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Hot Cowboy Names. Ladies? You’re welcome.

August 1, 2011 By 2 Comments

Another Stampede has come and past, so it time for another edition of Hot Cowboy Names! This past Stampede was my fourth consecutive Stampede in a row (I’m truly surprised I am still alive and functioning) and while I really only got one night of Stampeding in, it was worth it. Also, remember that the five of us grew up on a farm, so country is on our blood. See all of our posts about pigs here (apparently we have quite a few posts about pigs? Odd.)

Aside from Ranchman’s and Nashville North and country concerts and cowboy boots, my favourite part about Stampede is the Chuckwagon Races and the cowboys. I have said before and I will say again, pregnant women should go to the nearest rodeo to get baby name ideas. (I was going to link to their profiles, but … well, I’m not going to. You can Google them if you’d like but I wouldn’t recommend it.)

First off, and in no particular order, we have Kelly Sutherland. Kelly is like an 11 time Chuckwagon world champion or something,  and while I’m not too sure about stereotypical female names for men, Kelly pulls his off with brute strength.

Now let’s talk a bit about Colt Cosgrave. Sexy name, for sure. I bet Colt was a wild child, doesn’t the name give you an image of a dreamy man who lived on the edge and a real hit with the ladies?

Obrey Motowylo is such a such a unique name, not one that I would want for my children but it really sticks in your head.

Dusty LaValley is an awesome name, but the real winner here is his young son – get this – Austin Outlaw. Mothers, lock you daughters up.

Dallas Dyck, I’m sorry, but it just makes me laugh. Just think of the nicknames this guy had…

Hunter Herrin, you are killing me softly. Hunter is probably an impermeably tough man who comes home and lights candles for his lady.

Chanse Vigen is a … nice  name. I’m sorry to a certain person that I just said that, but it’s true. The end.

Tilden Hooper unfortunately reminds me of Tilda Sweeney, but it still a hot cowboy name nonetheless.

Oh my lord, I just noticed Quinn Dorchester. Not too keen on the last name, but is another example of girl-name-for-a-guy and me likey.

Lanson Gaudry – it just never ends. Hot. Name.

Next up we have the the deathly frightening bulls and horses (seriously, who comes up with these?)

Wrangers Crackalakin: Haha, what?

Skippy’s Fine Line: While ‘Skippy’ doesn’t connotate a giant 300o lbs that wants to smush you to pieces, trust me – don’t get too close to Skippy. Names can be deceiving and he would like to rip you to pieces.

Swervyn Mervin: I just can’t take this bull seriously. It makes me laugh. This bull would probably stop to crack a joke in the middle of it’s eight second ride.


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Those were just my favourites out of the many competitors at the Calgary Stampede this year, but there is pretty much a jackpot of names on the Results and Bios page of the Stampede Events page.

 

Filed Under: agriculture, animals, Calgary, leah

Life on the Farm

March 5, 2010 By 13 Comments

Did you know that us blondes grew up on a farm? A pig farm to be exact. I (who currently resides in Calgary) am home in Ontario for a week and promised my parents, who are on a cruise celebrating this girl getting married, that I would help Scottie in the barn. (Scottie McHottie is our farmhand, who rocked the traditional story of farmhand-marrying-farmer’s-daughter when he asked our Kate to marry him years ago).

My best friend is in broadcast journalism school and asked if she could make a video of me doing chores in the morning for a project and of course I agreed. Hello, what great blog fodder and who doesn’t love a vlog? HUGE thanks to my bff Leah – yes, we have the same name – for doing this!

So enjoy taking a peek into my current life, and also what life was like when we were kids and had to go to the barn when we misbehaved.

Filed Under: agriculture, Calgary, farming, life, pigs

To Kentucky and Back (1)

February 23, 2009 By 7 Comments

Scott and I had a nice trip last week when we drove down to Louisville. We were away Wednesday to Monday which was a nice vacation away. Here’s what we did for the first few days!

On Wednesday we drove down through the fog and rain, it wasn’t that nice of a drive. We stopped at Bass Pro Shops on the way down I-65 so Scott could drool over boats and fishing rods and the continued down to Louisville (and stopped at a Cracker Barrel too!) and arrived at our hotel- Springhill Suites by Marriott.

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Filed Under: agriculture, travel

Trip Planning

February 1, 2009 By 15 Comments

January and February seem to be the month for trips this year.  Two co-workers of mine are in Chile (for work), Mic & Kent are in Calgary, Laura & Matt are in Calgary and Scott and I are planning a trip.  finally.

Scott and I have not gone away since our honeymoon to Costa Rica last November (2007) and are in desperate need of a trip.  As many of you know we are farmers, Scott loves farming and he wanted to be a farmer since he was 3.  Scott really wants to go to the National Farm Machinery Show in Louisville, Kentucky in early February, so we decided to make it into a trip!  I’m getting really excited for it and started planning details last night.

We are planning on driving there Feb 11, and staying in Louisville until the 15th! Which means we are away for Valentines Day, how romantic… lol.  We plan to go to the show for 2 days (apparently it’s a fairly large show), go to Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby Museum, and of course I want to go shopping and go to the Science Centre!  It’s probably not the kind of trip many of you would be interested to go on but I think it’s going to be a great time.  I’m also excited to stay in a hotel, I love staying in hotels and we booked a pretty nice one in downtown Louisville.

Does anyone know of anything else that we could do in Louisville? Any great places to eat?

and since I am incapable of posting without a picture here are 2 pictures of farming. One taken at our barn during harvest and the other taken at my work during silage harvest.

Filed Under: agriculture, travel

A Royal Weekend

November 11, 2008 By

All five of us girls have been in a youth program called 4-H.  This is a program for kids in rural areas, and are interested in things from livestock to crafts.  Being from a pig farm, we blondes were involved in swine 4-H!  Our parents are the leaders of the club, and we’ve all been in it at one time or another.  We learn about different areas of pig farming, as well as go to fairs and “show our pigs”.  I know, I know.  You’re looking at the computer screen going “What? How would you “show” your pig?”.  Don’t worry, we’ve all gotten it before.

In about March a baby pig is born, and believe me.  It’s SUPER cute!  My favourites are the spotted ones and the brown ones.  In November-just this past weekend actually, we take these pigs to the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto.  There are people from all different counties around us, and there are different 4-H clubs in these counties.  When showing a pig there is a judge, and about 10 other people in a big pen with you.  This big rectangle shaped pen has little pens surrounding three out of the four sides of it.  These little pens have gates going into the big pen, and are usually only big enough to fit you and your pig, with just enough room for the pig to turn around.  At the Royal, there are three different age groups- senior, junior and novice.  Senior is ages 16-21, junior is ages 12-16, and novice is ages 10-11, and also, this group is for people who have never shown at the Royal.  To actually “show” the pig, you and the people in your class have canes, which you hold with the curved part down.  This helps direct your pig, and keep it under control.  Your job while in the ring is to give the judge a good view of the pig you are presenting, to always keep the pig between you and the judge, and to always be looking at the judge, and know where he/she is.  Also, to always SMILE!

This past weekend I showed my pig at the Royal in Toronto.  All the other five blondes are too old now, so the only ones from our 4H club there were me and two others.  I actually met my pig the day before the show, but sometimes people meet their pigs and work with their pigs for a couple of weeks before the show, just so their pig gets used to walking with them, and being in an open space with other people and pigs.  I was incredibly lucky though, since I had a GREAT pig!  She was very affectionate towards me, and was great at walking and being directed.  I was in the senior group, and placed second!

There is also a “conformation class”, where the judge is only judging your pig, and not your showmanship.  My pig did not do very well in this class.  There is then an auction for the pigs, and the top 30 pigs in the show get auctioned off, and the price is per pound that the pig weights-mine weighed 262lbs.  My pig was 23rd in the auction, which means I was the 23rd person to auction my pig off.

All in all it was a VERY successful day, and since my mom didn’t even think I would make the auction, I’d say luck was on my side!  Here are some pictures from the day taken by our mom:

Toronto

CN Tower after leaving the Royal on Thursday night!

Me and Pancake

Me and my pig Pancake

Group photo

Group photo

In the pen with Pancake

Showing

Showing

Ribbons

Ribbons

Pancake resting after her big show

Pancake resting after her big show

Sleeping while trying to study

Sleeping while trying to study

Filed Under: agriculture, animals, farming, pigs Tagged With: , , ,

Photoshop

May 1, 2008 By 9 Comments

Pioneer Woman has me obsessed with trying to conquer Photoshop. So far I have a few features that I’m getting good at, and I’m trying lots of new things! I don’t have the full photoshop, I have Elements, which is fine for me because if I had the full version I know I would be confused! The only reason I wish I had the full version is so I could download “Actions“, Pioneer Woman has a few of her own that you can use- for free! Using an action speeds up the editing process, it does many steps in 1 click of a button, so I hear.. Here are some before and afters that some of Pioneer Woman’s fans made.

Take a look at some of my before and afters.. got any pointers?

First up: My cute cat Chase.

2nd Example: I took this during the floods we had.

3rd Example: Scott planting corn. I am alone lots during the evenings now because Scott spends his time getting field work done, spring is a busy busy time for farmers! So when I bring him dinner, sometimes I decide to do photoshoots of him planting. So very exciting. (Getting fancy in this edit, I even straightened the picture!)

Another one from the field series. I tried cropping this one. I’m not really good at cropping, I always make it look awkward. And normally I’m happy with how the picture was in the first place. This one worked though, I think.

I actually showed you this picture before.. but what I didn’t tell you was that I edited the sidewalk! See in the Before lots of stuff on the path and I erased it like magic in the 2nd one. Skills I tell ya!

So there are some of my examples. What are your favourite editing tools on photoshop? Any tricks to teach me? Anything you would have done differently in my pictures?

Filed Under: agriculture, cats, photography, photoshop Tagged With: , ,

PETA?

April 18, 2008 By 12 Comments

Congratulations all, you have come across a FiveBlondes exclusive post. No one in my crazy family knows about this, only one or two friends. I, Lauren, have decided to (try) to become a vegetarian. I know, I know, I live on a pig farm, but I’ve decided it would be a good challenge for the summer.

Speaking of summer challenges, I’ve come up with a list of things I want to accomplish this summer. Here it is:

  1. Knit socks, slippers, or mitts. With help from Oma of course
  2. Try to eat vegetarian
  3. Exercise more. This going along with numero uno, just trying to make myself healthier.
  4. Bake a themed cake. There is a story along with this one. For Christmas Ericas fiance D got a cookbook, and I was looking through it and saw these awesome cakes shaped as all different things, so I want to bake one of those. Maybe for my birthday…
  5. Learn how to drive “the pig bus”. Long story short, we have a school bus (painted) that we drive the pigs to the end of the driveway to get put on a truck, and I want to learn how to drive it. I don’t know why, I just sort of thought of it one day and decided I wanted to learn. Unfortunately this picture is not ours, but don’t you think we should paint/decorate it like this?

The Pig Bus

Luckily, our cafeteria at school has a great vegetarian/vegan menu, and an all over great cafeteria, so it shouldn’t be too hard…until I get home that is. It’s been two days and I have so far succeeded!

Filed Under: agriculture, farming, food Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Photography on the Farm

October 15, 2007 By 3 Comments

View of the road from the house:

House from the driveway:

Back of the farm with a sunset:

Filed Under: agriculture, photography

I’m a Winner!

October 10, 2007 By 3 Comments

This morning mom called my office within the first five minutes of me getting at work.

Mom: “I checked my email this morning and there was an email from your prof Owen, want me to read it to you?”

Kate: “Sure, I guess” (thinking that this will be about a course that mom was interested in and wondering why she would want to read the email to me)

Mom reading the email: “I have some good news, and because I don’t have Katelyn’s email address I’m contacting you hoping you will pass this on to her. Katelyn’s
“Dairy Days” video won a bronze award ($100) in the Canadian Farm Writers Federation annual writing and broadcasting awards last weekend”

Kate: “Woo Hoo $100!”

Well I guess the rest of the conversation doesn’t matter because woo hoo I won!

The Canadian Farm Writers Federation (CFWF) is a group of ag journalists, which includes reporters, editors and broadcasters in business and government, specializing in agricultural communications. The CFWF represents over 350 members who belong to organizations all over Canada. In conjunction with their daily reporting, they put on a competition annually, which includes categories such as “television, radio, and daily, monthly and weekly press reporting; media release; press column; press editorial and press feature.”

I won the bronze award in Television News Reporting. I made the video in my Agricultural Communications course at Guelph in my last semester there, it was one of the assignments that we had to complete. The topic assigned to me was ‘Dairy Days’, which is a program put on for Oxford County students in grade 4 to get a first hand look at dairy farming. I did research before the event (there was not very much information!), contacted people to interview, attended the event with our production team who get footage of the event and edit the video, interviewed people at the event, put together a script, taped voice overs (my fave part!), and then got to watch the final video.

My prof entered a bunch of videos from the class and amazingly enough our classes work came in 1st 2nd and 3rd! The must make him feel good as the prof.

So I’m guessing you want to see the video now right? Ok no laughing, I do look kind of silly… but here you go! And feel free to take a look around at other videos on Youtube added by “AgriComm” that our class produced, I do have another video on the site, see if you can find my other one.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hNbBYT_Oig]

If that does not work please go here DAIRY DAYS

Filed Under: agriculture, farming, life, money, university, writing

Blog Review

October 1, 2007 By 1 Comment

I recently came upon a new blog, that I felt the need to share with the world and express my love for it.

Confessions of a Pioneer Woman

This blog (updated daily) is written by a woman, who in her earlier years was city woman who went to college in Los Angelas. She moved home after college and met a man she calls ” The Marlboro Man” whom she eventually married. Marlboro Man is a cowboy rancher in Oklahoma and Ree always has interesting stories of life on the ranch. Together they have 4 adorable children.

Here’s Ree’s bibliography from her website:

“I’m Ree, a.k.a. Pioneer Woman. Welcome to my frontier!

I’m a thirty-something ranch wife, mother of four, and moderately-agoraphobic middle child who grew up on a golf course in the city. I attended college in Los Angeles and wore black pumps to work every day. I ate sushi and treated myself to pedicures on a semi-regular basis. I even kissed James Garner in an elevator once. Now I live in the middle of nowhere on a working cattle ranch. My days are spent changing diapers, chipping dried manure from boots, washing jeans, and frying calf nuts. I have no idea how I got here, but you know what? I love it. Don’t tell anyone.

I hope you enjoy my website. Here, I write about my decade long transition from spoiled city girl to domestic country wife. I post frequent audio clips of my children mispronouncing simple words and of me doing Ethel Merman impersonations. I also share delightful audio clips of different styles of burps as well as photos of my son picking his nose. I’ve been known to record phone conversations with my retarded brother, Mike. Please don’t be offended; I’m a Middle Child. And I’m just keepin’ it real.

I’ve embarrassed myself a lot. Once, I spilled a pot of hot tea on Gary Coleman’s lap.“

love taking pictures and post frequent photos of my life on a working cattle ranch. And semi-regularly, I hold “Give That Photo a Name” contests, in which my readers enter suggested photo titles for a particular photo I’ve posted. The prizes are fabulous, and I get to swim around in your creativity for a day. Don’t miss ‘em!

In my spare time, I also manage to write, take pictures of nature, and compose ridiculous poetry in an effort to chronicle this bizarre, beautiful, and often hilarious journey I’m on. Thank you for allowing me to share it with you.

Also, check out my separate food blog, The Pioneer Woman Cooks! There, I post step-by-step pictorials of all the cowboy-pleasin’ dishes I’ve had to learn to cook over the years. You’ll love ‘em.”

You gotta check this blog out, it’s official I’m hooked!

Filed Under: agriculture, blogging, farming, review
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