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
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Oct
1
Blog Review
Filed Under agriculture, blogging, farming, review | 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!
Sep
6
Look out world here they come!
Filed Under Family, Wedding, farming, friends, life, money, music | Leave a Comment
Wedding Update: The wedding invitations are in the mail! Last night I sat myself down, printed labels out, stamped (those are our stamps above, so cute right?!) and sealed them! I think the invitations look pretty good and I hope that others agree. I’m very excited to get the reply cards back!
In total we are inviting around 216 people, hoping that only 200 can come, since that is the amount of people who can fit in the hall. We have a great mixture of Scott and my friends, my relatives, Scott’s relatives and a few of our parents friends. Most of the people coming are from Ontario, but we do have family coming from Alberta and hopefully a friend from Vancouver if she can take time off of school and make it down!
On Saturday is our Stag and Doe. A Stag and Doe (aka: Jack and Jill. Buck and Doe) is a party held by the bridal party, which is, I guess, a kind of fund raiser for the bride and groom. But in reality it is an excuse for family and friends to get together before the wedding to have a great big party! Stag and Does are very common in our area, and may sound weird to the rest of the world but they are so fun! Ours will be held in the driveshed on the farm and we are having a live band play and roasting a pig. We have the driveshed all cleaned out, and cemented the last part that needed to be cemented. Scott and his dad are buying beer today and we still need to go out and get all the rest of the alcohol.
Dress Update: Yesterday my Oma and my mom spend some time attaching the lace to my dress. I was excited to see it and even more excited to try it on! Sadly it is a bit short so mom will have to add a few more lace pieces to the top of the dress to lengthen the bottom. But overall it looks great, but wow it is hot! It is a good think the wedding is in October because I don’t think I could stand to be in the dress in the heat. I would be a sweaty mess, yes that is a nice image isn’t it. No dress pictures until October but if you check out my mom’s blog she does updates about the dress once and a while.
Aug
23
The case of the smelly PIG-NAPPING!
Filed Under Family, agriculture, farming, life, news, pigs, random, weird | Leave a Comment
I was reading some news articles on cbc.ca and this one jumped out at me:
Thieves carried off 22 pigs in compact car, say police
WOW. To sum up the story for you, a pair of guys (aged 19 and 20) stuffed 550 kgs (thats about 1200 lbs) of loud, dirty, smelly pigs into a compact car. They ate one (I hope they cooked it well) and sold the rest to “unsuspecting customers”.
We grew up on a pig farm (three of us still live at home), and I for one find this story completely absurd. Our parents would never have purchased pigs from two young guys in a compact car. I don’t know any farmers around here who would get involved with such a weird scam.
It kind of reminds me of a running joke around our home when we were younger. A friend or relative would knock on the door and then open it right away (we’re classic Canadians who leave our doors unlocked 24/7) and yell “Helloooo!” Typically, someone would yell back “go away! We don’t want any encyclopedias!”
And finally, it seems a though this is not the first time this has happened to this farmer! Thieves once butchered two pigs right in his barn and made off with the meat. I wonder if they were trained as butchers? More about the story here:
Pig-napping case angers N.B. farmer
