The students at the Rose Valley Hutterite Colony School make a newspaper every month during the school year.
The September issue found its way to our house courtesy of the Principal, Mrs. Saulters.
Producing this newspaper on loose leaf with handwritten stories, drawings and features is a heckuva good exercise in education in my opinion.
The newspaper gives the students day-to-day experience in reading, writing, drawing, thinking and creating things.
There is some neat writing and printing, something Yours Truly envies. I did three grades in my first year of school and never learned how to print or write properly.
The September issue of the Rose Valley Times was full of stories about the busy colony during the summer.
One of the most striking things was the 21.8 tonnes of potatoes they dug up this fall, saving one tonne for seed.
That’s a lot of spuds. I wonder do they have a potato digger? When I was a boy on the farm we used a one-bottom plough to run by the potatoes and expose most of them to be picked.
I recall on a visit to the colony this summer, one young fellow was quite proud that he would spend the summer helping his dad in the garden.
Must be a huge garden. The women spent much of the late summer/early fall making all sorts of sauces and preserves for use during the next 12 months. That included baking 300 dozen ginger snap cookies — my favourite.
The colony planted 300 pounds of garlic this fall for harvest next year. Planting garlic around the edge of your garden will keep some pesky insects away.
Closer to home, the local colonies had good gardens too. The Baildon Colony south of Moose Jaw recently donated 3,500 pounds of fresh vegetables to the Moose Jaw and District Food Bank. And the Huron Colony from Brownlee donated 1,083 pounds of veggies to the food bank.
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New management at the Cultural Centre is bringing in some different shows like the Harry Potter performance. That is great.
Lots of us wish the new management would bring back the pantomimes during the Christmas holidays.
They were a tradition until the last new manager refused to book them. Yes they are fairy tale type shows but the audience engagement, especially from the kids, was awesome and entertaining in itself.
I note only one nostalgia show on the Cultural Centre calendar this fall, yet the Casino Show Lounge in Regina has booked a pile of them.
Yours Truly was one of the sold out crowd at the 50s,60s Relive the Music Show. It was most entertaining and enjoyable from Bill Haley’s Rock Around the Clock to Patti Page’s Tennessee Waltz, Doris Day’s Que Sera, Sera to Roy Orbison’s Pretty Woman and medleys of Elvis, Beach Boys, Beatles and Rolling Stones to Tina Turner.
These shows have always done well in Moose Jaw and helped put lots of bums in the seats. Maybe we can experience more of them.
Ron Walter can be reached at ronjoy@sasktel.net.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
