WAINWRIGHT, Alta. – It was a farm meeting unlike any other.
Inside the Mistahiya ski lodge that hasn’t seen ski boots since the last good snowfall years ago, 30 women sat at thick wooden tables worn smooth with age and talked about cattle.
They talked about the importance of keeping the water in dugouts clean, they learned how to score cattle’s body condition and they learned about growing grass.
When they had a question they shouted it out. When they didn’t know the lingo they asked. When they had a joke they told it.
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The relaxed atmosphere, where women felt comfortable to ask questions and offer comments, is the kind of setting organizers of the Grazing School for Women wanted to achieve.
Four years ago Kerri O’Shaughnessy and a group of other government employees wondered why more women didn’t attend farm meetings. They knew women made many of the on-farm decisions, but they weren’t coming to meetings.
“We said, ‘let’s give them a place where they feel more comfortable,’ ” said O’Shaughnessy of Alberta Agriculture’s Cows and Fish program.
“Here they’re not intimidated to ask questions,” said O’Shaughnessy, who along with employees from other government departments and a dozen northeastern Alberta counties organized the fourth annual event.
It’s the relaxed atmosphere and timely topics that keeps single farmer Jean Lill of Czar, Alta., coming back. She has attended three of the four grazing schools for women.
“I find it very good. They teach us stuff I need to know.”
When she was growing up on the farm her father made all the decisions. Now on her own, she wants to learn the information she needs to know, in a small group atmosphere where no one is intimidated.
“Everybody just speaks up,” Lill said.
Keri James of Westerose, Alta., moved the fence to give her cattle enough feed for two days of grazing and drove 300 kilometres to the two-day grazing school. James has been to several larger grazing schools, but women are the minority at those events.
“Very few women speak up there,” said James, who wanted to meet other women who raise cattle.
“Women have different ideas and put them out there.”
Jillian Kaufman travelled from Lac La Biche, Alta., to join three other friends at the conference to learn more about their industry and have a mini break from the farm.
“I like the small relaxed atmosphere. It’s a less intimidating atmosphere.”
Leslie Owsley of Sherwood Park, Alta., said she came to reaffirm what she’s doing is right and have the confidence to monitor land she owns but is leased by others.
“It’s different to hear what other women think,” she said.
O’Shaughnessy said since they began the grazing school the initial concept has spawned other grazing days and workshops across the Prairies.
