Thursday, July 27, 2006

Pincher Creek Colony Annual Duck Slaughter

I was supposed to photograph the Hutterites working in the garden, but when no one was there I drove to the colony to see what they were up to. Rosa, from the colony e-mails me and lets me know when I can come and shoot, but there is only one phone number for the colony so I made my first unannounced visit.



Wednesday was their annual duck slaughter. The birds are killed in the barn and delivered to the slaughter house. This girl helps move the ducks to the end of the John Deer Gator so they are easier to grab and move to the steamer.


The ducks are steamed and them moved onto a plucking table.




When it comes to ducks, everyone in the community is asked to help. Unlike the chickens they have to pluck the birds by hand and then they save the down and make pillows and blankets.


When they are plucked and the wings have been chopped off, they move the ducks inside and dip them in cheese wax and then dunk them in cold water so the wax hardens.


This is Rosa removing the pin feathers by pulling of the wax. Once the wax is removed they put in back in the pot to reuse it.


The carcasses are then put on the line and the organs are removed and then they get to this man. He snips of the feet and throws them into a big cart of water. I walked by right as he through a duck I can covered in bloody duck water. He laughed at me, so I laughed and took his picture.

Due to the hand plucking it took over 15 hours to finish the slaughter of 1,400 ducks.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

A week in the life of me

Here are some of my photos for the week. There has been variety of the things to shoot so that is good. Sorry, no garden shots.

Tomarrow morning I am off the the Hutterites vegetable garden, which is a few kilometers from the farm. I think that they are picking peas. I will post those pictures soon if they are worthy of the blog.


I was told that there were cyclists riding down main street so I decided to try a panning shot.


Beyonce is a part of a youth entrepreneur project where they make cement stepping stones and sell them and other crafts on Saturday.


Tyrus made a stepping stone as well.


I wrote a story called "Weighting for snow" about how to stay fit and train during the summer for the ski season. Castle Mountain is around here and I am not sure if i should still sell all my snowboarding gear for a new lens, or ride all winter. Tough. Anyway, this is Peter McGee he is a snowboarder and his girlfriend owns the gym (her photo is a couple entries ago). He was my model for the paper shot.


Grace read a story with her grandma in the library. This photo goes with my story about finding heros in the library.


I went back to the all girls rodeo in hopes to get a better a photo, so I changed my clothes and laid in the dirt. All-girls rodeo's are pretty cool because in regular rodeos girls can only compete in one or two events and here they can compete in them all.

Saturday, July 22, 2006

Little Kids and a Rodeo


Caught in a rainbow as the fire hose creates a spinkler for the kids in Pincher Creek.



Siblings help the neighbour garden on a summer day.



Pole bending at the All-Girl's Rodeo

Sunday, July 16, 2006

Rodeo Grounds at the Piikani Blackfoot Reserve

Here are a couple shots I got last night at the Steer Roping, but both don't have steers or rope in them. I feel like my photography has hit a little bit of a rut, but I wrote my column for the newspaper on motivation, mostly for myself.

If you are interested the papers website is updated weekly with a handful of stories and photos. For the past four weeks my photos have made the front page which can also be seen at
  • Pincher Creek Echo

  • Now that I said that I wont make it next week.


    Wednesday, July 05, 2006

    Some photos from this week

    Here are a couple photos from this week. The first one is a portrait of the new owner of a gym in town and the other is a little girl and her father at the annual kite festival.