Gripple. Nice word. It has an active form, too: grippling. These old words don’t hang out in a dictionary, though, and Google is hopeless with them, but you can find them in […]
Gripple Apples
Fall: What’s Not to Love?
Autumn. It’s the beginning of the glory that is winter. It’s About the Light! Berry farm below Goose Lake, as the sun rises selectively. And just in front of that? See what […]
Homeless in Vernon
How could this happen? Homeless in Vernon How could this happen, in between a highway bypass, a rail line, and a marsh? Really? Not even under the sheltering limbs of the elm […]
Ogopogo From the Air, and a Story for You
Here’s the Ogopogo, seen from the air just after Thanksgiving … Mid-Okanagan Lake, with Ogopogo Photo: Anassa Rhenisch. Thanks for giving, Anassa! For the full story of this corner of the lake, why not […]
Glorious Sumac
Autumn. In the Okanagan Okanogan, it would be nothing without sumac. In the East, the maple trees and sumacs turn red and the sun burns on the face of the earth. We […]
Mariposa Lily: an Indigenous Food Crop Reborn
In open agriculture, indigenous crops take their rightful place as efficient water farmers on dry hillsides. One of the most beautiful of these crops is the mariposa lily. In most parts of […]
Water Farming
Yesterday, I introduced the concept of Open Agriculture: a form of agriculture that works with the forms and processes of the land and unites very different settler and indigenous forms of cultivation. Today, […]
Open Agriculture, Day 1
Welcome to the idea of Open Agriculture, farming for the future made in cooperation with the planet. I have been collecting seeds and making notes about new crops for the coming drought […]
Making the Future
Here’s the old story: Indigenous peoples lived for thousands of years in the West, surviving by hunting and gathering, often in abject poverty, until settlers came from the United States, Canada, and […]
Ripening the Sun
A friend asked how I knew when my green zebra tomatoes were ripe, when I’d never grown them before and they were green when they began and green when they ended. Good […]
Okanagan Okanogan 