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Last week Wednesday my son and I went to Wallenstein Feed & Supply.   Since my hubby works at a feed mill he wanted us to go check out what they do here. He would have loved to go but couldn’t due to work issues.

I should have written this post last week when all the information was fresh in my mind but life is what it is right?  I will simply have to do the best I can. 🙂

It was just a small group of us from the co-op that went, but we learned a lot about the making of farm animal feed in south-western Ontario.  This mill is highly automated. Runs at least 50 trucks from as close as Wallenstein to up north. 

Before we started the tour we all had to put on safety vests, a hard hat and a headphone.  Some sections of the mill are quite loud, so having the headset means we can still hear each other. 

Off on the tour!

Wallenstein Feed & Supply has four mills in one area, well okay.. they might only have three active.  I think they had torn down one mill and are looking at building the fourth.  We were mostly shown around mill four. 

We learned they have a few different trucks. Some trucks come with panels that can be moved to accommodate different size orders, and other trucks come with prebuilt storage areas. 

When trucks come in with supplies the load needs to be tested before it is accepted.  This year they need to be particularly careful because corn is carrying high levels of vomitoxin.  This toxin is dangerous to give to pigs (causes them to not eat and to have stillbirths or spontaneous abortions) so they need to be careful.  The mill my hubby works at can only take to 4% but Wallenstein Feed & Supply has three different levels for it.  The higher levels require more work as they need to be diluted and used differently. 

Testing the feed

Depending on the mill the men work 8 hour or 12 hour shifts. As I was watching the men work I saw clothing incentives, business perks etc pass along the screens.  They all seemed like decent incentive programs and who doesn’t like $’s off places you would go away?  A business treating it’s employees right. 

The opportunity was given to watch a skid of feed by bagged.  Two people, and a few machines and the job was done quite quickly.

Our last stop of the tour was to see how a trucker loaded his truck.   He gets his part of the puzzle from the office that organizes the shipments.  He needs to take a sample of every feed he puts on his truck and that sample is kept, I think she said for three years, so that if a farmer has a problem with the feed it can be tested by them or an off-site lab. 

The green circles mean open/empty bin, and the rest of the colours…. no one was really sure what they signified for the rest of the buns.  It is known the one of those colours means medicated and another means that a vibrator is attached to the bin. Otherwise all we know is the truckers understand the system.  🙂 

It was a good, very educational and interesting tour. 

Other agricultural field trips:

• ingersoll cheese museum
• Aylmer dairy museum

This past weekend I went to the festival of wizardry twice. On Friday I went with my son, and then on Saturday I went with my temporary son.  🙂  

Friday we ended up getting sent home since we had a spell of high winds come through that threatened the lives of people.   We helped a vendor put their stuff away after working in the children’s tent for about 30 minutes. 

I had just enough time to mostly finish my wand.  We were given the instruction of “inspire others” so making a wand and chatting as we did so seemed a great way to do that. 

My son liked this quote so I snapped a pic.

On Saturday, our student and I went up.  Originally I had planned to go with the lad and our student on the Saturday but they miss-booked us and the lad had a cadets thing come up and couldn’t go.  So we worked with the miss-booking and went two days in a row.

Anyways, we were assigned to helping mind the gate but they had lots of volunteers there, instead we went to the non-alcoholic bar and served drinks, cookies and candied.   We were run off our feet but had a lot of fun!

The Job:

We worked hard for an hour and a half and then needed food, and since I was working twice with a student we got a free lunch voucher.  The lines were horrible for the standard fries, pizza, burger places so we took a chance on a small place doing a perogi with chicken stew dish.  IT WAS FANTASTIC!  I need to learn how to make this it was so very good.  

Back to work with a student who kept enjoying the caramel sauce.  I gave him fitz but he just grinned at me.  🙂  The ladies working with me grinned at him and told said “teens!”  🙂  So it was all good.  It was good to hear his attempted chatter and the ladies responding to him.  It was such a nice day. 

The recipe:

The recipe we used for better beer “caramel sauce, cream soda, and real whipping cream”.   It tasted good but was very sweet. The cookies came in all house colours, glasses and sorting hat.  The glasses were very popular with families with multiple kids because they could break them in half easily.   YES, I bought some and brought them home for the guys. 

Once 4 oclock came around we were done for the day so wandered around seeing what all was there.  I was tempted by honey, our student tempted by a neat ornament.  I had no money for things though (since I had bought cookies) so we just bought with our eyes.  I met a lady who wrote what looks like an interesting book so I talked to her about reviewing it.  🙂 

We heard some noise so headed over to see what was going on and discovered a game of quidditch was going on…. a match between Toronto and Guelph. It’s an immensely confusing game…..

Just so you know… we learned that bacon flavoured cotton candy tastes good but wrong.  🙂   The vendor said it was a good seller combined with her maple flavour.  I told her I believed that but wasn’t brave enough to buy any.  I did take a sample stick home to hubby who liked it.  🙂  (I told her I thought he would).  

That was our wizardry weekend.  SHOULD you ever be up this way in September of 2019, come join us at the Festival of Wizardry.  It’s a good time!