|  To me, the thought of lavender always brings images of the south of France to mind – and a lovely vacation I spent there with my Mom in the late 1990s.
It’s time for me to change my thinking, though, because lavender is set to have a bigger presence as a homegrown Ontario crop as well. Ontario farmers recently formed the Ontario Lavender Association and are excited about the potential of this crop as an exciting addition to agri-tourism in our province, says a recent story in The Grower. Continue reading Lovely local lavender  When they’re planting their crops, farmers in this area must always keep an eye out for unexploded bombs. Their lands were once battlefields and the dangerous remnants of those conflicts are still a threat today, decades after the end of hostilities.
Now any number of war-torn corners of the world may come to mind as you read these words but the truth may surprise you. The farmers I’m talking about farm in Belgium, in the fabled Flanders Fields made famous by the poem of the same name written by Canadian doctor John McCrae during World War I. Continue reading Where food, farming and bombs collide  Imagine an 11 acre indoor garden with two kilometres of walking paths, 776 cubic feet of soil, 4736 square feet of pond surface and 300,000 visitors over eight days.
That’s the world famous Floralies of Ghent, an incredible floral and plant exposition that takes place once every five years – a tradition that’s been ongoing for over 200 years.
Continue reading A floral paradise  There was a bit of deja-vu in the air along with the ash as I read in the news this morning that an airport-closing plume had made another appearance in Britain.
It seems a bit like old news now – but a few short weeks ago, the impossibly-named volcano in Iceland that had somehow managed to send global air travel into a tailspin was making headlines around the world. I had a unique perspective on that particular story as I arrived in Europe to participate in the International Federation of Agriculture Journalists’ (IFAJ) Congress in Belgium a day before the now infamous eruption.
Continue reading Return of the ash  It’s a healthy green vegetable that is growing in popularity with consumers. So much so that a niche market for Ontario-grown edamame could be one with potential for farmers.
Edamame is a succulent soybean that is a staple in some Asian diets. Although it is planted and grown like a regular soybean crop, edamame is harvested when the plant has reached the R7 stage – still green and at the peak of its sugar levels, which results in the best flavour. Continue reading Edamame – a new local food?  In honour of April Fool’s day…a joke involving a spaghetti tree is listed among the top 100 hoaxes of all time.
In 1957, the BBC broadcast a story about a bumper spaghetti harvest from spaghetti trees in Switzerland. Many UK listeners called in with questions, including how they could grow their own spaghetti trees. Continue reading The spaghetti tree hoax  A unique project brings daily activities of milking cows to new media tool Twitter.
This article appears in this month’s Ontario Dairy Farmer magazine and is the full length version of shorter blog article I posted here a couple of weeks ago. They’re an unlikely team – a new media researcher in Waterloo, an English professor from Georgia, a Brant County dairy farmer and 12 Holstein cows. But they’ve come together in a unique social media project that looks at the way humans interact with animals and has the cows posting their daily activities on Twitter. Continue reading Teats and tweets | |
