Meagan Curtis During the first decades of the 20th century in rural Vancouver Island, horses were used for farm work and personal transportation. It seemed everyone had a horse of some kind. Horses co-harvested the hay and grain that would feed and warm them through a cold rainy winter after these crops were cut by… Keep Reading
Anna Helmer Hello and welcome once again to The Biodynamic Farming Experience for the Celestially-Challenged: a partly-formed, poorly-articulated, and over-hyphenated chronicle of a particular journey in which a woman-farmer-of-a-certain-age-and-experience (me) delves into the theory and, more importantly, the practice of Biodynamic farming in search of fun and the future of farming. Rambling along here, aren’t… Keep Reading
Wendy Bennett, CRSP, Executive Director, AgSafeBC It’s only been two years since one of British Columbia’s most devastating wildfire seasons. In 2017 over 1.2 million hectares were destroyed by 1,353 wildfires in the Cariboo, Kamloops, southeast and coastal regions. According to recent forecasts, this summer could be another long, hot, and dry one. The effects… Keep Reading
BC Agriculture & Food Climate Action Initiative The impacts of climate change include hotter and drier summers, which means that wildfires are expected to become more frequent and intense. But ranchers can take steps to prepare for an emergency wildfire event and reduce risks to their operation. The following actions are extracted from the Workbook:… Keep Reading
Crop-Livestock Integration at Green Fire Farm DeLisa Lewis, PhD What do the North American Dust Bowl of the 1930s and the current global experiences of climate change have in common? Of course, both are understood as environmental disasters with humans as major contributors. But, if you answered with either ‘farmers’ or ‘soils,’ or more ideally,… Keep Reading
A Recipe for Success in Achieving Long Term Soil Conservation Saikat Kumar Basu Why Care for our Soils? Soil is an important constituent of both agriculture and forestry; unfortunately, it is taken for granted most of the time. It is a cheap, easily accessible or available global resource for which we have often forgotten to… Keep Reading
Tools for your Nutrient Management Toolkit Amy Norgaard, Dru Yates, & Emma Holmes Every year farmers align countless variables to produce healthy crops that make it to market. Crop planning. Bed prep. Transplanting. Irrigation. Weed management. Pest management. Harvest. Storage and transport. Typically, there is a sweet spot in terms of either quantity or timing… Keep Reading
Three case studies examine soil management practices in the face of climate change By Rachel Penner, BC Agriculture & Food Climate Action Initiative Improving soil health is one way producers can increase the resilience of their operations in the face of climate change. The BC Agriculture & Food Climate Action Initiative (CAI) has supported multiple… Keep Reading
Anna Helmer Would you mind if we talked about Biodynamic farming? There. That’s how you keep your readership small. Those of you still with me have fought through eye-glaze and eye-roll and have resisted page turn. You will notice that even I am struggling a bit to stay on topic, and if only you could… Keep Reading
Cultivating Climate Resilience in a Living Laboratory Constance Wylie Surrounded by forest and sea, the University of British Columbia is a quick 30 minute bus ride west of downtown Vancouver. A city unto itself, more than 55,800 students and close to 15,000 faculty and staff study, work, live, and play there. A small but growing… Keep Reading
