News
Westerner Park’s Urban Farm Festival A Big Success!

On Sunday, August 20, our first Urban Farm Festival was held at Westerner Park. The goal of the Festival, presented by Peavey Mart, was to educate and encourage people to bring aspects of farm living into their urban homes. This was achieved through a trade show style set-up featuring exhibitors, compromised of local producers selling homemade or home-grown products. Admission was free for anyone wanting to attend, thanks to the generous support of our sponsors.
There were also free workshops for attendees to participate in, led by local people with experience in the subject matter. Workshops offered included: Urban Chickens, Hobby Bee Keeping, Canning, and Gardening Basics (sponsored by Peavey Mart) and Is Your Home Healthy? (sponsored by Health Canada). The Festival, which fell in line with Alberta Open Farm Days, also offered a petting zoo for children and adults to experience animals up close.
āOpening our doors and allowing people to experience aspects of the farm life that they can bring into their own homes was a way that Westerner Park could share their agriculture roots with the community,ā says Christina Sturgeon, Agriculture Event Sales & Production Coordinator, Westerner Park. āWe want people to know where their food is coming from and understand the benefits of growing your own or supporting local vendors by buying their natural, homemade and home-grown products.ā
In order to better understand how growing oneās own garden can be easy and sustainable, Westerner Park employees, with the help of Steel Pony Farms, planted our own Urban Farm near the racetrack on Westerner Park property in May. These small gardens were grown inside cedar boxes called wicking beds, which collect rainwater and feed the plants from the bottom up as they require hydration. This limits the frequency that the beds need to be watered by hand, and could eliminate it altogether depending on the amount of rainfall the area receives. The planting of the Urban Farm was supported by Red Deer County.
Westerner Park also collected donations from TJās Market Garden to donate back to our community through the Mustard Seed and Red Deer Food Bank. A total of 230lbs of produce was donated.
Sunday evening, 60 people gathered in the Holiday Inn Chalet for the āTaste of Homeā Long Table Dinner, prepared by Chef Emmanuel of the Boulevard Restaurant & Lounge. The meal consisted of mostly locally sourced organic ingredients, including donations from local producers Rock Ridge Dairy, James Ramsey, Flying Cross Ranch, and the Little Ice Cream & Soda Shoppe. A highlight of the evening was watching Chef demonstrate how to make his honey berry flambe topped with vanilla bean ice cream.
Hosted by Trevor Stoyko from CRUZ 100.7, the event was well received by those in attendance with many looking forward to next yearās event.
With the first Urban Farm Festival and Long Table Dinner being a success, our staff at Westerner Park are already planning how to make next yearās festivities bigger. āWe want to grow the agricultural community within Red Deer and Red Deer Countyās urban setting and have people be more aware of where they are getting their food and other products. That is our ultimate goal,ā says Sturgeon.
For a full list of sponsors, or information about other events happening at Westerner Park, please visit westernerpark.ca.
Media
Top Five Huge Stories the Media Buried This Week

NEERA TANDEN:Ā āThe military requires accountability. Itās the most accountable organization. You are supposed to be accountable to higher-ups. Politics isnāt supposed to have to do with any of this, and the fact that thatās happening, that theyāre just basically saying nothing to do here, is a big problem, I think, for those who believe in accountability.ā
@ScottJenningsKY:Ā āI think Republicans arenāt interested in any lectures on accountability in the military after the Biden administration. I mean, the bar for getting rid of a Secretary of Defense is apparently pretty high. You can get 13 people killed and go AWOL and not tell the commander in chief, and thatās not a fireable offense.ā
āBut these lectures about accountability and national security after letting 10 million people into the country who raped and murdered and committed violent acts and no remorse or accountability.ā
NEERA TANDEN:Ā āWhat are you talking about? They closed the border.ā
#4 – Bill Gates says we wonāt need humans āfor most things.ā
During an appearance onĀ The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon asked Gates a pretty direct question: āWill we still need humans?ā
Gates responded, āNot for most things. Weāll decide ā¦ There will be some things that we reserve for ourselves, but in terms of making things and moving things and growing food, over time those will be basically solved problems.ā
VIDEO:Ā @TheChiefNerd
REP JORDAN:Ā “Is NPR biased?”
MAHER:Ā “I have never seen any political bias.”
JORDAN:Ā “In the DC area, editorial positions at NPR have 87 registered Democrats and 0 Republicans.”
MAHER:Ā “We do not track the voter registration, but I find that concerning.”
JORDAN:Ā “87-0 and you’re not biased?”
MAHER:Ā “I think that is concerning if those numbers are accurate.”
JORDAN:Ā “October 2020, the NYPost had the Hunter Biden laptop story, and one of those 87 Democrat editors said, ‘We don’t want to waste our readers and listeners’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.’ Was that story a pure distraction?”
Video + Transcript viaĀ @Kanekoathegreat
While youāre here, donāt forget to subscribe to this page for more weekly news roundups.
#2 – Utah becomes the first state to officially BAN fluoride in all public drinking water.
For decades, fluoride was accepted as a safe way to prevent tooth decay. Few questioned it.
But last year, in a dramatic legal twist, a federal judge ruled that fluoride may actually lower childrenās IQāand cited evidence that could upend everything we thought we knew.
That ruling sent shockwaves through the public health world.
Judge Edward Chen pointed to scientific studies showing a āhigh level of certaintyā that fluoride exposure āposes a riskā to developing brains.
He ordered the EPA to reexamine its safety standards, warning that the margin for safety may be far too narrow.
At the center of the case: dozens of peer-reviewed studies linking everyday fluoride exposureāeven at levels found in U.S. tap waterāto reduced intellectual capacity in children.
It wasnāt just one paper. The National Toxicology Program, a branch of the U.S. government, also concluded that higher fluoride levels were āconsistently associatedā with lower IQ in kids.
They flagged 1.5 mg/L as a risk threshold. Some communities hover right near it.
In response to the growing evidence, Utah passed HB 81, banning all fluoride additives in public water.
The law takes effect May 7. It doesnāt ban fluoride completely. Anyone who wants it can still get itālike any other prescription.
And thatās the point: Utahās lawmakers say this is about informed consent and personal choice.
This issue is no longer on the fringe. Across the country, cities and towns are quietly rethinking water fluoridationāand some have already pulled out. Utah is the first state to take bold action. It may not be the last.
The conversation surrounding fluoride has shifted from āIs it helpful?ā to āIs it safe?ā And for the first time in nearly a century, that question is being taken seriously.
VIDEO:Ā @TheChiefNerd
#1 – RFK Jr. Drops Stunning Vaccine Announcement
Kennedy revealed that the CDC is creating aĀ new sub-agency focused entirely on vaccine injuriesāa long-overdue shift for patients whoāve spent years searching for answers without any support from the government.
āWeāre incorporating an agency within CDC that is going to specialize in vaccine injuries,ā Kennedy announced.
āThese are priorities for the American people. More and more people are suffering from these injuries, and we are committed to having gold-standard science make sure that we can figure out what the treatments are and that we can deliver the best treatments possible to the American people.ā
For years, the vaccine-injured have felt ignored or dismissed, as public health agencies refused to even acknowledge the problem. Now, thereās finally an initiative underway to investigate their injuries and to provide support.
Thanks for reading! This weekly roundup takes time and care to put togetherāand I do my best to make it your go-to source for the stories that matter most but rarely get the attention they deserve.
If you like my work and want to support me and my family and help keep this page alive, the most powerful thing you can do is sign up for theĀ email listĀ andĀ become a paid subscriber.
International
āLot Of Nonsenseā: Kari Lake Announces Voice Of America Is Dumping Legacy Outlets

From theĀ Daily Caller News Foundation
By Hailey Gomez
Special Adviser for the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) Kari Lake announced Friday that Voice of America (VOA) will terminate its contracts with The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse.
VOA, an international broadcasting state media network, is funded by USAGM, with former President Joe BidenĀ requestingĀ in March 2024 a budget increase for the 2025 fiscal year to further support the radio network. In an XĀ postĀ on Friday, Lake announced USAGM will end its āexpensive and unnecessary newswireĀ contracts,ā adding that some of the major agreements included ātens-of-millions of dollars in contractsā with AP News, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
āUSAGM is an American taxpayer funded News Organization with an 83-year history. We should not be paying outside news companies to tell us what the news isāwith nearly a billion-dollar budget, we should be producing news ourselves,ā Lake wrote. āAnd if thatās not possible, the American taxpayer should demand to know why.ā
During a meeting withĀ VOAĀ staffers Friday, employees were reportedly told to āstop using wire service material for their reports,āĀ accordingĀ to Newsmax. Notably, audio, video, and text reports have often been used to supplement coverage from locations where reporters are not present, the outlet reported.
In an interview with Newsmax prior to the official contract cuts, Lake discussed how the agency was finding āa lot of nonsense that the American taxpayer shouldnāt be paying for.ā
āToday, I started the process of terminating the agencyās contracts with the Associated Press, Reuters, & the Agence France-Presse. This will save taxpayers about 53 million dollars. The purpose of our agency is to tell the American story. We donāt need to outsource that responsibility to anyone else,ā LakeĀ wroteĀ in an X post regarding the interview.
Disputes between The AP and the White House began in February after the corporate media outlet was revokedĀ press accessĀ for refusing to call the Gulf of America by its new name. The AP filed a lawsuit on Feb. 21Ā againstĀ White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich for injunctive relief.
Lake wasĀ swornĀ in as USAGMās special adviser on March 3, saying sheās ālooking forwardā to serving America and āstreamliningā the agency. The cuts from the agency follow President Donald Trumpās push for his second administration to review the governmentās wasteful spending.
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