Sask. oil and gas

[cowman]

Well I tell you I've never been jealous of anyone who lives at Hanna or Special Areas! Might wonder about their sanity...but never jealous! LOL
I would think those lands would be prime candidates for sale to the owners? No one else really wants them.
The eastern slopes of the Rockies are a different matter....?
Now once again...I have never owned, or have any desire to own, a grazing lease! I have no desire to put cattle into a community pasture! If I wanted to be an absentee owner maybe I would think different!
The guy who complained about every Tom, Dick and Harry on his grazing lease due to oil leases...how is that any different than private land? I have hunters, kids riding snowmobile/quads/horses as well as hikers/birders on my land all the time! Few if any ask and quite frankly I don't care as long as they pack their beer cans/whisky bottles home with them! I have no problem with people enjoying my little bit of paradise!
I'm not sure if the grazing leaseholder was bragging or complaining about the surface lease he got? I think his adverse effect was in the ballpark($1750...in my high end market we get $1850)? His loss of production was not bad...he states it takes 50 acres per cow!? Our loss of production is $325/acre on prime black soil cropland!
If he thought his land costs were too low....well he is in the sticks...and it IS lease land? I would say he did very well?
The bottom line is this: If there was never a cow on the grazing leases, the people of Alberta would recieve a considerable larger sum of money than any grazing fees/taxes that might go into the government coffers. That is a fact. Tom Thurber headed a committee to look into it and that was his findings...that is not in dispute. The Klein government didn't implement his findings because of politics! Old Jack Horner rallied the troops and Klein came out looking like a complete fool(which happened often in his reign)! Never again will any Tory premier take on those welfare cows...just a fact.

[cowman]

Oh one other thing:
There was one time I was mildly jealous of the good people away out east! It was in 2002 when the drought was bad?
The Alberta government gave a $4/acre drought payment(lease or private land!)...on every acre? Now if my land can feed a cow on 2 acres and out in the desert it takes 100 acres...well guess what? I got $8 to feed my cow...out east they got $400! Even with $120/ton hay, I suspect they did well?!
Old Shirley sure took care of the down home crowd with that program! Probably why they kept electing her every year!
As I said...mildly jealous...until I thought about driving through there in August! What a desolate place! That was the first time I ever saw cows eat buck brush right down to the roots!

[blackjack]

...cowman...if all someone wanted to do is ranch...land is 5 times cheaper...your return on investment on the cows would look much better on paper than where you live now...you know and i know there is the catch cowman the investment in the land at red deer might be 5 times higher...but every time there is a land spike and the price doubles...its not hard to figure what area has the best returns on investment...so which rancher is really better off...now compare that to the leases in the foothills now that's a different story...lol...

[coppertop]

cowman, blackjack etc. I guess the one thing missing in your comments is that many people are ranching/farming on land that has been ranched/farmed by their family for generations. Some people settled in the special areas of the province and some along the highway 2 corridor, and some in the eastern slopes. Fact is that as urban centres grew, land close to them increased in value, land farther from the corridor or large popluated areas has likely increased significantly but not to the same extent. The proximity to water. annual rainfall and soil quality drives the price of farm land.
In my area of west central AB. land values have risen but we are not close to a large centre nor do we have mountains in our backyard...BUT we do still have some peace and quiet which is worth more than all the money in the world as far as I am concerned. Managing the land, managing grass etc. is crucial in all areas but specially in areas where it takes a significant amount of land to pasture one animal unit.

I do agree with cowman on the inequity of the acreage payments and hope we never see another program like that, and Shirley sure did look after her own area on that one.

[cowman]

blackjack: I have nothing but a high regard for the people who live out there! They are "survivors" without a doubt! And I really don't begrudge them the few extra government dollars.
We face our own problems in the "corrider" and in fact we will probably be long gone before those tough old boys out east are gone!
Blackjack/coppertop: The huge proposed ethanol/biodeisel plant at Niobe is, from what I'm hearing, a done deal? Apparently the company has bought the land.

[blackjack]

...there will be changes out there as well...many of them ranchers are starting to get a little long in the tooth themselves and the next generation is workin the patch...if this shallow gas hadn't shown up...coronation and hanna were starting to come ghost towns...last summer when i was out there both towns seemed to be a little more lively...

[coppertop]

My son has been working in that area for nearly two years, working over old wells etc. It is a good thing that the activity in the resource industries does help some of the areas that have never really seen much of a boom !! My son's rig crews are mainly farm kids, a lot of them are from Saskatchewan, grain farmers that work the rigs all winter.

[Horse]

Like Suffield all the "" RAnchers were pissed when the National Defence wanted to remove the wild horses off the base and all tyhe locals said geez we put good studs in there and when we want a hopliday we would go and gather some horses and sell to McLeod or who ever FREE BEES god help us all .