Here’s an orchard planted 4 years ago. Well, a tiny bit of it. Note that the trees are dwarfs, planted as close as liners in a nursery. Note also that each tree […]
Apples and Economy in Crisis
Race and Apples 3: Health, Fruit-Growing and Poison
Apples aren’t as healthy as they used to be. Race has a role in that. A big role, actually. Poor Joseph. Now he’s a hydroelectric dam. Spanning the Columbia right next to […]
Climate Resilience in Okanagan Agriculture 4: Rewilding Apples
There are too many apples in the world. Far too many. Too much cropland is taken up producing a product falling out of cultural favour. For 120 years in Canada, the solution […]
A Broken Culture Has Started Flogging Candy in the Okanagan Now
Land was taken from the Okanagan Indian Band to start a cattle industry in the 1860s, to generate a cash economy to support the administration of the colony of British Columbia and […]
Peach Harvest Begins
When I was six years old, I went from farm to farm with my father, and watched as he and the other men in town sliced open peach blossoms to see how […]
Organic Aphid Control in the Plum Orchard
Simple. Just wait. Problem solved.
Changing the Climate One Porcupine at a Time
This is the closing of a series on mitigating climate change through local action. The Earth is very responsive. We can trust that. This estuary on Vernon Creek, for example, with its […]
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, […]
A Lousy Apple Year for Vernon
In the local royal gala orchard, long past the renewal date of 10 years for slender spindle high density, high-capital orchards, a snowball bloom has settled out into a lousy crop. The […]
The Year of the Kazillion Cherries Has Begun
When I pruned these trees, the wind was kaboodling down the Similkameen Valley like a grizzly bear made of dry ice. Sawdust was falling in my face from my saw. My feet […]
Okanagan Okanogan 