LAKELAND - ‘Forks up for Canadian Agriculture” is the theme of Canada’s Agriculture Day 2021, Feb. 23, and today’s the perfect day to celebrate all the food choices that we are able to enjoy as the result of Canada’s agricultural producers.
Look around your local grocery store, and you will see more and more foods that bear a Canadian label, from a simple maple leaf or ‘Made in Canada’ on a flour sack to ‘Made with 100% red, ripe Canadian tomatoes’ on the ketchup bottle, ‘Proudly Canadian’ on a bag of BC apples, and ‘Fresh milk from Canadian dairy farms’ on the carton or jug you put in your cart.
One of Agriculture Canada’s suggestions of a way to celebrate all the great food that Canada has to offer is that you cook an all-Canadian meal, and whether it’s breakfast, lunch or dinner, there’s no problem with doing just that. Bacon or ham from Canada’s pork producers, eggs from a local producer or one in another province, toast made with bread that your local bakery made with Canadian flour, and honey from a Canadian beekeeper will keep you going strong right until lunchtime, when you can enjoy a grilled Canadian cheese and tomato sandwich and munch one of those juicy BC apples for dessert. And how about a nice glass of cold milk to go along with it?
What to have for dinner? Why not a prime Alberta beef steak, on the barbecue if the weather warms up as promised, or made into Swiss steak with Canadian grown mushrooms, carrots and onions, with a baked Alberta potato on the side, and maybe a nice slice of pie made from frozen blueberries from Nova Scotia, BC or anywhere in between, topped with a big scoop of ice cream.
You could even enjoy a glass of Okanagan wine with your meal, because those grapes are Canadian grown as well.
Every one of those meals is well worth lifting up a fork in salute to the grain farmers, livestock and poultry producers, orchardists, berry and wine producers, vegetable and sugar beet growers and dairy farmers who made it possible to put all that good food on your table through summer’s heat and winter’s subzero cold.
Let’s raise a toast to Canada’s agriculture sector for their ongoing efforts to keep us well fed.
Chore time at 20 below
The following poem was written by Vicki Brooker with the Elk Point Review/Lakeland This Week
When it’s 20 below
And a wind blowing strong,
It seems like the chores
Take three times as long...
Chop pails, they just multiply,
Water trough all day to fill,
Bales all twice as heavy
With the snowfall and the chill.
The cows along the feed fence
Are impatient in their need
To just get breakfast over,
They have hungry calves to feed.
The chop is in the feed bunk
But the steers are in the shed
And really hate to head on out
And leave their cozy bed.
The bulls gobble down their oats
And head back to the straw
That’s spread out in their shelter
Out of the wind so raw.
The horses sure are frisky,
They nip and dance and kick
As they head off to their breakfast
In the bush across the crick
The dog wags on the back porch,
Her house she’s clean forgot,
She wonders just what’s cooking
And can she lick the pot.
The cats are up there with her,
With whiskers frosted white,
They’re hoping maybe someone
Will invite them in to have a bite.
At long last all the livestock
Is all bedded down and fed.
And it takes 10 whole minutes
Your snowy clothes to shed.
The old coffee pot’s a-purring
On the woodstove’s friendly glow
And it’s darn nice to get indoors
And forget the cold and snow.
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