The Felfie Bandwagon--Hop aboard y'all!

What started out as teenage girls taking selfies and posting them on Facebook has morphed into a whole new trend.  Enter the #felfie!  What is a "felfie" you might ask?  It's a farmer taking a selfie. What started as a photo contest with the Irish Farmers Journal for Ireland's greatest farmer selfie, then exploded around the world.

I think all farmers who engage in social media should join the felfie trend.  Why?  It's good for the industry. It shows consumers that farmers care for their food.  It is putting a face to the farm and making the connection to their food more personal.  If you're a farmer and reading this and would like to put your #felfie out there, email it to me and I will post it!

To read other's posts about felfies click here and here

The Furnace vs. the Freezer

Here in Alberta, we are known for our cold temperatures, and expect it to be cold during winter.  The winter of 2013-14 hasn’t been an easy one for temperatures.  From November until the middle of January we saw very cold temperatures and wind chills.  We’ve had a bit of a reprieve for about 15 days here, that has brought us temperatures that are above zero, but when you normally deal with -37C (-34.6F) for lows and your daytime high of -21C (-5.8 F), a few days above zero feels like a Tropical breeze (not really, but it does feel nice)!  When we look on the other side of the globe and hear of people dealing with temperatures above +40C (104F) our deep freeze doesn’t sound too bad!

While reading other farm and ranch blogs, I’ve made friends with Mandy, a fellow cattle farmer from north-west New South Wales, Australia.  Mandy writes an amazing blog called Rocky Springs Rambles, and this week, Mandy and I have gotten together to do a comparison of what each other has to deal with working outside in extreme temperatures.(Numbers in brackets are Fahrenheit for the folks that don’t do metric).

Official temperature: Australia: 42.5 (108.5); Canada -18.2 (-0.76), add the wind chill factor and you get -27 (-16).  Honestly Mandy, I think the only time in my life when I felt the weather THAT hot was went I was in Phoenix, Arizona in June!  I complain when the weather gets above 28 (82.4) here!

Temperature on the top of your hat

-15.3 (4.4)was the temperature at the top of my hat

In Australia: 49.2 (120)

Temperature underneath your hat

-13.8 (7) was the temperature underneath my hat

In Australia: 42 (107)

Water in the cattle troughs

14.5 (58) The troughs (seen here) are heated

In Australia: 33.8 (93)

Sitting with the cattle

Behind the cattle windbreaks: -18.1 (-0.5)

Under a shade tree in Australia: 40.6 (105)

Soil Temperature:

In Canada our soil is buried under 120 cm of snow!  So I’m calling it frozen.

In Australia: 37 (98)

Dog Pool in Australia: 30 (86)

No dog pool in Alberta in January!

Kitchen: Canada 20.8 (69) and that’s with the furnace running!

Australia: 38.1 (100)

Cold water tap in bathroom:

Canada: 16 (60)

Australia: 37.3 (99)

The thought of 40+ (104) degrees in January is nice, for a few minutes.  Sorry, Mandy, I don’t think I could live in the “furnace”.  Just too warm for me!  But I do hope your temperatures moderate a bit & that you all get some much needed rain!