A little trip back in time

One of my daughters favorite things is to go to a museum park here in town called Heritage Park. This is a pioneer village setup in the heart of our city with houses from the city and countryside from around the turn of the century. I visited once as a child and remember vividly enjoying the time spent there with Mom and Dad. Since then we have been back with our kids a time or two. The most recent visit was this past fall when Kelsey and I went and spent a very pleasant day wandering through the grounds. The pictures below are from this visit.

First we walked by the horse paddocks.

This is a sod shanty similar to the one some of our ancestors may have started their life on the Canadian prairies in.

All of the horses on the park work for their living we enjoyed seeing this team relaxing in their pasture.

There may or may not be ghosts who live here, this would be one of the spots I would hang out if I was one of them.

I grew up on the prairies, I spent hours exploring old grain elevators and seeing them dot the prairie landscape. These two pictures are one of the exterior of the elevator on the park and one taken from the interior looking down the ramp.

We lived the last few years of my life at home adjacent to a prairie ghost town that had two elevators still there when we moved there. One was partially torn down and the other was operational. The operational one was eventually sold and moved in tact to another location, the partially torn down one was eventually dynamited as a person had died when they started tearing it down and no one else wanted to take on the task.

There is a paddle wheel boat that takes visitors for a brief sail on the Glenmore Reservoir. This was the flag of the time, however I also took it thinking of my Grandma... English to the core and still considers England home decades after coming here following World War II as a war bride with my mother in tow.

We proceeded to go on the wee cruise around the lake. The following was a picture Kelsey took with my phone of a very pretty tree.

Following the boat ride we continued to wander through the park, we stopped briefly for lunch and then completed a very enjoyable afternoon.

I liked watching the staff as they went about their day in the period dress and using period equipment where applicable if possible. Because it was cool most of the fireplaces and wood stoves were burning and the smell of wood smoke was everywhere.

We didn't ride in any of the horse drawn contrivances, however we enjoyed watching them for sure. The picture below was of Mac and Cheese taking a coffee break in the stable next door to the black smith shop pictured below.

There are several interesting restored homes on the park and we enjoyed exploring those.

The one pictured to the side was one of my favorites the floor plan for the largest and most ostentatious one is pictured below. It is supposedly haunted and ghost stories abound... however they weren't in a chatty mood when we were there and so we don't have any such stories to relate.

 

Sometime I would love to write a story purely fictional with these houses and such as the back drop... who knows maybe someday should time permit. I think it would be a lot of fun, however it would also take time and currently that is a commodity I don't have a whole lot of.

This has become a rather long post... oh well it was a really fun afternoon.

The grounds close for the season and then open briefly a limited number of exhibits around Christmas. I have never been down in the wintertime, however this year might be the year to go.

The forgoing is from inside a small stone house... another of my favorites... I have a weakness for stone houses. I found the center piece of the front parlor very interesting.

Kelsey took a picture of the train, I took a picture of Mac and Cheese back at work. Then we called it a day and headed home. We were walking passed some trees when a rustling drew our attention. There looking back at us was every hunters dream...

It’s a mild, nice “Chinooky” winter morning here at the foot of the Rockies. I am only working in the office one day this week so due to having a few tenders scheduled to close I will likely be spending most of my day right here. Thought I would post a couple of brief updates this morning so that I don’t forget these adventures as the busy-ness of the week unfolds.

Friday was an awesome regular day, however both the sunrise and sunset were worthy of pictures and had a nice way of book-ending a normal day.

Sunrise the start of a new day.

Sunset the end of a normal day and a busy week

Saturday was a busy day of moving sheep, some sorting had to be done and four ewe lambs were sold to a client that needed to be delivered. Larry the ram was going to accompany them for a visit to their new home. Larry didn't think he wanted to go with them so we had a little set too! A few nicks and a pair of glasses later, Larry was successfully loaded on the trailer.

Later in the day I would also trip when running through a sheep pen and do a full on face plant in the muck. I don't think I was smiling as much after that, however it wasn't worthy of a picture so didn't take one.

Sunday after an amazing mtg and "Potluck" lunch I went to work helping pack some wool sacks with fleeces for shipping this week. Then I cleaned and prepped the barn for some new tenants. 

This makes a difficult job a whole lot easier.

This was the barn when I started (Had some ongoing residents for about a month)

All cleaned up ready for some tweaking and the new tenants can move in.

My mom has spent several weeks in Alberta this fall, she was helping us get our house in town ready for renting and also a few projects at the Sheep Ranch to make the small Cabin there feel a little more like home. We so appreciated all she did and the time she spent. One of the highlights of her visit was the three weeks she and Kelsey spent together at the Riding Academy where Kelsey works and trains.

She insisted that she wanted a family picture before she left, so last evening we all were clothed and in our right minds and having corralled the cat and the dog we managed to get a picture as follows.

Once again, downloading plans and while this is going on decided I would post a small update. I was at my second Grand Opening of a Divine showroom yesterday. The first was slightly after I joined the company 9 ¾, years ago. Last night was very spectacular as we launched what promises to be a new way of selling flooring. One client as they walked through the space said, “This feels and looks like an Art Gallery not a Flooring Store!”

The food and beverage for the Grand Opening was provided by CRAFT.

 It was very good, very nicely presented and if I had been at all on the ball I would have recorded what each one was. The standout of the evening was the Rack of Lamb pictured above as of course seeing this caught my attention due to the past few months living on the sheep ranch.

The showroom has several vignettes of several "life styles" which are to be used to select and direct people to the products we sell that fit this description. Below are some shots of vignettes to give an illustration of what we are talking about.

You can then narrow down your choices and quickly find what goes together.

Then further into the showroom the actual samples are cataloged and stored so that large sections can be viewed and selected from.

So there you have it a very abridged version of our new showroom. Please contact me for your own personal tour.

Life has been a blur to say the least… as you are aware if you are reading this, we undertook a move to a Sheep Ranch earlier this year. This has unfolded in a huge learning curve and interesting adventures that continue. I have been remiss in that I haven’t updated this in forever; however working on tenders at my desk today so maybe will post some pictures of various activities up until today!

Lets go a little back in time:

It was down right hot outside:

Time to shear sheep... a new experience and the following pictures better tell the story than my feeble typing.

This then was followed by some cleaning duties as we scrambled to get the barn cleaned before the snow arrived.

I will not post all the before and after pictures but here are a couple that help you understand why I counted this cleaning as my workout!

Before (Note it was almost to the top rail)

After... clean as can be ready for a new tenant

Soon a bobcat arrived onsite and this was then used to address the corrals and feedlots. This was surprisingly hard work as things were relatively firmly packed and took a fair bit of digging to get it loose.

The following are some sunrise pictures taken over the past months...we get some very stunning morning pictures on our way to work.

The next adventure was the process of artificially impregnating some sheep to introduce new bloodlines to the flock. This was interesting and its interesting to note that the vet who did this is flown all over the world to do the procedure that took place right on the ranch.

Breaking News! A hail storm hit the farm last night and the following are pictures of the damage. We will heal, we will repair, however let this be a lesson not to ever take Mother Nature lightly and when she gets pissy its not pretty!

The following are my pictures:

Hail in the ditch as I was driving to the farm.

The leaves and such on the road

The lawn was white and crunched underfoot.

Hail was drifted up against the back door

The front yard, not a flower left.

The shepherd checking his brothers barley crop

Not a seed left on the stem.

Fortunately this car was already destined for the scrap yard.

The siding damage to our cabin in the woods

Gloria's garden... nothing left but to dig the potato's.

First please let me introduce you to Duke, he was born when the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were visiting Canada for the first time as a couple so hence the name. Duke is a large Suffolk ram that is pretty much king of the ram pen. He really isn't a mean sort; however he does like to get fed promptly and if you get between him and the feed trough he will move you!

To better facilitate growth and wellbeing in the sheep we did a ton of sorting this weekend. The recently weaned babies were sorted and bigger ones were put together, smaller “runts” were separated to better enable them to compete for feed.

The little ewe lamb pictured below is “Nicki 2” she is #317 the first new lamb that was my father’s day gift this year. She is named after a tiny black orphan lamb that my parents gave me as a birthday gift one year. She has strong Suffolk roots and hopefully has babies next year.

One of the hard things for me has been the “deaths” that happen frequently on the farm. There are numerous contributing factors. While this is part of it, is not an easy part, I felt for a poor ewe who didn’t survive the weaning process. Everything I tried to help her was too little too late.

Now that the last round of ewes has had their babies weaned it was time to “process” them and get them turned out to summer pasture; this included several immunizations, rounds of medicine and of course pedicures (some which hadn’t had them for a long time.) It was grueling, muscle numbing work. It also was an opportunity to separate a number of “culls” from the flock. These were loaded and taken to be shipped for meat. The following show the process right from the start of the sorting process to the final weighing of the culls at the feedlot where they will be shipped from.

Kelsey has been travelling most of the summer, time at Salmon Arm, Didsbury and then a week in Kelowna predated her recent trip to Manitoba to spend the next two weeks with my Mom and some of her relatives. She did however while passing through Calgary squeeze in a ride on Arizona and there is a picture of her jumping below.

The following are pictures of her arriving in Manitoba. I understand it was a good trip although the plane was tiny, full and the flight a little bumpy.

Finally in conclusion a little touch of cuteness to complete the post. There are several barn cats that help keep the mice at bay. A few of them had kittens this summer and due to the attention of Kelsey and the shepherds grandchildren some of them are very tame. The little fellow pictured below is my favorite and always comes to say hi as we are working on chores around the front of the barn.