There’s a lot of talent hidden among the canola fields and cattle pastures of Western Canada that isn’t always noticeable from the highway or gravel road.
Nobody should be surprised by this, but it’s sometimes easy to overlook.
For example, the Western Producer has written a lot over the years about farmer inventors and how they drive innovation by solving problems they encounter.
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Most recently, we published a story about two brothers in Alberta who came up with a way to prevent rocks from damaging combines during harvest.
It’s an ingenious idea that promises to prevent lots of headaches for lots of farmers in the future.
That’s one example of talented people that would never be noticed simply by driving past the inventors’ farmyard.
I was reminded of all this hidden talent recently during a day participating in an art studio tour in north- central Saskatchewan.
These tours are a wonderful idea, and the one we embarked on earlier this month is the third such one in which we’ve participated in the last few years.
Local artists from within a specific geographical area open up their studios or display their work in easy-to-access spaces, and the public is then invited to spend a day travelling the countryside in search of all this art.
The tour we embarked on recently, called the Thickwood Hills Studio Trail, featured a wide variety of artists, many of them displaying their work in the places where it is created.
The art ranged from the traditional, such as paintings and pottery, to the downright creative, such as craft soap and work made out of scrap metal.
Many of the artists on this tour were set up in a handful of resort villages nestled on the shores of Iroquois Lake and Shell Lake, while others were found on out-of-the way acreages.
One of the most memorable was on a farmyard at the end of a long, winding driveway with crops growing right up to the edges of the yard.
This particular artist is a painter, and the work hanging on the walls of her living room quickly provided a clue as to where her agricultural interests lie.
The walls were covered in paintings of horses in all their glory, and we probably didn’t need to ask — although we did — that yes, she does own horses.
It was a wonderful conclusion to a satisfying day spent in the country looking at art in all its different shapes — and a good reminder that there’s plenty of talent hiding in them there hills.
