Here’s an example of how much land is used for machines and how little for growing food. High Density Apple Orchard in Bella Vista I’d say that was about 75% for tractors, […]
An Agricultural Wasteland in the Okanagan
How to Turn the Okanagan Into a Desert
I thought at first this bunchgrass was in such beautiful shape this spring because of a winter of voles fertilizing it while nesting in its thatch. Then I realized that it hasn’t […]
March 2 and the Apples are Ripe
Cherries, too. It is a lesson in ending anthropological thinking. What would our valleys look like if we grew fruit for the birds, and then, rather than harvesting it for fruit or […]
The True Costs of Farming in the Okanagan
Farming is expensive in Canada. One way of looking at it is shown by the apple plantation below. Let’s look: Posts: harvested on the plateau, trucked, milled, impregnated with toxic copper compounds, […]
How Fences Change the Climate
Last week in Kelowna, I talked to a group gathered at the library about the price of fences, such as this ‘deer fence’ around an orchard in Vernon. Deer need to go […]
The Difference Between Coyotes and Humans
Check out what Sen’klip nabbed and dropped along his trail. Lovely! Check out what farming looks like in the Okanagan today. Here’s a farmer at work on his farm road in Bella […]
Lack of Childcare Spaces in the Okanagan
Right. Hard at work sleeping in the vineyard, everyone who should have been at work is surprised by the news photographer (me) and begins to make a cunning plan. And what’s that? […]
Bamboo? Shoo!
Canada is a place that buys bamboo sticks and rods and posts and stakes from China so we can hold up our tomato plants and gladioli and other fine and lovely things […]
Learning to Swim in the Sea of the Sun
Water. Here’s some caught in a flow of energy. This flow is called the Thompson River. You might as well call it “poetry”. Or “agriculture”. (And for that, a few words might […]
It’s Not Just Technology That Changes the World
Like the apple, the quince was selected by thousands of years of human use to be the size of a hand. Any smaller and our ancestors would have walked on. It doesn’t […]
Okanagan Okanogan 