Dear whoever will read this, [this letter has been sent to the mayor and a number of city councillors] I would like to add my voice to all the others asking the city for a non-essential or cosmetic pesticide ban. I’m a local food writer heavily involved in the urban agriculture and foraging communities. I [...]
I was lucky this year. I got up to my moose hunt only a day before the snow. Ruffed grouse , although well geared up with cool anatomy to walk on it [see photo below], they seem to go in hiding when it snows. If the trails and roads are bare, they’re often found simply [...]
At their request as a consulting local food ‘expert’ [makes me cringe to refer to myself as such], I’ve headed up a couple food adventures lately with some of NAIT‘s culinary arts students. Last week was foraging for highbush cranberry – still have to write about that one. Yesterday though was a farm experience I [...]
Headed out this evening to hit the urban bush with a bunch of Slow Food Edmonton members. I organized the event hoping it would be an easy, casusal way to get us like minded folk outdoors enjoying some wild food and good company – maybe even expose some folks to something new that grows in [...]
Well. Success. I’m very grateful that the principles of cellaring are not rocket science or prohibitively expensive. This is my first winter with a functioning root cellar for veg – built in a corner of my conventional concrete basement – and every last item in there is providing valuable education for how to manage my [...]
A simple hard truth about living in Alberta: vinifera grapes don’t grow here. [yet]. As a self-professed wine snob, that hurts the feelings a little. For a time I felt pretty good considering the Okanagan valley ‘local enough’ to get my wines, but a recent drive reminded me that 14+ hours isn’t really all that [...]
Last Wednesday evening, upon light prompting [read: suggestion] from friend Valerie, I headed back into the bush to pick another round of the abundant crop of highbush cranberries. I’d picked 20 lbs already. I really didn’t need more. But only a few days prior, I’d been out to En Sante Organic Winery and Meadery [who [...]
I’d had enough of reading about Karlynn‘s foraging successes, especially having spent far too much time harvesting far too few berries of the low-bush variety. Rather than a sheet pan one layer deep of low-bush, roughly the same amount of time spent picking highbush yielded 21 lbs of fruit. As you can see in the [...]
At a recent farm stay over the weekend, the smell was everywhere – that pungent, somewhat stinky odor…not of manure, but of fall cranberries. I looked, and looked, and looked – nothing. Until I looked down instead of up. I’m good and used to harvesting high-bush cranberries, and even have some planted in my yard, [...]
The highbush cranberries in the shot are clearly not ready yet – but I had to go take a look today to see what the yield would look like this year. Looks like it will be a decent year, and I can fulfill my need – scratch that – greed, for copious amounts of the [...]
