When the apple trees are pumped full of nitrogen and water to make the apples big and keep them from burning when they can’t get cool in the summer sun, then some […]
Global Warming & Cooling Cycles, Okanagan Style
Want to Buy Some Land in Vernon?
This orchard will be for sale soon. It’s dying. There’s no way that it can pay off the cost of its posts now, let alone anything else. There’s an idea out there […]
Communicating With Deer
Here’s the walking trail above the orchards west of my house in late winter. Notice how the path is as wide as a road, is packed down from human traffic, and is […]
The Karma of Deer
Whatever else 12 foot tall fences are for, they are not to keep deer out of orchards. Here, you can see that the goal is to keep the neighbours out. With their […]
This is Not a War
Grass springs. up. If you come along and eat it, it springs up again. That’s because its regenerative life is under the ground, in rhizomes, sods, roots and seeds. When grass needs […]
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, […]
If Geese are Noble Beasts, What are Pheasants?
Praise to an orchard that left apples on the ground for the neighbours. The geese are contemplative about it, the robins (to the left) are quiet, the starlings are hidden in the […]
The Best Hours of the Year
I had an unusual start in life. When the sky got like this at this time of year (and even darker at solstice), I was out pruning fruit trees, like this apple […]
Dandelion Swan Song
Aren’t the orchards pretty in the springtime, with their quaint tractor wobble reminiscent of human fragility and everything? You, too, can achieve this effect on your own yard. These babies will […]
Apple Trees Wasting Water
It is said all the time how water efficient orchards have become with trickle irrigation. Maybe not. If these trees were fruiting in the low winter sun, they would only have apples […]
