The project to renew the heritage apricot of the Smelqmx, the last survivor of a 1920s program to remove commercial fruitgrowing from Indigenous hands in British Columbia, continues. Every day I carry […]
Paul Terbasket’s Apricot Ripens Up
Indigenous Trees and Settler Trees
Here’s an indigenous fruit tree, a black hawthorn in bloom on the banks of the Shuswap River. And here’s an apple tree, a species brought by settlers 160 years ago. Both are […]
Paul’s Apricots are Ready for Winter
The new apricot trees from the survivor of the end of native fruit growing in 1923, with the jailing of Paul Terbasket for watering his trees, a sideshow to the McBride Commission […]
Sixty Things We Can Do to Help the Earth Right Now, Right Here
This is the second part of the answer to a question of how adopting Indigenous land use protocols can help the Earth. The first is here: The Price of De-Indigenizing the Land. […]
The Harvest Begins, With Desert Parsley (and a very fine rock)
The desert parsley is up in the Similkameen. This is on the south-facing side of a gulley. The north side was still covered in snow, so perhaps three days before this slope […]
Towards an Indigenous Agriculture: Land Reform for British Columbia (and beyond)
Yesterday, I showed how an aspen copse … … could be used as both a living and an agricultural space by farming both its edges and its shade. Here’s that post. Today, I’d […]
Our Future is Fruitful
The future opens out of the present. First we see. Then we help others see. Then we build it together. Staghorn Sumac: Our Okanagan Future The future is already here. It is […]
In Praise of Scotch Thistles
B.C. Hydro, our provincial power provider, is a responsible citizen, and poisoned these invasive thistles last year. It’s the regulation. One wants to protect cattle range from inedible weeds. The thistles […]
Biscuit Root Makes History
I found a rich community of biscuit root growing on a scree slope. They’re hard to harvest there (which is, likely, why they’re still there), but they love it. Beautiful Biscuit Root […]
An Oriole, a New Food Crop, Northern Pineapples, and Drinking the Sun
I am piecing together a guide to new crops that can build a new, sustainable agriculture and food art culture in this grassland sea. Yesterday, I noticed that a late spring crop […]
Okanagan Okanogan 