I hear wedding bells!

One of my best friends in the whole wide world is getting married.  And I have the distinct honour of being a bridesmaid.  Which means – wedding planning!

Not everyone gets as excited about planning a wedding or an event as I do. When you ask a bride (or groom) about how the planning of their wedding is coming along, you often hear “I’m so stressed!”  But it certainly doesn’t have to be that way.

My advice, when it comes to planning a wedding – or any event for that matter – is to create a plan and stick to it.  In event planning circles we call it a ‘critical path’.  It’s a detailed road map that outlines what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and who is going to do it.

For planning a wedding, this could be as simple as getting a calendar and marking down all the important tasks and due dates.  I generally use an excel spreadsheet.  Or, it could just be a list in the back of a notebook.   It really doesn’t matter as long as you have it all written down in one place and you refer to it often, and update and revise as necessary, as you move forward with your plans.

Once you have your plan in place, all the little tasks that can cause brides stress won’t be  as overwhelming. You can see clearly when each task needs to be done – and it helps you determine what task you can delegate  to your finance, bridal party and family and friends who have offered to help.  From their perspective, it helps to clarify their roles and responsibilities and hopefully you can avoid any miscommunication.  Most importantly – it feels great when you can put a big check mark next to a completed task.

If even the thought of planning your wedding overwhelms you, or you don’t know where to start, consulting an event and wedding planner might be a good first step. Event planners can help guide you through the planning process, help you select and negotiate with vendors, and make sure you have the wedding of your dreams.

3 year old boys like trucks.

They just do.  In fact, anything with a steering wheel, an engine, or giant tires will grab their interest immediately.   And it’s not just 3 year old boys.  My husband, at age 37, has the same fascination.  You should have seen him when we got a new lawn tractor.

We have three nephews, two of whom turned 3 years old this week.  Since the kids have more than a million toys already (ok, I’m exaggerating, but anyone who has been to the home of a 3 year old lately knows what I mean), we’ve decided to start being the cool aunt and uncle who take them places and do things with them rather than buying them toys that just clutter up the house.   So, we’re taking the kids to Monster Jam in Hamilton on November 21st.

I’m not entirely sold on the concept.  Big trucks with giant wheels that drive over top of and crush stuff?  Is that really something people find interesting for two plus hours?

Apparently, it is.  And it’s big.  Huge.  Stops on the Monster Jam circuit include Helsinki Finland, Mexico City, and everywhere from Tampa to Hamilton, Ontario in North America.   They sell upwards of 3.5 million tickets every year.

I guess 3 year old boys (and 37 year old boys) everywhere love trucks.

Our nephews, Erik and Tyler, taking a spin on the John Deere Gator. Only 13 more years til they get their lisence!

Well, it’s been a while.

But I’m back. And it feels great!

I took a bit of a break from my studies in the Diploma in Agriculture Communications program to deal with a few of the curveballs that life threw my way.

The only thing that stands between me and another piece of paper to frame and hang on my wall is an internship, which I’m delighted to be doing with Andrew Douglas at McCormick Global and Len Kahn at Marketing 911. I’ve got two really interesting projects on the go – first is a writing assignment for Top Crop magazine and secondly, a ‘white paper’ on the status of the ag media in Canada.

Not only am I back into the swing of my studies, but I’ve made a change in my career as well. After nearly six years (where did the time go?) I’ve left UofG to start a private consulting and freelance writing business. It’s only been six weeks, but I’ve been keeping myself pretty busy with project work with the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association, writing for the Ontario Pork Producer magazine, and I’ll be working with the Ontario Grain Farmers and Farmers Feed Cities at the Royal Winter Fair.

This all leads me back to my agricultural roots, and I’m so happy to be here! Today, when I was sitting around the farm kitchen table interviewing a young farmer about his agri-ventures, I knew I had made the right decision (even though it was a scary one).

I’m not about to leave my 10 years+ experience in the not-for-profit and charitable sector behind – I’m also available-for-hire to plan events, work on communications projects, assist with strategic planning and conduct volunteer management audits and reviews.

Here’s to new beginnings!

I grew up listening to CKNX radio in Wingham, Ontario.   CKNX AM radio, a country music station, serves Huron, Bruce, Grey and Perth counties, communities that are primarily rural and agricultural.  As such, the newscasts have a large proportion of agriculture stories.  After lunch everyday, most farm families in midwestern Ontario turns on the radio to hear the daily markets, the weather forecasts and of course, the local funeral announcements.

Unfortunately, I don’t get reception of CKNX in my home or car, but sometimes will tune in on my computer at work to get my ‘fix’ of local, homegrown news,  thanks to livestreaming audio on the internet.  But while travelling in my car, or listening to the radio at home, it’s Country 95.3, a country music station that broadcasts out of Toronto.

The radio personalities on these stations are definitely urban, and rarely do you hear any agriculture news – except for national news stories like bird flu, mad cow disease, or the recent tainted pet food scare.  And when they do talk about agriculture, I generally find myself cringing at some of the misinformation about agriculture that gets shared on the radio.

I was surprised today, however, to find out that Country 95.3 has partnered with the Canadian International Farm Show, being held at the International Centre in Toronto February 5-7.

Visitors to the station’s website can enter a contest to win a Kubota RTV.  To enter,     listeners have to answer 5 trivia questions about food technology.  It’s great to see a station with a mainly urban audience promoting an agricultural show, but also designing a promotion that can help educate their listeners about Canadian agriculture!

Promoting local…

The last few months have been busy around my household, not only with the usual pressures of work and participation in the first cohort of UofG’s Diploma in Agricultural Communications, but also in the planning of a big event – my wedding – May 3rd 2008.

The last couple weeks we’ve been putting a lot of effort into planning the wedding, and one night while planning out the dinner menu with my Mom (who will be doing all the cooking for 200+ guests), I realized that the wedding could be an opportunity to educate some urban folks about agriculture and about the importance of buying, and eating, locally. You see, my fiance, Steve, was born and raised in Kitchener-Waterloo, and the majority of his friends and family, along with some of my friends from University, are all urbanites with very little connection back to the farm.

Planning out the menu, I realized that the many of the ingredients for the dinner will be coming from local suppliers – the beef and chicken from local farmers, processed at a local meat packing plant. The potatoes are being purchased from a mennonite family down the road from my parents. Butter and sour cream can be purchased from the Gay Lea plant in Teeswater. It will be too early in the season for a lot of fresh Ontario-grown vegetables, but we can get some hot house tomatoes from a small, local greenhouse for the salads. Add to that the Ontario wines that we will be serving at dinner, and the live plants from a local greenhouse for decorating the hall, and the wedding could be a “buy local, eat local” opportunity to educate some urban consumers.

The challenge will now be to come up with a way to share this information, keeping within the bounds of wedding etiquette. I don’t want to come at them with a “hit-them-over-the-head” approach. But if I can promote the local produce and connect them to the farmers who produced it – some of whom will be at the wedding – then it will be a worthwhile endeavour.

Howick Fall Fair – A Cut Above

Ontario’s fall fairs are known for displays of fresh produce, livestock shows, cotton candy, ferris wheels, and hair cuts. Hair cuts?

My 19 year old cousin, Trevor, has been growing his hair for the past 2 years. While we assumed it was just a tremendous teenage effort to tick off his dad, he did have more altruistic motives. At this year’s fair, Trevor auctioned off sections of his hair to be cut off to make wigs for people with cancer – and to raise money for the Canadian Cancer Society at the same time. With pledges from the community, the auction, and the last minute participation of several other fair-goers, this endeavour raised close to $2500 for the Cancer Society.

Always looking for new ways to engage the public and to get young people involved, the Howick Agricultural Society hopes that this will become a yearly event at the fair.

Foot and mouth strikes the UK… again

The summer of 2001 was supposed to be my triumphant return to the UK following my summer abroad on Junior Farmer exchange, when foot and mouth disease struck the UK countryside. This devastating disease essentially immobilized most of rural England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. With many of my friends’ farms quarantined, agriculture shows cancelled and young farmer events and activities on hold, I decided to wait until the outbreak was over and instead, went to Panama with some girlfriends. There are definitely some stories to tell about that trip, but that’s for a different sort of blog…

Six years later, foot and mouth disease is again a problem affecting farmers all across the UK, with several outbreaks in Surrey over the past couple weeks. Though this recent outbreak will not be affecting any of my travel plans in the near future, I am thinking about more than just myself and the effect that it has upon British farmers – including many of my friends – who have yet another setback to deal with. 26 European countries have moved to ban imports of British meat, and the UK’s National Farmers’ Union has reported that the crisis will cost the industry 10 million pounds per day (~20 million dollars). That’s a huge blow to an agriculture industry that is still dealing with the effects of the last foot and mouth crisis and the BSE crisis of the late 90s.

The Outdoor Farmshow

Our first assignment was to visit Canada’s Outdoor Farmshow to learn how to be “photo journalists”. The goal was to capture the essence of the show through photographic images. I’m not sure how well I did, but here’s a sample!

The first words…

Welcome! This weblog has been established to chronicle my experiences as a member of the first class of University of Guelph’s graduate diploma in agricultural communications. This is the only program of its kind in North America, and I’m very excited to be a part of the program.