Kyle a journeyman welder was out to weld new plates on the bottom of this machine. Pictured here is Kyle in the middle of welding the plates on. Also while he was doing that outside I was in the shop working on welding on a hitch on our manure spreader.

Working the Fields

Today I was discing the field where some of our garden peas will be planted this year. I disced the field twice with the tractor used for our grain farming and then Elna was out in the afternoon with her seed drill planting peas.

Discing is not practice that we do on our grain farm. With the advances in seeding equipment we direct seed most all of our field crops. For the garden peas discing warms the soil and will help kill the weeds in the garden.

This is the second planting of the season as we planted on row last November 8 just to see if fall planting of peas would work. So far they look good but it is still too cold for them to germinate.

In the afternoon I harrowed the other field where our garden peas will be planted this year. This field can be quite wet some years, but this year it very dry meaning we are about a month earlier getting on the field compared to normal. Not good as we need moisture!!