Upper Canada Village transitions from pumpkins to Victorian Santa

 From Kirby the Hermit Crab to Dakota the Poodle, from Florida’s Gatorland to television’s Sesame Street, the young speakers at the 2012 Iroquois Public School Speak Off entertained judges, teachers, family members and their fellow students with some outstanding speeches on Monday, March 5. 

“The eight finalists in our gym were chosen from their individual classroom competitions,” said teacher/organizer Margaret Phifer. “It was definitely tough for grades four to six teachers to choose those finalists because all the classes had some great speeches. This has been an amazing competition.”

This year, after a hiatus of some years, the Royal Canadian Legion, Branch 370, Iroquois, is once again involved in elementary school public speaking.

“It is wonderful that we are participating with the Legion again,” Phifer said, “that they are becoming involved with our young speakers.”

This year’s first place finisher was Katie Buter, whose speech, complete with actions and singing, was based on the enduringly popular children’s show, Sesame Street.  Katie will be going to the Legion semi-finals competition in March. She and second place finisher, Darci Dodge, the proud owner of Kirby the Crab, will both present their speeches at Winchester Public School for the South Dundas Family of Schools in April. Third place finisher was Dana Domanko, who shared a wealth of information on a sticky subject, Gum.

Judges for the event were retired IPS teachers Bob Dolan and Gail Burrell, while Maurice Kolff, represented the Iroquois Legion.

At the medals presentation, judge Dolan congratulated all the participants on the tremendous amount of time, energy and effort they all put into writing, practicing and memorizing their speeches.  He also told them that it took real courage to be able to get up and speak before a large audience, and he reminded them to always stay passionate about what they are doing.

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This year’s Morrisburg Tubie Festival will take place on the weekend of August 4th and 5th.

The Township of South Dundas recently received a letter from the Morrisburg and District Lions Club with a list of requests for the 42nd annual Tubie weekend.

The requests included: 

• Use of the waterfront park and ball diamond area on August 4th for “parade staging, antique car show, hospitality tent, and an evening concert featuring Ambush.”

• Exception to the noise by-law to allow the Saturday night concert to proceed until midnight.

• Use of the Cruickshank Amphitheatre for children’s entertainment.

• Use of the dock and beach facilities for the Sunday Tubie Race.

Council, unanimously and without comment, agreed to all of the Lions Club requests at the June 26th council meeting. 

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The doom and gloom being predicted for area farmers at the height of this summer’s drought, has not come to fruition locally and most area farmers are now wrapping up an early harvest season.

Archie Mellan, local councillor and Hulbert cash crop farmer, spoke with The Leader Monday about this year’s harvest. “Generally, I think most are pleasantly surprised,” said Mellan.

This year the soybean crop was about average on his farm. “The beans came through amazingly well,” said Mellan, explaining that they are more resilient to the drought conditions experienced this summer.

On his farm, the corn yield was about half a tonne per acre below the normal average. 

Mellan said the corn yields this year are very sporadic and directly reflect the amount and timing of the rain, explaining that those farms a little to the north of his farm seem to have even lower yields, while those to the south seem to have slightly higher yields.

“Those sporadic rains really made a difference,” said Mellan.

Although the corn harvest was below average, Mellan said, “We are satisfied with what we got. It’s a lot better than the doom and gloom they were forecasting back in July and August.”

The dry weather did allow the corn to mature and dry down quickly.

This year, his corn harvest was finished by the end of October, which is two or three weeks ahead of schedule for an average year.

Because prices are driven by the US market, droughts in that country mean that prices have been driven up. 

“So, the price makes up for the yield lost,” said Mellan.

“In this area, everybody’s down a bit, but we’re not too bad off. In other areas yields are down, 1-1.5 tonnes per acre, and it’s hard to recoup that.”

The farmers most affected by this year’s drought locally are dairy farmers, as there is a real shortage of forage. 

“The second cut of hay this year, was basically non-existent,” said Mellan. “I’ve seen them taking off hay into October, because they simply need the tonnage of feed. Maybe they can make up the difference with corn silage.” 

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