business for sale okotoks
We LOVE our artisans and small businesses, as they are the ULTIMATE MAKERS & SHAKERS of th BIRD ON A BARBED WIRE Tell us about your business and where you are from ... My name is Jennifer Rondeau. I grew up on my family's farm north of Blackie that had been owned and operated by the Bird family since 1905. Bird on a Barbed Wire started as a hobby business in November 2015 to give me a creative outlet as a stay-at-home-mom to two little boys. I enjoy finding ways to incorporate my modern/transitional sense of style with my farm girl roots. I love hunting for vintage & reclaimed pieces to use, climbing through the scrap piles at the farm searching for beautiful old pieces of wood, and creating lovely little pieces of home decor. All of the barn wood that I use in my products is reclaimed from the Bird farm I grew up on. Where do you sell your work and how can people get hold of you? I sell my work through local market events as well as through my Etsy store.
Next market will be MarketSquare's Spring Fling May 12-13. My name is Jennifer Stables and I am an artist and educator living in Okotoks. I grew up in the small town of Bow Island Alberta, and I received my Bachelor of Fine Arts and my Bachelor of Education from the University of Calgary. I have been painting and drawing my whole life, but it wasn't until after the birth of my son in 2012 that I began to focus on selling my own artwork. After spending 10 years as a classroom teacher, I decided to start my own business, Jenny Dale Designs, which I launched in 2013. I create and sell whimsical artwork and poetry, and I work in schools as an Artist in Residence. My artwork is currently being exhibited at the Okotoks Rec Centre as part of their Art in the Hall program. My work has also been featured on Etsy and Project Nursery, and a selection of my artwork is also distributed to stores throughout North America through Oopsy Daisy Fine Art for Kids. Jennifer can also be found on MarketSquare website.
The business side of things started when I couldn't find what I was looking for when I thought about what I'd want for my own wedding favours - completely customized tea, with ingredients or flavours that we could choose that meant something to us.
mtb handyman servicesThat's the product I began with and it is still a service we offer. I opened The Tea Wagon because there was no such thing as a mobile version of my favourite brick-and-mortar specialty tea stores. I think great, high quality tea should be available everywhere, and The Tea Wagon helps me to spread the love of loose leaf! Tearrific's base of operations is in DeWinton (where I previously lived) and I now live in Calgary. I've also lived in Vancouver and three different cities in England (my time there really strengthened my tea habit!). I have never felt more at home anywhere than I do in Calgary and the surrounding area. Even though I wasn't born here, this will always be my home!
I started Tearrific about 4 years ago selling my hand-blended teas at craft fairs and markets and doing personalized party favours. I started The Tea Wagon last year and we had our first event with the trailer in April 2015. Where can you find Tearrific? Tearrific has been a loyal MarketSquare vendor in Okotoks from the get-go, and we're thrilled to have them continue to join us at each event in 2016. My name is Cindy Hogg, and I own Crate Ideas. My husband and I live on acreage in DeWinton and have done for the past 10 years. We got into creating and making crates, trays and small furniture last January when we both became unemployed. We found we loved the creative aspect of building and finishing these pieces, and sometimes even find it hard to part with our product! My husband is now employed but races home each night to spend his evenings building and planning. We hope this will lead to something we can both do in retirement. My husband’s moto is “do something creative every day”.
Where can you find Crate Ideas? ... and watch out for their MarketSquare business page in upcoming weeks!KEE JIM HASN’T ALWAYS BEENthe most popular person in the Canadian livestock industry, but he is well known and respected. He’s a relatively young big-picture thinker, and over his 27 years of developing a successful feedlot consulting service, he has never shied from controversy. In fact, as the hint of mischief in his smile suggests, he may even like to stir the pot on occasion. But you can’t take away the fact he is a smart, bright, successful businessman with a strong entrepreneurial sense and a sincere commitment to seeing the Canadian livestock industry do well. He not only helps others feed cattle, he has himself become one of the largest cattle feeders in North America. He still manages the family ranch in B.C., owns thousands of feeder cattle, has extensive grasser cattle holdings in Saskatchewan, and has several thousand head of sheep on feed, too.
And he has been active in a number of industry associations. Overall he says, if the industry is well, that also helps his various business interests do well, which boils down to a win/win situation for everyone. Jim, who turned 50 last year and is looking ahead to the “second half” of his career, has never stood still or looked back, after being one of the youngest graduates from the Western College of Veterinary Medicine in Saskatoon, Sask. in 1983. He was born and raised on the family ranch at Little Fort in B.C.’s central interior. He still manages a cow-calf and purebred Hereford cattle operation from that location. But, soon after graduating as a large animal veterinarian, he launched a new business concept called Feedlot Health Management Services. “The timing was right,” Jim says. “The livestock feeding industry was just shifting to Alberta, and I saw an opportunity to provide management services to a rapidly growing industry.” Using the tools of research and data analysis, Jim developed a management model which has evolved and expanded over the years to involve much more than just veterinary care.
With a focus on helping cattle feeders be as efficient and profitable as possible, he now has a staff of 15 professionals and 30 support staff spanning disciplines from animal science to statistics, epidemiology, nutrition and animal welfare. They work with dozens of feedlots across North America with an annual throughput of 1.5 million to two million head of cattle. While the company works with feeders ranging in size from 1,000 to 100,000 head of cattle, its services help well-managed feedlots to make incremental improvements in overall production and feeding efficiency. Rather than managing pens of cattle on an all-in/all-out basis, Jim’s approach is to recognize the genetic potential of each animal, shipping cattle when they are “finished,” optimizing their marketability and reducing feeding costs. But managing feedlots is just one component of Jim’s far-reaching business interests. While he has partial ownership in a number of feedlots, his principle interest has been in cattle ownership.
He is one of North America’s largest cattle feeders with several thousand cattle on feed from Western Canada to Nebraska, Colorado and Texas. He won’t say how many he owns at any given time, other than “there’s a lot.” He’s not interested in owning bunks and boards and getting involved in the infrastructure side of the business. Working within a North American marketplace, he buys cattle at the best price he can, and then has them fed on a custom basis where it is most profitable. “I am a cattle investor,” Jim says. “From the very beginning I made a conscious decision not to get involved in the farming end and owning infrastructure. I own cattle and feed them where they are the most profitable. I am not committed to any physical facility or geographic area. I may buy cattle in Manitoba and have them fed in Nebraska, or buy in Mississippi and feed them in Colorado. My business is based on owning cattle. I am a renter of infrastructure.” At one time his main focus was on owning cattle in finishing feedlots, but as the profitability of finishing cattle declined, he has put more emphasis on feeder cattle — buying lighter cattle, grass cattle, backgrounding.
He runs his successful cattle-feeding activities through G.K. Jim Farms. “It is a very low-overhead operation,” Jim says. “With a staff of only eight people looking after that many cattle, it is very efficient.” Aside from feedlots and feeding, Jim has served on the board of Alberta Livestock Identification Services Ltd. and was a founding board member of the Alberta Livestock and Meat Agency. He has served too with the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency, the Alberta Beef Producers, Alberta Cattle Feeders and Canadian Cattleman’s Association. In each case, he left his mark, often one that others have found hard to forget. Another longtime livestock industry player, also known for speaking plainly, Dr. David Chalack, one of the principals of Alta Genetics and chair of the ALMA board, praises Jim’s contribution to agriculture. “Canada and the ag sector and specifically the beef sector are very, very lucky to have someone like Dr. Kee Jim working on their behalf,” says Chalack.