Our grapes are up to something we never suspected. You know those leaves on grape plants? Grape Leaves Waiting for the Light Assmannshausen am Rhein, late June, 6 a.m. Photosynthesis is the […]
Grapes at Work
Marc, yeast, and terroir
Today, the first of a two-part series on the spiritual and environmental nature of wine, and what it can teach us about productive paths for our society as it works to reintegrate […]
Poetic Light
After thinking about water yesterday, and how it is moved from place to place with the sun’s heat, which it stored and gave back again under the soil surface, I went to […]
Adding and Subtracting Value
Words are curious things. Here are two, often used together by government and industry: value and added. Together they indicate a concept by which an area of production (vegetable growing, perhaps) can […]
Wild Harvest
Since farmland prices in the Canadian Okanagan has been pushed to dizzy heights by the scarcity created by the International Border between Osoyoos and Oroville, and no young person can farm anymore […]
King of the Grass
I was out on the Commonage today, south of Vernon and above Kalamalka Lake, and found some Giant Wild Rye Grass growing on the road margins of a riparian area. The tallest […]
Burning Water
There are two major uses to which contemporary society puts the high country above the dry Okanagan Valley: water collection for settlement use, and forestry. As I suggested yesterday, the two are […]
Winter Tomatoes
I wonder how much we need greenhouse tomatoes. Take a look at the tomatoes I picked from my garden on October 12, with a frost coming: The Last Tomato Harvest of the […]
Okanagan Chestnuts
Here’s a crop we see too little of in the valley: nuts. It’s like having Christmas on the tree. Gone are the days when we used to sit in front of the […]
Wine for Christmas and the Future
There are two new vineyards on the block. The first is Meyer Family Vineyards, which is located under this Coyote Rock in Okanagan Falls, on deep gravels and sands that appear to […]
Okanagan Okanogan 