Columns

It was with a bottle of scotch from the Orkneys that she was christened in the all-but-forgotten language of those isles. The bottle was not broken but a dram was sprinkled on her prow and into the waters of the Sydenham for good luck.

"Thanks for those parts," Dave Winston told George Mackenzie when he sat down at the table for the morning coffee session at Mabel's Grill.
"They work?" George asked.
"Like a charm," Dave replied.
"What's this about?" Molly Whiteside asked ...

I've been chasing two combines with the grain buggy for most of the day. One of them has broken down. It has been a long week, with not a lot of sleep and rain in the forecast. Tensions are high on the crew -- we weren't communicating well and I keep...

There is a reason we cherish the friends we made in elementary school or hang around family -- these life-long bonds create safe places where we feel known and secure. Where we don't have to filter everything we say because they know who we are...

On the night I attended Dan Needles' The Team on the Hill, this past summer, the Blyth Festival's audience was filled with familiar faces of people I'd come to know through years of work on this magazine.
Over the next couple of hours there were...

Whether we are talking about family, friends, or community -- respect for each other is one of the key elements to keeping relationships healthy. As we humans become more numerous, we have to work harder to share spaces and live together in harmony...

Little boats lead to larger boats -- and higher stakes. His boy wanted to add a sail to the mix and little Samwise with its six-foot length wasn't a likely candidate.
It was a visit to the nature centre and gift shop in Algonquin Park that led to...

"Sure hope we don't get an early snow this year or we'll never get the crops off," said George Mackenzie the other morning at Mabel's Grill.
"Yeah, normally I'd getting ready to combine my corn by now but it's far from ready ready," said Cliff Murray...

With fall fair season in full swing, it got me thinking about the importance of fall fairs and also how some have struggled. I recently attended the Wellesley-North Easthope Fall Fair after entering a pie in a political pie contest among councillors...

When James Alf Wight was 50, he was sharing a funny story about a farm client with his wife, Joan, and said he'd write it in a book someday.
Joan laughed. "People don't suddenly start to write a book at the age of 50," she said.

Late last winter I noticed a grey smudge on the snow outside our kitchen window and when I investigated, I found the remnants of a paper wasp nest blown out of one of the trees in our yard.
The wear and tear of winter winds had ripped away the outside ..

Permaculture is a term widely attributed to two Australians, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, who began moving the idea ahead in Tasmania in the late 1960s and '70s.
Holmgren in his book, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability...

Are you one of those persons who loves quotes? I know they drive some people nuts how they congregate on Facebook memes and feel-good annotations. Yet there is something about a pithy collection of words that can deliver a hammer blow of truth...

There s never been a time in human history when the general population was more educated than today. There s never been a time, thanks to smart phones and the internet, when we ve had access to more expert knowledge...

Winter is meeting season for a lot of farmers. Sometimes you feel like you ve heard it all before, but you want a day out to connect with other farmers. Sometimes you signed up in a moment of weakness and feel obligated to go. Sometimes you just ...

The Canada Food Guide has never just been about just nutrition. It is a political document as well, representing the views and interests of the food and farming lobby.

What is it about men! Molly Whiteside asked (though it sounded more like a statement) as she filled the guys coffee cups after their arrival the other morning.
You mean what makes us so loveable? asked Dave Winston...

I have vivid memories of my maternal grandmother, grey-haired, slim and tall at 5 11 , standing waist-high in her expansive flower garden and casting an admiring eye over its summer splendour. For some reason, Gram, as we called her...

A recent study commissioned by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency discovered one in five packages of sausages from grocery stores across Canada contained off-label ingredients. One of those ingredients was horse meat.

After reading a column by the editor of one of the other farm newspapers about favourite books he reads over and over, I decided to pull my copy of one of those titles off the shelf and reread it myself.

In general, people, myself included, tend to have short memories when it comes to the weather. The stunted, water-deprived corn in July quickly morphed into the crops we thought we d never get out of the field in October, November, December...

I had never planned to reach 55. Yet it lies just ahead, Dahlia says.
She makes the remark as a matter a fact, no complaint in her voice. She and her friend Eddie are sitting in the narrow space between Christmas and New Year s in her kitchen...

What, no sweet potato waffles? asked Cliff Murray as Dave Winston ordered pancakes and maple syrup for breakfast the other morning at Mabel s Grill.