Smoky Lake Pumpkin Festival!!

In less than 24 hours over 5000 people will decend on our little town for a weekend of mayhem. Woohoo!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUuZDNgdn1I&NR=1 

You can shake your head if you want, but you know you wish you could see it this weekend!!

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YpNhFWn1gs&noredirect=1

 The fun starts tomorrow evening with an art show and wine tasting next door in the Ukanian Hall!  

Work photos!

i finally got around to taking some photos at work on Friday too.  I'll take more next week, as I'm on a one hour lunch.

 This is the processing room.  All the cones come here first until we decide what's happening with them.  Some collections are for industrial use (oil/mining companies can request or buy them for reclamation), some collections are just for our conservation collections (I'm in charge of this now) and some get split into both.  Some are from our breeding orchards for research.  Some have enough cones that we can send them to the industrial nursery next door (> 1 hectalitre) and the smaller ones we clean ourselves.

 These are the Black Spruce (Picea mariana) cones I counted last week.  They are from one of our clone breeding orchards.  There are a few clones and many trees for each clone.  We monitor the number of cones, height, growth rate etc of the trees.  Don't get excited about the clones.  I did at first but it's not as bad as it sounds.  It's a long explanation though.

 And these are Red Pine (Pinus resinosa) that I counted last week as well.  And yes, they are VERY sticky!  Geez, I thought we dressed down at the MSB.  You have no idea...

 And these are some of the Black Spruce waiting for me to count them.

 We are keeping a few of the Black Spruce cones out of the bulk collection because we don't have much separate seed from these ones for research.

 These are Limber Pine (Pinus flexilis) that arrived in my first week.  These were picked early because we need to beat the birds and squirrels.  But some species can be harvested a little early and matured, as long as the embryo is more than 50% of the entire seed length.

 And this is the DC room where we  mature the seeds.  We also use it later in the year for the seedlings, hence the name 'dormancy conditioner'.  It's kept at 15C and the humidity is constantly trying to come down to 65%, although with all the new cones coming in, it's been near 100% lately.  We don't have a dry room because we don't need it!  Happily, once the cones are picked and matured if needed, they dry down to ambient (around 40% RH) and over the course of seed cleaning the ambient drops to about 20% RH near Christmas.  Perfect!  In fact last year they were a little slow because they were shorthanded and the last few seeds they cleaned after Xmas were possibly a little TOO dry at around 4%MC.  Eczema here I come.

 This is one of the 5 glasshouses belonging to us.  Not used right now obviously but soon.

 Just to show the 14 glasshouses belonging to the commercial nursery next door.  It used to all be government but in their infinite wisdom, they privatised some of it about 10 years ago.

And this is the view of the admin building from my building.  There are around 10 people in this building, including my bosses.  

My building.  Called the tech building by us.  6 of us work here but Karen and I are the only two that work in the labs.  The rest are pickers, glasshouse keepers and database...people. 

Anyway, I'm off to make pumpkin cookies for my NEW colleagues.  Eat your heart out!  Have a good week.

Iron Horse Trail

Walking on the Iron Horse again today.  Geez, I'm outta shape now.  8 hours a day up and down cliffs in Germany but I was knackered after 4 hours today on a flat trail!  Need to fix that.  of course it was a lovely 15C in Germany and it was 30C here today.  Yah, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Anyway, took some photos.  Enjoy! (the geese photos didn't exactly work well)

On the way home from the Ukranian dinner...

Last night i went to a Ukranian dinner at the village hall in Bellis.  It is hailed as one of the main events of the year, so i was very excited.  Plus I love perogies.

I have to admit....I won't be going again.  I would have been perfectly happy with a spoonful of perogies and some salad.  Instead what I got was MANY spoonfuls of perogies (because I had to try all of them) plus starch after starch after starch.  And then if I did have room to squeeze salad on the plate, it was swimming in caesar salad dressing.  All this because I cleverly told the ladies I hadn't had much Ukranian food.  So then I had to sit and eat it all.  I felt like I was going to hurl by the time I got home.  By the look of the hundreds of people there, I think they eat like this all the time!


Anyway, although the dinner was a small disaster, on the ride home the woman giving me a lift took me to Mons Lake, just north of Smoky.  So I took a few snaps and then we passed a buffalo farm!  Only one near the road and we think she might have been a late pregnant female.  Anyway, enjoy!

yah, sorry

OK, I know I've been neglecting this.  It's been really difficult because I still don't have internet at home, so I'm still sitting on the library steps on the weekend stealing wifi and I find it difficult to email everyone, facebook AND blog.  A bit repetitive for one thing! I should have internet on Wednesday, so it will get better.

And last week being my first week I didn't have much time to be online.  Although we're still getting me set up at head office, so it's debatable whether I'll get paid at the end of this week like everyone else.  Not pleased about that - I don't think they have ANY idea how difficult it has been to coordinate all this on my end.  My request to download Skype has also been turned down unless I can do a business case for it.  But funny enough it still downloaded ok...

So work!  Everyone has been really great.  I'm in a separate smaller building away from my bosses, but I think I'm going to start taking one tea break in the main building just to keep contact.  Last week was only 4 days for us, so one day was introductions on site, the next day was driving around the seed production sites, one day researching (this is me trying desperately to process at least some of what I've been told) and then one day in Edmonton meeting more people.  It's a bit odd because not everyone at the ATISC (Smoky Lake) site know that my job description has changed and I'm not so much a grunt worker as the woman before me.  Not that I won't have to muck in like everyone else at certain times of year (like now - good time to start), and I'm looking forward to doing that and even seed collections (especially when they are via helicopter) and field measurements.   But I'm also expected to start researching and publishing this year.

We were doing cut tests on green cones last week.  Some species can be picked early and allowed to mature in the DC chamber (dormancy conditioning, although they admit it's not got much to do with dormancy).  And since our main competition for seeds are birds (they make a HUGE mess), we have to balance immaturity with availability.  Squirrels are a bit of an issue too but if we can find their cache, we just raid it and that saves a lot of time and money.  Sounds mean and the squirrels here aren't Grey American.  They are little red ones similar to the ones in Europe.  Very cute.

And something else really interesting I found out last week that made a LOT of sense.  I hadn't seen their dry room, so I asked about it and got some weird looks.  Apparently, once the cones have been matured, processed and cleaned, they are usually 7-8% MC!!  Amazing!  Last year they were nearly screwed because it took them until after Xmas to do some and they were getting dangerously low MCs for those last few.

Well, all this makes a lot of sense because I've been struggling to stay hydrated here.  If I miss one tea break I'm in danger of a coughing fit!  They probably think I'm ill from the number of times I'm running to the loo!  Anyway, I've noticed it in my skin too.  I would suggest you all run out and buy shares in Johnson's Baby Oil.  Which brings me around to the necessity of finding a man within the next year because I think the wrinkles are going to appear in force this winter.  That might have been a BIG con if someone had told me I'd age 5 years in the first 6 months!

And along with the dry air (it's around 20-30% right now), it's very dusty.  VERY dusty.  The soil is similar to sand.  How they grow anything in it, I don't know.  I don't like wearing shoes so during the summer I have pretty dirty feet anyway.  But I've actually had to take off my ankle bracelet because by the afternoon I have a ring of dirt around it!

But don't let me put anyone off coming to visit!  I've been here 3 weeks and we've only had 2 days that weren't beautiful blue open sky and that should continue into the winter even when it's cold.  I had to be up early to go to Edmonton on Friday and the mist hugging the ground on the fields was spectacular.

Anyway, hopefully that gets some of you up to date and feeling more included :)  My bed should finally be delivered tomorrow.  Three weeks on an inflatable mattress is pretty much my maximum I think.  My back thinks so too.  So there's a bit of info the Facebook people don't even know ;)  Oh and internet hooked up on Wednesday.  By the weekend I should almost be a real person!

Later.

This morning on the Iron Horse Trail...