Apples are among the highest glories of human culture. That’s why it’s exciting when B.C. Tree Fruits, the corporation that markets Okanagan apples (and Okanogan apples, too), to the supermarket industry, releases […]
Naming A New Apple
A Partridge in a Pear Tree? Better!
I love the old song The Twelve Days of Christmas and it’s “PARtridge in a pearRRrrr treee!” And I love pears. But I am wondering if it’s really the right song for a […]
Transportation: It’s What We Do
The East Kelowna cherry farmer Hugh Dendy, whose family has been farming East Kelowna since farming in East Kelowna began, told me once that Kelowna’s decline into a strip mall paradise began […]
The Peaches of Winter
Our supermarkets fly fruit to us from Peru, Chile, Argentina, Morocca, Israel, China, Japan, Mexico, California, New Zealand, Australia, Greece, Turkey, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and wherever in the world else, but […]
Dogs Dogs Dogs
Dogs have been important in the Okanagan for thousands of years. To lead us on the trail of a possible reason why, here is one of Mourning Dove’s tales of that wild […]
Playing with Land
The British Columbia Agricultural Land Reserve Commission, created to protect agricultural land from development, has just approved the transformation of 10 acres of agricultural land on the Okanagan College Property in Vernon […]
Maréchal Foch: The Forgotten Grape of the Okangan
Wine is getting expensive these days. A bottle of Okanagan red usually costs upwards of $20. The best stuff goes for over $150. Ouch. Yes, I understand that only so much wine […]
The Organic Machine
One of my goals for writing Okanagan Okanogan was to collect material and photographs to support a project reimagining the landscape of the Greater Okanagan as a series of organic and physical […]
Amazing Vole Gardens
If you’re going to plant a garden, it’s a good idea to dig around and till the soil a bit first. Here’s a meadow vole doing just that, affectionately imaged by the […]
The Problem with Watersheds
Human engineering rearranges landscapes to make water flow. This is a curious thing when a landscape is renowned for being short of water. Since the human carrying capacity of the Okanagan has […]
Okanagan Okanogan 