I am also terrible at saying NO.  I want to do everything, try everything, prove everyone wrong when they say I CANT do it, and do some more, because I think I do my best work when I have a million things to juggle.

I started this year off tell myself: “I am going to do 10 Season & Supply dinners – because doing more means your more successful: – right? WRONG. While having dinner with a couple of my best friends – they pointed out that QUALITY over QUANTITY might be the best approach (sounds obvious right?) while sometime when your treading water and just trying to stay afloat – you forget things, miss things, and don’t always see things clearly. So I’ve decided to cut back my dinners to 4 this spring/summer and they are: Dinner at the Greenhouse, Dinner in the Garden, Alberta Open Farm Days, Dinner in the Field.

This doesn’t mean that if a crazy, fun, adventurous opportunity arises that I won’t take it (chances are 99.99% that I will take it haha) but this gives me time to step back, enjoy my kids, the farm, and putting on the BEST possible Season & Supply dinners for you guys!

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Olds Town Square volunteered their space (that you must check out – its serving up pour over coffee, true buch kombucha on tap, a fun variety of fitness/yoga classes and some very cool artisan goods!) Amy & Craig (Olds Town Square’s owners were a huge help in putting this event together with us!) Our community stepped up in a big way and everything was donated for this long table fundraiser.

Here is a list of local food and beverage producers that contributed to the dinner:

Dancing Goats Farm
Micro Acres
Shirleys Greenhouse
Westway Farms Ltd.
Eau Claire Distillery

We also had 3 very creative chefs that donated their time and talent: Chef Pierre Lamielle, Chef Elycia Ross, and Chef Sam Rajapaksa. The chefs knocked the meal out of the park! The menu consisted of:

Wild Mushroom Tart
Prairie Nicoise Salad
Hand Rolled Cavatelli
Beef Barbacoa
Canola Cake

The dinner was intimate and cozy – 44 guests – and we raised $5500 for Jen and her family. Jen gave a remarkable speech. It was a great night – showing the power of community and connection. Sending all the love to everyone that participated, attended, volunteered his or her time, service, and product, it truly was a very magical evening.

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CALVING! It’s such an exciting time – 450 contented cows all about to bring new life into this world! It’s also one of the toughest seasons – unpredictable weather, arctic like temperatures, long hours, some sad moments, chores and to-do lists that never get shorter – but when you walk through a pen of mama cows with their calves you can’t help but smile and know it was all totally worth it.

Cows have fairly close to the same gestation as humans (approx. 9 months).  

Cattle also have the same cycle as humans (21days). We begin with our breeding program in April where we sort our cattle into small groups to be put out with a bull (breeding male) at pasture and then we AI (artificially inseminate) majority of the heifers (females getting pregnant for the first time). My Dad, Andie and I all have our AI’ing course so between the three of us we work together to get it done. Breeding is a time where we do a lot of observing – we need to watch if the cattle come into “heat” which means they are cycling and at peak fertility time to become pregnant.

How does one identify “heat” you might ask?

Heifers will ride one another, become sweaty, and have discharge – all identifying that they are at a peak time to get bred! Breeding runs until about mid June. Once breeding is over we bring the bulls back to their own pasture over summer – and send the girls out to the lush grass pastures on their own! We check the cattle weekly throughout summer – making sure their water supply is good and monitoring the grass conditions. We bring the cattle home generally in October (weather depending – it can be as early as end of August on a very dry year with limited grass or as late as November on a mild start to the winter and enough grass in the pasture)  We then do a preg check on them. Our Veterinarian comes with his ultrasound wand and checks each female to see if she is pregnant, how far along she is, and if everything is healthy!

From there we sort the cattle into groups by age.

First time calvers get their own pen, 2nd time calvers get their own pen as well – and the older cows go together – this keeps an even playing field for feed (older cows will beat up on the younger ones and push them away from feed) We want to focus on animal health management – being strategic about how we manage the cattle to prevent injury or illness therefore sorting them into age groups helps. Then January rolls around and we begin to have our first calves! We keep very detailed breeding records and have approximate due dates on all the cattle (cattle are also like humans in the sense that calves can come early or later than expected – that’s the beauty of nature!)

We do regular “checks” through the pens.

(Walking through to see if we see any cattle showing the signs of early labour – kinked tail, water breaking – and if things have progressed far enough – hooves!) We like to let the cows do the work but keep a close eye in case any need help (backwards calves, first time calvers sometimes need assistance) in these rare and special cases we will bring the cow into the barn and assist her in our calving pen to make sure she has a safe and healthy delivery. It’s important that the mom and baby calf are paired up good – its critical for the baby calf to get colostrum (from moms udder) in the first 4-6 hours after birth. Colostrum is nature’s way to help fight off any bugs (disease/infections) and nourish the calf. We then give the calf a tag with a number that will then become its identity the rest of its life at the farm. This helps us with our records – when we sell cattle, or need to treat them for an injury or illness – this is all recorded. Over the next month calves and their moms are fed in large pasture pens free to roam and explore – we check every calf, everyday, to make sure they are healthy! My kids love coming to work at the farm to play and watch the baby calves!

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We partnered with Arcteryx to do a farm to table dinner for them that they had to hike into! It has always been a goal of mine to do a dinner in the winter – so when this opportunity presented itself I couldn’t say no! My husband’s family has a small ranch near Bragg Creek – so I brainstormed up this wild idea to have guests snowshoe in to a secret location for a farm to table lunch Season & Supply style. Arcteryx invited 25 of their community partners, ambassadors and staff to meet at the store for 10am and dress for a winter hike to an undisclosed location for an epic day – it also happens that the polar vortex decides to roll in on the weekend of our event haha – luckily this was an event with Arcteryx (I’m not sure many other groups could handle the conditions!) We met the bus and led our excited and curious guests on an hour hike up to my in-laws house where we had an amazing farm to table lunch awaiting.

We wanted to cook some of the food over fire and my husband built me this incredible hanging fire pit that we could use for this event (and all the future events!) I got my very talented friends Chef Pierre Lamielle, and Chef Elycia Ross (Chef of Little Food Truck on the Prairie) to dream up a menu with me – a whimsical play on camp food with our local Alberta ingredients – our menu included: smoked Alberta Rainbow Trout, fire burnt greenhouse grown peppers, tomatoes Westway Farms Beef Meatballs, seared red cabbage, wheat risotto and for dessert apple cobbler, brown sugar rye biscuit, and blue spruce ice cream. Pierre and Elycia are crazy talented and completely grasp the farm to plate concept so it is always a pleasure working with them. We also had a couple fantastic breweries (Banded Peak Brewing and Born Colorado Brewing) and a cider (Lekker Cider) to go with each course – and of course coffee from my fav local Calgary coffee boys – Calgary Heritage Roasting Co.

It was an incredible day!

A real feel good time with great people, great food, great conversation, and a complete sense of community. It was a good reminder to myself why I do my dinners – and it got Season & Supply’s 2019 off to a pretty dang good start!

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My dad started Westway Farms Ltd. 40 years ago – he was a city kid from Calgary that fell in love with farming when he would spend his summers in Manitoba with his grandpa at their farm. Farming became his passion and he bought his first piece of land in the Didsbury area when he was 24. From there things grew and he was able to purchase a small farm where he began to run a few cows, pigs, and grain farm.

In 1992 he decided to build a seed cleaning plant and become a certified seed grower and things have just snowballed since. Westway Farms Ltd. now runs about 450 cow/calf pairs, feeds and finishes 400 head, and grain farms about 7000 acres.

I am the oldest of 4 kids (followed by my brother Will, sister Andie, and youngest sister Josie) Currently Will, Andie, my husband and myself all work full time at the farm – along with 5 full time year round employees – and of course my dad – he won’t ever retire. So it really is a family affair and we all mesh and meld together to make it work.

Each of us brings different strengths and attributes to the table  – also working with the ebb and flow of changing seasons and changing personal lives (aka kids, pregnancies, university) we all adapt and we all help each other to get through – even though we may drive each other crazy at times – I can’t imagine a different life.

Farm life is so fulfilling and it’s exceptional to watch my kids grow up in this life. We take pride in environmental stewardship, animal husbandry, and growing food for people. If you have any questions you would like to ask a farmer please don’t hesitate to reach out!

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My husband and I finally moved from our tiny one bedroom loft above the shop at the main family farmyard and purchased our own 160acres with a house! It feels like so much space! We have big dreams for our own farm that we will slowly work towards and will keep you updated on as they happen – but for now we are fulltime farming at the main Westway Farms Ltd. yard and are looking forward to an exciting year!

2018 was a learning year for me with Season & Supply.

Learning how to juggle being a mom of two, a farmer, a wife, taking over some office duties at the main farm and running Season & Supply in the mix of all that! I need to start by saying it really does take a village – I could not do it all without the support of my family (husband, parents, in-laws, siblings, friends, extended family). We hosted 6 dinners last year and each one was beautiful with several positive takeaways and a few learnings.

This year I’ve made it my mission to bring it back to the farm.

All the dinners Season & Supply hosts this year will be right at the farm! We will be hosting at different farms this year – giving our guests a wide range of agricultural experiences and learning opportunities – we want to close the gap between producers and consumers. Keep your eye out for tickets because we plan to release them soon and you won’t want to miss out!

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