we're from the country and we like it that way (even if others don't)

Alberta, rural Alberta in particular, gets a pretty bad rap a lot of the time. Alberta: home to gun-totin', tory-votin', Jesus-lovin' rednecks.

Which isn't to say that we haven't earned the reputation - Albertans have a bad habit of acting a little ... back-woodsy, shall we say, when the world is looking. But it's become habit for the rest of Canada, when the heat is on, to turn and say "at least we're not Alberta."

In Alberta, of course, this has turned into something different; "Blame Alberta" has turned into "Blame the Rural-folk."

The rural areas, some would have you believe, are filled with inbred, cross-burning, bible-thumping, Conservative-loving, ignorant, ill-educated, seldom-washed, gap-toothed hicks. All rural people drive huge, polluting trucks with a gun-rack in the back, believe the earth to be 6000 years old and flat, and wait for the local preacher to tell them how to vote. Rural evenings are spent at bush-parties, book-burnings, and tent-meetings.

All evils can be directly related to the population of rural Alberta: homelessness is the result of country-folks right-wing attitudes; numerous Conservative majorities the result of rural ignorance; private health care the brain-child of greedy country-dwellers.

Rural areas are devoid of culture, the people illiterate, the towns and villages suspicious of outsiders.

When spending time in one of Alberta's urban centres, rural people must make a decision: completely renounce one's roots, or face ostracism by enlightened city-dwellers.

Reasonable people realize what a load of horse-turds statements like these are, but reasonable people can be hard to find in a pinch.

There certainly are many people in this neck-of-the-woods who do fit the stereotype, but many more live in the shining cities and all across Canada. Are we to believe that there are fewer Conservatives in Calgary and Edmonton than in the rest of the province? Can it possibly be true that there are fewer Creationists in the cities than out of them? Am I to believe that urban centres are not plagued by racism and prejudice?

When I was in university I spent an awful lot of breath defending my rural background and the baggage that comes with it. Many felt I must be relieved to have escaped the ignorant country-side. When I returned to the farm I suspect more than a couple of my friends questioned my actions: I suspect they're still waiting for me to come crawling back to the city.

The issue goes beyond personal annoyance, however. It seems that nine times out of ten the people who denounce the rural areas loudest are staunch supporters of Alberta's non-right parties. What rural Albertan would vote for someone who holds them in disdain? The Conservatives, for all thier faults, know that rural voters hold the balance of power and to win you need to court that vote.

Be ye warned, people of the left, change will not come without the rural vote.

Thus, dear reader, I complete my post. Regards from Alberta's brush plain.

you want to see dry? i'll show you dry!

As with farm communities everywhere, the big topic out on the brush plain this spring has been the weather.

That mythical 'average year' continues to elude us and every one's feeling the pinch - after several years of excessive rain, sodden fields, and cloudy days we've slipped back into the drought cycle - clear blue skies and never-ending wind that dries out your lips and carries the topsoil to Saskatchewan.

This has been a year of dust storms and fire bans. But we seem to missing something ... oh yeah, almost forgot, "Cue the locusts!"

Dear reader, if I seem to have been inconsistent with my posts lately, I apologize - when you take on the role of a farmer you tend to tie yourself a little more to the elements. "Make hay while the sun shines" applies equally well to spring seeding and fall harvesting. Clear sunny days mean the rush is on to put a crop in the ground.

I fully expect this summer is going to break my heart - if this weather pattern continues we can expect the grain to fail and the hay to be a wreck as well. But we'll get through it.

Because, as they say, there's always next year.

the thing we all need to learn a little (myself included)

http://www.ted.com/talks/joachim_de_posada_says_don_t_eat_the_marshmallow_yet.html

alright, who broke the school system?

I'll be completely and brutally honest with you. I don't like my job. I don't hate my job, but I certainly don't like it.

Let me explain something - I like teaching. I really like teaching. I like sitting down with kids and helping them puzzle through the challenges that face them daily. I like working with them while they learn to think for themselves and challenge the world around them. I love getting to open their minds to new possibilities.

But that's not what my job is. My job title is 'teacher,' but in essence my job is to transmit the values and culture dictated to me by the ministry of education. I am to come to work and do as I am told and I am judged by how well I play the game. I am an employee of the state: as such I am at the state's mercy.

The point is this: teachers, and by extension the public education system, are not judged on their abilities; they are not judged on how their students fare in the world; they are not judged on whether or not they have tried to improve the world. Teachers are judged on the quality of their classroom decorations; they are judged on how long they stay at school after work; they are judged on how much jargon they can use in a single sitting.

Education (and I would argue this goes doubly for public education) has little to do with bettering the world and improving the lives of our children. It has everything to do with appearances.

Teachers really do care. Schools are not inherently evil. The majority of people working in the system do so because they believe they are doing right. Their intentions are good, but the road to hell remains paved with good intentions.

My wife, who now works in a school, and I both came to the realisation at about the same time that schools are not a happy place. Nobody really wants to be there - teachers are, in large part, miserable and count the hours down. Some, like their students, spend their time counting down the days they're done. In Dante's inferno the school would have been located somewhere around the first circle of hell.

I'm young. I don't claim to have all the answers or be able to fix everything. But I'm not stupid. I can recognize when something is not working and public education is not working. It looks good. It gives the impression that something is being done without actually addressing the problems.

As for myself I'm going to go and teach some students. To hell with appearances.

Happy wednesday from Alberta's brush plain.

always look horses, gift or otherwise, in the mouth

Have you ever promised yourself that you would limit your actions? For example, "I'm only going to eat one piece of pie," or "I'm only going to pick a fight with one skinhead," and the next thing you know you're surrounded by empty pie tins and the entire Aryan Nation (Edmonton Chapter). That's sort of what our chicken adventure has turned into.

It doesn't help that the woman we buy our chickens from - our dealer, if you will - is a junkie herself. She just can't help it, she wants the whole world to experience the joy of poultry. You go to buy five chicks, you leave with seven and an order for turkeys.

I can think of far worse things that a person can overdo than acquiring poultry: I don't think that the seven new bantam chicks in our office are going to lead us into a life of crime.

Horse trading, on the other hand, might be a good gateway, if you will, to the criminal underbelly of agriculture.

Whilst returning from our chicken acquisitions we decided to drop in at the auction mart where we knew there was a horse sale taking place. I like horse sales: I understand horse people, their mistrust of other human beings; their strangely warped hats and manure crusted clothes - it's an atmosphere I'm comfortable in. But some of the claims made by horse traders would make a carny blush.

"This here is a gen-u-wine pure-bred thoroughbred mare! Papered and all! Let's start the bidding at five hunnerd!" When said beastie is trotted into the ring you behold a dirt encrusted little nag with a stringy mane and a touch of founder. The ancestry is more along the lines of zebra/shetland pony cross. It would cost at least five hundred to convince someone to take her off your hands.

But people bid - it's like a sickness. Horses trot into the ring, hands jump into the air, prices rise steadily and someone becomes the lucky new owner of thier very own hayburner.

Afterwards you hear everyone trying to justify it to themselves: "I figure I'll feed her up and make a good horse outta her" or " He's just gotta grow a little bit and then he'll clean up real good."

Which is why every other farmstead in Alberta has an unbreakable, unrideable, fleabitten equine living behind the barn.

"But Stu," you say, "how can you speak so harshly about those who just want to have a horse around the place? Don't you want the same thing?"

Too true, dear reader. Too true.

There's one thing has kept me honest so far - our stock trailer isn't road worthy and I don't relish the thought of paying a hefty fine when caught with my illegal rig.

But yes, I too sit there, my eyes glazed over, my hands twitching, trying my damndest not to bid for everything that comes into view; wondering if the auctioneer mistook that involuntary twitch as a bid (important lesson learned - do not take a talkative Italian with you to the auction market: it's liable to end in financial ruin).

It's true that I want to have a couple horses around the farm yard: Preferably rideable ones though - horses you can saddle up any day and not have to worry about filing a flight plan before hand.

Experience has taught me this - a few years ago my family bought a nice little mare at auction. "Broke an' all" they said, "this here's a real nice horse." And she was - a nice little palomino mare, friendly and clean.

When it came time to throw a saddle on her, though, her Jekyll and Hyde personality came out. Our nice little mare turned into a ball of tightly wound rubber bands, a ball of rubber bands that exploded when I hopped astride.

They say when you get bucked off you should just get back on again. Although generally good advice, a guy just sometimes has to admit he's beat. After a couple dozen trips through the air we decided to give the original owners a call.

Turns out she had been broke and ridden (about six years before) but had spent the past few years on pasture with her foals.

I had to go back to college the next week: me being the only one with the guts to climb up on her meant that, next horse sale, our nice little mare returned to the auction.

Who knows, perhaps some poor sod became the proud owner of a "former Kentucky derby winner" that day.

animal based musings

At a time when some people are concerned about swine flu, Kayla and I seem to have come down with chicken fever.

Having managed to sustain our little flock of chickens for a few months we've decided that it is high time to add a few more into the mix. Five more to be exact.

Of course, this means that we will, again, have chickens as our house quests. It also means that we will, again, have to deal with the late night cheeping, scratching, squawking, etc that comes with having such creatures as guests.

Truth be told, I really don't mind.

As this adventure continues we're learning that it's really nice to have lots of living things around. When the cats first came to live with us we were wary - neither of us are what you would call cat people, but pretty soon we were glad to have the extra bit of companionship. When the first batch of chickens arrived we both asked ourselves what we'd gotten into, but we quickly learned how much fun having little feathered monsters around can be.

I've always been an animal lover. When I lived in Edmonton I found the hardest part of it all was the lack of contact with dogs or cats. Now that I'm working in a school I find one of the frustrating aspects of the job is that I can't bring the dog with me (when I'm farming he usually rides with me in the tractor or truck). Animals really do make life easier to bear.

Of course, that means that I have to work pretty hard to restrain myself from bringing home every dog-to-a-good-home or elderly-horse-looking-for-retirement-pasture that I see or hear about - I could easily turn into that guy who drives around in a pickup with fifteen dogs riding in the back.

Maybe I need a change of work. They say that most people switch careers a good seven or eight times in their life; perhaps I should find one that allows dogs.

If you happen to come across a job listing advertising $50 000 a year and dogs permitted, let me know.

Who knows, maybe it would be fun to say I let my job go to the dogs.

westron wind, when wilt thou blow/ that the small rain down can rain?

It seems that it this part of the world most people can recall their grandparents' stories of drought, grasshoppers and poverty from the depression. For those of us who grew up in this part of Alberta those stories are particularly realistic, because to a certain extent we've lived them ourselves.

My junior high and high school years were marked by drought - severe, endless, soul sucking drought. Summers when the temperatures would sit at 40 degrees Celsius or higher for days on end; when the grasshoppers ate the crops down to dirt. Winters when dust instead of snow drifted in the yard. Springs when the grass refused to grow and farmers had to sell of the herds they'd worked years to build up. Other years when we couldn't sell our cattle even if we wanted to because of BSE.

I think that, in a way, I was lucky to have lived through that. It taught me to appreciate things like rainy days and my generally comfortable existence.

But at the same time it left a mark on all of us, a mark best defined as an extreme fear of drought.

East-central Alberta is dry country - there's no way to deny that: this is the peak of Palliser's Triangle, people are not meant to live here. But every spring day that passes without rain raises my pulse a little. Every cloud that drifts by makes me angry. Images of grass fire, grasshoppers, and grazed down pastures pop into my head and have me wondering just how one performs a rain dance.

This spring has been a dry one. At present there is a giant flock of geese grazing the stubble next to my house because there's no water in the sloughs. The roads are lined with blackened grass.

Yesterday a little rain fell - enough to dampen the dust, but not much more - and I've fallen back into an old habit: checking the forecast every time I see a cloud approach.

So far the predictions look promising - thunderstorms for today and tomorrow, a little more rain for the weekend. Experience teaches that weather forecasts have about as much accuracy as the average magic eight ball, but beggars can't be choosers.

Dear reader, if by chance you should watch the weather report this evening and see a forecast of rain for that big empty space on the Alberta map, stick an ear out the window. If you hear a wild whoop of joy coming from that general direction have faith that the weatherman was right.

If you need me, you'll find me dancing in the rain.

may day, may day!

Today is a hard day for me to spend at work. Today is the day that I want to march with my comrades in the streets. Dance around a maypole or two. Burn the capitalist swine in effigy.

May day is a beautiful holiday that has sadly been allowed to dwindle.

Some people may claim it's because the class structure of our society has changed - perhaps, the working class is certainly not what it used to be and the majority, in Canada at least, tend to come under the heading of 'middle class,' an umbrella term designed to make us sound a little more affluent than we actually are.

On May Day, those of us not counted among the rich and powerful get to count our victories and commemorate our losses - victories and tragedies generally ignored by history texts and glossed over by more conservative ideologues. I like reflecting on the fact that at one time people were passionate about the politics that govern their lives, that ordinary individuals were able to express thier anger and frustration towards the abuses of the ruling classes and, through sacrifice and determination, improve thier circumstances.

But years of moderate success have lulled us into a state of inaction. In the third world and the cities of Europe the hardships have remained harder and the booms shorter-lived than those we have experienced in Canada. We've bought into the system and have seperated ourselves from our global compatriots: we've forgotten what we came from which is dangerous because if we misstep we may find ourselves there again.

I wish I could march in the May Day parades in Edmonton. I wish I could spend time with friends and comrades who, like me, think we need to remember this important part of our past.

Unfortunately I am faced with the reality that my present occupation makes taking a day off in solidarity risky - as an employee of the state, and one without a permanent contract at that, one needs to keep his or her nose clean. I have commitments to keep, and such is the trap that many of us have caught ourselves in.

And so my brothers and sisters, I wish you a happy May Day. Go outside; meet with your comrades and family; put your feet up and have a beer. Today we celebrate that we are the ones who still have to work for a living.

It's still essentially true that we have nothing to lose but our chains.

Workers of the world, unite!

In solidarity from Alberta's brush plain.