environment
-
Book Recommendation: Beasts of the Sea
This book was published a couple years ago in 2023 and I’ve been waiting and waiting for a translation from the original Finnish (since my Finnish needs improvement), and as of 2025 it is now available in English. Written as an account of Russian expedition to the east that lead to the Steller’s Sea Cow… Continue reading
-
New Camera, New Journey: Sharing the Life on the Farm
First, welcome to any new readers from the Selkirk Horticultural Society. Over the last couple years since I’ve started doing workshops and farm tours, one one of the things that stands out to me is how difficult it is to communicate just how much life you can attract to a farm or garden, and the… Continue reading
-
The Paradox of “Development”
I’ve always had a problem with the word development. As is the case with language, words can have many meanings. Yes, one can refer to a learning curve or gaining a skill set as development. Or, one could refer to an athlete’s progression as development, there’s even a phrase for it, draft and develop, in… Continue reading
-
Book Recommendation: White Light
I highly recommend White Light: The Essential Element that Changed the World, a book about Phosphorous, by Jack Lohmann. Published just last year in 2025, the book details the Phosphorous cycle and its crucial role in life on Earth, its discovery as an agricultural fertilizer, and the severe environmental and political implications of mining it.… Continue reading
-
Toxic By Default
We received notice from our RM of all the wonderful chemicals that may be applied during the season, a run-of-the-mill PSA. It proceeds to list 9 different herbicides and 4 pesticides. At the bottom of the PSA comes the kicker: if you don’t agree, you have to write a physical letter to the provincial government… Continue reading
-
Book Recommendation: A Sand County Almanac
‘Tis the season! …reading season! This is a great one from a naturalist, A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. Aldo’s prose and storytelling is the star here, with beautiful passages detailing the natural movements of animals through the seasons. It was published in 1949 and not only does it stand the test of time,… Continue reading
-
Science Will Win
Back in January I wrote a piece detailing the absurd reliance and insistence on widespread chemical usage in agriculture. There is something I would like to draw attention to: a stunning collaborative journalism piece titled “Revealed: the US government-funded ‘private social network’ attacking pesticide critics“ exposing the lengths to which the chemical industry will go… Continue reading
-
Wetlands are Critical Agricultural Infrastructure
Like many other types of ecosystems, wetlands have had more-than-significant destruction and elimination over the past century. Where I live there was once a place called St Andrews Bog which covered some 116, 000 acres. It was nearly all drained, leaving only a small section of the south portion of Lake Winnipeg and, later, a… Continue reading
-
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
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.
