Columns

Back in the winter, I wrote a column about rural poverty, living wage, and some United Way research about life in Huron and Perth Counties. I don t usually get feedback from the columns that I write but that one did inspire a couple of people to make...

Jack and Eddy have been sitting in silence for some time, poles extended over the deepest pool in this stretch of the stream or crick as Eddy would say sacrificial dew worms suspended in the violet darkness.

You know what I hate most about summer? George McKenzie was grumbling the other day. Family reunions!

I have always been skeptical, I have to admit, of aid organizations promising to deliver goats, chickens or pigs to people who forego Christmas presents.

A recent conversation with my neighbour demonstrated how farmers can view the relationship between agriculture and nature in different ways. We encountered each other along a fence line between our farms. My neighbour asked if I d like my side of the...

Cliff Murray had arrived early so when Dave Winston and George McKenzie arrived he was reading one of the Toronto newspapers that Mabel keeps around for the Grill s customers.

Fast Eddy lives on a clay hill in a fieldstone house.
You get there along a half mile lane that cuts through a field planted to corn and leads to a plank bridge crossing a narrow stream. From there, the lane deteriorates into a rutted track...

Last year, I read in a farming publication about an old saying that over their career, farmers get only 40 chances to get planting right. Of course, that is a very arbitrary number it depends on when you start, when you finish, and if you get...

As I drive along the concession roads with the glory of spring on the land, I m struck again and again with how well-kept nearly all the farm homesteads are. It s a far cry from farms when I was growing up.

It was hard to see the little, pale, brownish brain heads popping out between the clutter of spring growth and fall s faded leaves on the forest floor.

The word he used was defeated.
Len was at the Stratford Dairy XPO eating his pancake breakfast. He was a dairy farmer who had travelled from Wisconsin with a friend to take in the show.

Trees are the answer. No matter the question. That was the title of my talk for the Ontario Woodlot Association s conference in Shakespeare in April. It was such an honour to be there a great day with lots of information and tools for anyone with trees on

I wish Facebook had never been invented! fumed Cliff Murray the other morning as he sat down for a session at Mabel s Grill.

It was in the Detroit airport in the 1990s, heading for a southerly destination, that I first noticed it. A lot of smartly-dressed people talking as they walked. They look self-absorbed, intentionally so, it seemed. That s when I decided I d never own one

Communicate is defined by the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, Second Edition, as transmit or pass on information by speaking, writing, or other means . Such a simple definition for something that often turns out to be so complicated!

I haven t watched many James Bond movies lately but back when I did, a favourite plot line was about 007 saving the world from some megalomaniacal billionaire who wanted to run the world. Back then it seemed as far-fetched a fantasy as Bond s magical...

We share knowing glances and nods of understanding. No matter where I go in the world, there is a sense of kinship among the producers of food.

I remember with fondness my few months of interaction with the indigenous community of Northwestern Alberta in the mid-1980s, many of whom are members of the Dene Tha First Nation.
It s not that they were leading untroubled lives...

Marketing grain effectively is a big piece of the farm profitability puzzle. When we had sows, we fed all of the corn that we grew. Since that ended, we have gone through a continuous learning process about how to capture the most money from all the plann

The Ontario Federation of Agriculture s Producing Prosperity in Ontario policy, designed to draw the attention of the three main political parties in June s provincial election to the needs and potential of rural communities, is also a refreshing recognit

The Pigeon King returns to the Blyth Festival and raises questions about the self-proclaimed Pigeon King himself, Arlan Galbraith.
I m not alone in my curiousity. Thousands of farmers signed contracts with Pigeon King International (PKI) ...

Last year, on July 1, my wife and I took a break from our farm to mark Canada 150 Day. Increasingly conscious of Canada s shameful historical (and contemporary) treatment of Indigenous peoples, we decided to sidestep events focusing on the nation-buildi

Here s the ingredient list I used, Pinkie: 18 cups of handpicked gooseberries, the purple variety; seven cups of dark maple syrup; six cups of granulated sugar; and a generous tablespoon of cinnamon.

Everyone knows the stereotypical farmer strong, stoic, rarely discussing, or even having, feelings.