Crave introduces ad-supported tiers, including a $9.99/month plan

Automation reaches new heights on farm

LANGHAM, Sask. — The thousands of farmers from across the Prairies who flock to the annual Ag in Motion show every July seem oblivious to the possibility the technology on display could one day replace many of them.

Families with children in tow, Hutterite colony workers, grandparents and young couples just starting out roamed through the 600 or more exhibitor displays, amazed at how everything about farming just keeps getting bigger, more efficient and increasingly more automated.

It’s now possible to seed using a 100-foot-wide drill — a 12-foot jump over the widest available a few years ago — provided the farmer can afford a tractor with enough horsepower to pull it. Those sell for around $850,000 and up.

Granted, the number of farms with enough acres to justify that kind of width and drawing power is still relatively small, but farms continue to grow. And it’s no secret the number of people who have the interest, skills and financial wherewithal to run them continues to shrink.

For unique Menno-centric take on Free Press, satirist mines her jibes between the lines

Free Press readers of a certain vintage may remember when tuning into a local radio station to hear a pair of disc jockeys perusing a section of the Saturday edition was appointment listening.

On Sunday mornings from 1962 until the mid-1980s, CKRC 630 personalities Bob Washington and Tom Ashmore — better known as Wash and Ash — entertained Winnipeggers of all ages by impersonating the likes of Dennis the Menace, Beetle Bailey and Archie Andrews, as they lent their voices to that weekend’s multi-page, colour comic insert.

In a 1984 interview, Washington, who died in 2016 at the age of 82, attributed the weekly program’s longevity to audiences enjoying the antics of “two middle-aged guys in 24 dialects, giving their version of what Dagwood is saying to Blondie, or what Hägar the Horrible is bragging about.”

More than 40 years later, another Winnipegger is turning to the Free Press for her material. Only instead of reading the paper’s funnies, Lori Klassen, a mother of three and grandmother of two, is funnily reading the paper.

Men cycling across Canada for charity have bikes stolen in Winnipeg

Thomas Clark and Valentin Duquenne were devastated after their bikes went missing outside CBC Manitoba’s headquarters, but uplifted by the outpouring of support from Manitobans afterward.

Today’s horoscope

MOON ALERT: After 9 a.m. today there are no restrictions to shopping or important decisions. The moon is in Capricorn.

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

You are direct, proactive and quick to act. You shouldn’t second-guess anything, especially instructions or orders from authority figures — bosses, parents, teachers, VIPs and even the police. You might misread their intentions? Postpone important decisions.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)