Winter … Ugh!  Well, I suppose now we can expect our second summer. It’s been a bit of a tricky harvest after the 3 weeks of beautiful weather late September and early October. But every year is different and this one is no exception.

We are very pleased to welcome our new Executive Director, Ashley Honsberger. She comes with many, many accolades from colleagues, former employers, as well as all the social media outlets. Even her old neighbours back home made special calls to our office to say that we hired the right person. Current President Steve Sickle says, “We are truly excited to introduce Ashley Honsberger as our new executive director. Ashley is the right person at the right time for the next stage in our organization’s journey. Her collaborative leadership style will be an excellent complement to the expert staff already at OSCIA.” And we can finally bid Andy Graham farewell into his retirement. In his last email to our board, he stated “I’ll look forward to keeping in touch with Ashley throughout her first year as the ED, as she gets comfortable in the leadership role.” Imagine that! Andy trying to retire and is still willing to ensure the welfare of the OSCIA. Admittedly Ashley has some big shoes to fill, but I’m sure that she will rise to it.

Hopefully everyone took advantage of the new S-Cap program funding.  Letters of approval should be coming out soon after extensive reviews.

OSCIA is accepting applications now for the Honey Bee Health Initiative and the Resilient Agricultural Landscape Program (RALP), to support farmers in making their agricultural lands more productive and resilient.

I encourage all the counties to get planning their AGMs. The calendar is filling up quickly and I want to attend all of them.

Finally, OSCIA’s provincial AGM is February 5 & 6 with a special sprayer clinic the next day. Please send in your resolutions, and registrations for the President and delegate.

Please stay safe to finish off this crop season.

Very Best to all……. Andy

Andy van Niekerk, P.Ag. Provincial Director, Georgian Central.  Cell: 705-446-5080