Reading Time: 4 minutes Spring is almost over, and summer proper looms on the horizon. I always find the solstice bittersweet because every subsequent day is just a little shorter. As the season progresses, I’ve found that having a first vegetable garden is much like a new mother with her first-born baby. My garden is demanding, all-consuming, fussy and […] Read more
Lessons for a novice gardener: Weed it and weep
Confronting the Green Giant under the bed
ROOT PROBLEM Growing up in a household where potato chips abounded but even carrots were deemed exotic doesn’t teach you the best nutrition habits
Reading Time: 3 minutes I’ve never met a vegetable I couldn’t grow to hate. Honestly, with the exception of corn and potatoes, I spent most of my life avoiding vegetables the way a cat avoids a bath. I like to believe that genetically, I come from a long and successful line of hunters. When I imagine my ancestors I […] Read moreDefending America in a cow-eat-cow world
Reading Time: 3 minutes “Schadenfreude” is when an individual takes pleasure in the misfortune of others. Although the word is German, the behaviour it describes is global, and it was alive and well in Canada when we learned the U.S. had discovered a new case of BSE. Facebook lit up like a Christmas tree as folks in the business on […] Read more
Muzzled media spells bad news for democracy
Fiscal conservatism It doesn’t seem to apply when hiring communications staff to screen questions
Reading Time: 2 minutes This is supposed to be the era of instant communications but you wouldn’t know it when dealing with the federal government these days. Accessing even the most mundane information has become tedious and time consuming. In the past, communications staff facilitated information gathering by answering media requests with an expert or source who could best […] Read morePink slime a learning opportunity for Canada
Trust issues The furor over the beef additive comes at a time when consumers are leery of industry and government
Reading Time: 3 minutes The pink slime controversy is poised to become an infamous part of our cultural food lexicon — it’s gone viral and unfortunately, it’s given the beef industry another black eye. Pink slime refers to lean finely textured beef, or LFTB, an additive used as filler in ground beef. In fact, it really is still beef. […] Read moreRed meat study — perhaps the news isn’t really that bad
Food diary A red meat lover finds that when she does the numbers, she’s not eating enough to worry about
Reading Time: 3 minutes Many readers have probably heard of the study recently released by Harvard School for Public Health, warning of the increased mortality risk associated with red meat. I can just imagine packers cringing as they heard the news, retail buyers adjusting their sales projections, and the feeders starting to sweat as they recalled the high prices they […] Read moreSometimes the old ways are the best ways
Reading Time: 3 minutes When I first moved out west, I fell in love with the cowboy culture. It’s steeped in heritage, hardship and honour, all excellent cornerstones for any compelling story. In that culture, there’s nothing more iconic than the branding ritual. Over the decades, brands have become their own language. Branding irons are passed from one generation […] Read more
Country living that would make your hair curl
No exaggeration A transplant from the east realizes there’s a reason why they set up wind turbines near Pincher Creek
Reading Time: 3 minutes It’s been six months since I moved out to the country with my two sons and it’s been quite an adventure. We’re 20 minutes from Pincher Creek, so I took planning for the worst quite seriously when we first moved here. I felt immense pressure to stockpile emergency goods and firewood. I spent most of […] Read morePink slime: An object lesson for the meat industry?
Labelling The beef industry is not doing itself any favours by claiming “beef is beef”
Reading Time: 3 minutes With a long-term decline in per capita consumption — 94 pounds per capita in 1976 to 60 pounds per capita in 2009 — the last thing that U.S. cattle producers need is the current controversy over “pink slime.” And with the controversy in full swing, they certainly don’t need industry and political leaders fighting the […] Read moreShort-sighted solution to the wrong problem
Phosphorus It’s fertilizer, not a pollutant, so why not manage pigs in a way we can use it?
Reading Time: 3 minutes “It would be giving the animal a gene, which nature made a mistake by not giving them.” If there is one sentence that captures why the world’s first GMO pig never made it to market, it would be this comment from one of the lead researchers on the University of Guelph project back in 2001. […] Read moreCyber-Savvy Farmer
