Climate
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The Tale of Humble Tea and the Sea
The sea is the gift that keeps on giving this winter (and it is rare to have so reliable a subject as an amateur nature photographer). The lesson learned from last week is that visiting the same place every day allows nature to reveal herself slowly and gain new appreciations for the forces that shape Continue reading
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The Incredible Oceans
Something magical can happen if you return to the same place every day to document it. Nature works slowly and reveals the methods of her beauty over time. After 8 consecutive days and nights of -15C to -20C and colder, the sea crusted over in a beautiful pattern of hardened slush. Visiting the same site Continue reading
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The Fragility of Water
The phenomenon known as “sea smoke” happens when temperatures drop. Relatively warm water meets very cold air, and we can see condensation occur, making it appear as though there is steam rising from the body of water. It is a strikingly beautiful thing, and I’ve been lucky enough to be able to take amazing photos Continue reading
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Garden Futures: Designing With Nature
When I wrote last week’s post Art Can Show Us the Diversity We’ve Lost, I didn’t know that a couple days later I would be stumbling into the Garden Futures: Designing With Nature exhibit in Helsinki’s Designmuseo. The stated goals of the exhibition seemed to jar with my perspective as a farmer. It is not Continue reading
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Art Can Show Us the Diversity We’ve Lost
Anecdotally, everywhere one seems to look, humans appear to have an irresistible urge to clean things up, make everything tidy, neat and uniform. Anecdotes meet reality. This issue is supported by mountains of science and documentation: modern conventional corporate agriculture is a major driver of biodiversity loss for its preference of monocultures and deforestation, forestry Continue reading
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Change Is Coming….Fast
Not talking about it, or pretending it isn’t real, will not help us prepare for significant changes the world will face in the coming decades. Not talking about it leaves our communities and societies weak, our businesses brittle, and unable to adapt in time. Not talking about it means we double down, triple down, quadruple Continue reading
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Life Without Sun
The last two nights we’ve had a very light touch of frost. All it took was 11 hours without the sun to freeze. To go from 18C to 0C. We live on a precarious edge at all times. The only planet we know that exists to harbour life as we know it does so because Continue reading
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Nature’s Economic Paradox
Several times this summer I have come across comments or opinions relating to fertilizers (specifically Nitrogen) on various social media platforms. Usually these comments are in the realm of needing to feed the world, the high cost of the fertilizer to the farmer, or how emissions from producing nitrogen are necessary and therefore shouldn’t be Continue reading
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The Human Scale and Our Recent Past
At Riding Mountain in Manitoba, there is a bridge and low-tech dam built by conscientious objectors in the early 1940s at Whirlpool Lake (more archival photos here). What is striking to me about these sorts of things is everything absent from modern life. This bridge was built by hand. There was no trip to the Continue reading
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Nature Comes Developed
We’ve spotted a Yellow Lady Slipper orchid Cypripedium parviflorum in a ditch near the farm. This beautiful flower lies a mere six inches (or 15 centimetres) from where the grass in the ditch is dutifully mowed by the neighbours. I have always found the term “development” as it relates to urban planning or suburban expansion Continue reading
About Graham
Graham is an ecologist-farmer from Canada working on educating about the wonders and beauty of the natural world, and how we can design biodiverse food production systems.
Complimentary Blueberry Juice 