| In a society where less than two percent of the population farms, there’s a real knowledge gap when it comes to food. It exists on many levels – nutrition and preparation come to mind – but especially on the production and origins end. So it’s no surprise that one of the main missions of many in agriculture today is to talk to people about how food is produced and where it comes from. This is all relatively simple and straightforward when we are talking about fruits, vegetables and field crops. It’s not even that complicated with milk and eggs. But meat is another story. Continue reading Do we or don’t we talk about it?  When I came across a website that mentioned it would let me grow my own wheat online and follow it through right to my dinner plate, I have to admit I was intrigued.
I went to www.howwheatworks.com and signed myself up so I could get started. Faced with several different wheat types I could plant, I chose durum as I am totally addicted to pasta – and the majority of our pasta contains this particular kind of wheat.
Continue reading Grow your own pasta – virtually I feel the need to get something off my chest this morning. It seems to be popular in the urban media at the moment to bash farmers, especially those who grow corn and soybeans. These horrible people – or so the theme goes – are ruining the environment by growing large volumes of these crops and they’re making us fat to boot. Continue reading In defense of farmers  A bunch of us girls get together every once in a while for craft night. Now, normally, this has nothing to do with food or farming – other than we’re all farm girls and we usually eat food before crafting. But the last time we got together, my friend Cathy mentioned she was growing tomatoes in her garden this year.
Continue reading The great salsa adventure
I think I could be newly addicted. This year, more than ever before, I’ve been focused on local foods and making a conscious effort to buy and consume more of them, especially Ontario fruits and vegetables. Not only are they good for me, but I believe it’s important to support our own, in this case Ontario’s farmers. But there’s one problem with my carefully practised efforts to buy Ontario: what do you do with the remainder of a two-litre basket of peaches when all you can really eat within a few short days only uses up half the basket? Continue reading Once you start, you just can’t stop The word crisis is heard often at the moment. Unfortunately, it seems to be heard most often in conjunction with two other words: agriculture and farmers. In a country as wealthy and as entrenched in farming as ours, to me, there’s something fundamentally wrong with this picture.
Continue reading Our agriculture industry is at a crisis point  They say it’s one of the most difficult crops to grow, second only to orchids. A statement like that probably brings all sorts of exotic plants to mind, but what we’re actually talking about here are mushrooms.
Yes, mushrooms. Continue reading Growing the perfect mushroom | |
