farming
-
Hnatiuk Gardens YouTube Channel Launch
Good morning to our friend, the classic Alberta Clipper. It’s a little chilly to work in the greenhouse today, with a nice layer of sticky snow covering it and struggling to get up to 10C, but we’ve got everything growing under wraps at a nice toasty 23C. It is hard to imagine that last year,… 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
-
Our Little Orchard Story
***sorry to anyone trying to comment, it seems comments were held for review, but I’ve changed the settings so hopefully that doesn’t happen anymore*** About a year after we started the no-till experimental acre in 2018, I got the idea to start planting apple trees. I was pretty ‘green’ at the whole professional farming thing… Continue reading
-
Pushing for Spring Production
New year, new season, new schedule. As I always like to say, this is the best time of year for farming…because nothing has gone wrong yet. It’s all the purity of the platonic farming season, where everything grows perfectly, everything goes to plan, harvests are abundant, and perhaps most importantly, there are no weeds. I’m… Continue reading
-
All The Life In The Compost Bin
Last year I was able to successfully harvest 600L of worm compost and repeat that this season. It worked pretty well, and if you want to read about why we’re running our waste ProMix through a worm bin you can read that post here, and on the second go-round I tried to make some improvements… Continue reading
-
The Way The Weather Goes
This short blog hiatus was unplanned. Fall was mentally difficult and I think I just checked out of agriculture a bit early this season. Even though there was a lot of positive things going on, the farm received over 120mm of rain in October, effectively shutting down our season. The one thing we have (until… Continue reading
-
No-Till Soil Demo: Let Plants Do The Work
Wow, did I ever get a nice big surprise this week when shredding all the beds. Finally, winter is coming, so down goes all the above-ground plant mass. We take our compact tractor and flail mower and shred all the plants down to the surface. This methodology allows all the below-ground plant mass to stay… Continue reading
-
No-Till Bed System Fall Prep 2025 Version
Next year will be our 9th attempt at this…can we finally utilize the entire system? We’ve never maxed it out. (For a quick recap about where we were last season, and two seasons when we converted to 100 feet), and for this season, we had the capacity for a 58-bed system, but in practice we… Continue reading
-
Problems With Parsnips
After trying for 4 years or so, I think I’m finally giving up on this one. The general problem with the Parsnips is that they anchor themselves into our clay soil and are nearly impossible to dig. I’ve also noticed they send out enormous side shoots, which I thought anchored them even further. Luckily I… 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.
