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Ya sure. Most of the bids for the work coming up haven't gone out yet but maybe remind me in the fall when you ready to go out.

   

Typical farmer,oh how many of them have I sat and bullshitted with and learned about crop insurance. I havent met one yet that wasnt a Welder,equip. operator,or truck driver.

You have to be multi skilled to be a farmer in Alberta.

   

i dont have crop insurance

   

ty i was weldning all winter and the money comes in good for seeding lol

   

someone was talking about a home that was worth 190k in 1998 that is now worth 405k, then they called 405k insane. But, I bought a nice house in Calgary in 2003 for 143k, so I posted that i thought a house at 190k (in 1998) was insane.

BTW, I have a brother in law that bought a modular house straight from the factory in Lethbride in 2006. It was a 2000sq ft home for 170k, and delivery was cheap. When someone is paying 365k in Fort Mac, what are they paying for? the land? or are they just over paying because they won't make the drive to Lethbridge?

   

   

They're paying for the land costs. They sell a trailer park home that's actually only worth about $40k but it's sitting on a lot that's worth over $300k. Hence people getting stuck with a $2500 a month mortgage just to live next door to Ricky, Julian, and Bubbles. Oh yay! The job the province has done (another legacy of Ralph the Great) at releasing more land for development has been an absolute joke. If they ever want to look at a real conspiracy theory then someone should dig deep and examine the collusion that's occurred between the government and Ft Mac realtors in order for them to stifle new development so they could raise the price of existing properties to astronomical levels. It's absolutely disgusting and essentially criminal at what's happened up there in terms of home affordability.

   

if what you are saying is true, something stinks to high heaven. My lot in Calgary was worth 40k in 2002. it'll be a very long time(probably not in my lifetime) before it reaches 300k.

   

probably the best thing to do is work one of those schedules like 3 weeks in, 1 week out. go after training and experience(instead of overtime and money), then find a job in a different part of the country.

   

Ft Mac is a weird place at best, which is too bad because there's a lot of good people living up there. The vast majority of the commuters who go there for work, myself included every once in a while, aren't going up there to raise hell either. We're going up there to do the job, make the money, and then go home. The residential development and infrastructure woes up there are so bad though that even the guys making the big bucks get screwed on accomodations. If you go into a better hotel for 20 to 25 nights you're looking at paying $4000 to $5000 a month. If you rent a place you're looking at anywhere from $1000 to $2000 a month to share space with others, you know, use the same showers and washing machines with strangers. If you go into the camps you can save a lot of money, but you once again end up with the whack-job group showers stuff, except instead of sharing with three or four room-mates you're using the same facilities as literally dozens of other guys. I don't know about you but I didn't play team sports or go into the army so the idea of living that way genuinely freaks me out.

It's a fuck of a hard way to live. I challenge anyone from elsewhere who hates Alberta so much to come here for a while just to learn first-hand how much fun it is to have to live this way. They don't have to like us if they don't want to (yes, Ontarians, I'm looking right at you) but they've not earned the right to show us such contempt either.

   

One of the reasons lots of the farmers I used to jaw with did work a second job was because the crop insurance sucked when things went bad.So most of them work in the patch in the off season.

   

YTF do you farm when you can make a shit load more welding? This is the same as my brother in law. He has his master tradesman as a mechanic, yet all the money he makes at the dealership goes back into the farm. Works all day in the shop and comes home to work with cattle and/or field work, depending upon the season. Right now it's not too bad, except that it's calving time.

   

A buddy of mine worked the field for about 10 yrs. He was a former firefighter and had a shitload of safety courses. He worked as a rig pig for a few years and eventually ended up a safety boss. He said it was a money trap for him and while he loved the money he hated traveling, the dirt, the hours and the general living conditions, but he couldn't think of a job that would pay him as much as he was making. He eventually quit though and became an environmental officer for the province....less pay, but he now has an office and regular hours.

   

I've worked with lots of farmes in the patch. It usally works out pretty good for them. Things are normally a bit slower in the summer anyways and you normally get shut down due to rain half the time in June & July so they really don't miss much. Gives the employers a chance to decrease their crew size (which no likes to do but it has to be done) during the slow times and still have the experience avalible in the winter when they need it.

   

The modular he was looking at was pretty nice but it wasn't 2000 sq. feet. It was brand new and the way they're being set up is on residental lots not a typical "trailer park" so I imagine most of th price was for the lot. He's currently paying 2 grand a month for a basement suite with out any laundry or cooking facilities.

   

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