Diane Rogers

WINNIPEG – With the first question, a woman punctured the balloon of success surrounding a new diversification project. “Where can you buy bison meat,” she asked. North Dakota bison advocate Dennis Sexhus was flummoxed. The industry is concentrating on restaurants because they are easier to get into than grocery stores like Safeway, he said. Consumers […] Read more

WINNIPEG – Farm women must learn to have fun while wringing every last dollar out of their farm businesses, two sisters told the Manitoba Farm Women’s Conference Nov. 13-14. As Barbara Thrasher and Madelon Smid ran through their list of business tips for the 200 people in the audience, coffee table-sized coins propped up their […] Read more

WINNIPEG – Wacky works for Peak of the Market. People remember the funny, home-made ads featuring the vegetable marketing co-operative’s president. They also like Peak’s sponsorship of city bus benches laden with puns like “Give peas a chance,” said Larry McIntosh, star of the ads. He told the Manitoba Farm Women’s Conference that the vegetable […] Read more

WINNIPEG – Farmers have a tougher time getting a pay raise than do people on welfare in the city, says the head of a Winnipeg food bank. David Northcott told the Manitoba Farm Women’s Conference that the economic system does not value farmers or their produce enough. Manitoba’s welfare payment rates have risen in the […] Read more

Maxine Routledge will be spending hours on her phone this winter in an effort by Canada’s largest rural women’s group to bring people together. But it is not likely to be a face-to-face meeting or a conference. No one is funding such gatherings, said the woman who has taken on the job. From her farm […] Read more

At least three of the studies commissioned by the Prairie Women’s Health Centre of Excellence have dealt with farm and rural women. The Winnipeg-based centre, one of five in Canada funded for six years by the federal health department, has now finished its research. Last month it held a conference to decide on action for […] Read more

MAYFAIR, Sask. – Few people can pin down the moment when inspiration strikes them. Vivian Saccucci can. It was 5 a.m. four years ago and she was milking cows in the family dairy barn in northwestern Saskatchewan. “The cow had been laying with her tail in the gutter and she swatted me across the lips […] Read more

A pen of breeding heifers may not appear to have much to do with health care. But a Beef Up Your Health project will play Santa to health-care districts, hospitals and nursing homes in southwestern Saskatchewan. Lyn Johnston, executive director of the Dr. Noble Irwin Healthcare Foundation Inc., said the heifers will be raised over […] Read more

Health districts rely on various foundations to help pay for new equipment, says the head of their lobby group. Brian Rourke, chair of the Saskatchewan Association of Health Organizations, said he had no figures, but member health districts tell him they benefit from foundation fund-raisers. “There’s some concern that if we move to larger health […] Read more

DYSART, Sask. – It was a fact-finding mission baited with sugar lurking in the chocolate. The Saskatchewan Women’s Agricultural Network came calling to three communities last week to find the issues of concern to farm women. Carrot cake and Nanaimo bars served with coffee thawed the meeting’s atmosphere into relaxed chatter in the south-central town […] Read more