The fruit that this rich land produces is dependent upon mining the water resources that used to flow down from the hills. As a result of the corresponding loss of spawning channels […]
Wild Harvest
Choke
When I was a boy in the Similkameen, we were told that choke cherries would, well, choke you. Fruit that grew wild on the land was, we were told, poisonous. Sigh. Such words are […]
Wild Apples
The American natural philosopher Henry David Thoreau died of tuberculosis in May, 1862. He lived to see the apples bloom that year and begin to swell into fruit, but not to mature […]
Royal Gala Country
Late in September, a forklift driver at a Kelowna apple packing house goes on a hunger strike for publicizing that a truckload of Washington Royal Gala apples was inside his warehouse during Royal […]
Food and Industry
Here’s an example of what can happen when a horticultural industry is replaced by a technological one: Hanford, Washington The plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb was created on the Columbia, in the […]
The Big Picture
The big picture is vast and complex. Maybe not. Take a look. Mullein Overlooking Bella Vista and the Commonage Hint: the Mullein is not a weed here. It is a native plant […]
The Land Game
Apple Orchard at Fort Okanogan I’d like to introduce you to two of the players in the game being played right now for the heart of the valley. Above, at the mouth […]
Land is Money
Depression Area Orchard Gets a Makeover As immigrant dreams give over to the dream of a settled identity, the Okanagan is in a period of transition. On the one hand, the Okanagan […]
