What country kids do for fun!

Filed Under farming, friends, photoshop, summer | 8 Comments

Our family has always been obsessed with taking pictures, one or more of us always has a camera handy to take pictures of anything that strikes our fancy! One of our fun summer activities has always been taking jumping pictures! Check out these jumping sites: livejournal, and flickr. I remember taking jumping pictures in my room in university, on the trampoline and our recent favourite in the wheat!

A few weekends ago we decided to do an impromptu photoshoot in the wheat.. so please pardon my baseball attire (Re: Short shorts) as I had just finished practice! Lauren, our married friends Laura & Matt, Scott and myself all took part (we may have had to force the guys). Here are some of my favourite pictures (not all jumping ones), stolen from Lauren’s facebook page.

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Jul

14

At least I’m a cute raccoon.

Filed Under farming, life, relationships, summer | 5 Comments

Mr. X and I had a very busy weekend. He had an urge to rearrange all of our furniture so that we could fit his New Bike! inside the house when we pick it up on Tuesday.

Did I mention he bought a bike?

So now our apartment is rearranged, providing Max with lots of stimulation for his little kitty-brain. Seriously, if you ever think your cat is getting bored with his life of being trapped in your home (especially when said home consists of 6 small rooms), just move things around. It’s like Disneyworld for cats.

Speaking of animals, Mr X finally ventured into our barn for the first time! Although we’ve been together over 5 years, up until now the barn has been one place he has adamantly refused to go. We were at the farm trading vehicles and talking to Dad when Dad suggested that we see where they will soon be building the new office and washroom (the barn has been recently majorly renovated. You might say, torn down and re-built). I immediately said YES! and we didn’t give Mr X a choice. Off we went! He wouldn’t touch any of the pigs (not even the day-old piglets), but I feel it was a major step in our relationship. I can scratch that marriage ultimatum off the list (I told him that the wedding would not go down unless he had gone into the barn. I don’t think he realized how serious I was).

On Sunday, Mr X, myself, Katelyn, Scott, Micaela and Kent went golfing. It was a beautiful day - except for the wind. Our course is often very windy and Sunday was no different. I was stupid and forgot to put on sunscreen. My legs, arms, and face are bright red. BRIGHT red…except where I was wearing my sunglasses, prompting this comment from Mr X later in the evening:

X: “You look cute.”

E: “Do I look like a cute tomato?”

X: “No…a cute raccoon.”

So there you have it. I look like a cute raccoon, slathered in aloe vera gel.

Apr

18

PETA?

Filed Under agriculture, farming, food | 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:

Knit socks, slippers, or mitts. With help from Oma of course
Try to eat vegetarian
Exercise more. This going along with numero uno, just trying to make myself healthier.
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…
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!

Oct

10

I’m a Winner!

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