A little brown alpaca named Benny caused quite the stir when he and owner Ann Patman took a stroll in Winnipeg’s Osborne Village earlier in April. People waved, and cars stopped to stare. “They couldn’t believe what they were looking at,” said Patman. Folks kept their distance, though. A select few donned rubber gloves to
It’s an alpacademic!
Faces of Ag: This Manitoba transplant’s cute and curious critters are making housebound folks smile
Red River crests in lower predicted range
Water levels were dropping as of April 22, and PTH 75 remained open
Water levels are dropping along the Red River, but the river is expected to be outside its banks into May, according to provincial reports. As of April 22, the Red River had crested at all points from Emerson to the floodway and was expected to crest shortly in Winnipeg. “This is good news,” said Infrastructure
Folklorama and food safety
Faces of Ag: Aline Tezcucano’s fascination with food and biochemistry began with making cheese, butter, bread and tortillas in rural Mexico
Fresh off her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry, Aline Tezcucano went to a job interview with a big food company. She struggled to answer their technical questions about food safety. Disappointed, she went home and started studying. Years later, food safety is what she does. Aline is a veteran policy specialist with the province, specializing in
A temporary foreign worker solution
With tens of thousands of Canadians laid off due to COVID-19, people may wonder why farmers are hiring foreign workers. That’s a good question
Mid-March, amidst the initial panicked onset of a COVID-19 pandemic, Canadian borders closed to most international travellers and a swath of the ag sector panicked. They were counting on foreign workers — tens of thousands of them — to fill their ranks for the busy season ahead of them. Without workers from countries like Mexico
Is food security anxiety seeing a Victory garden revival?
Local seed companies see intense spike in demand amid COVID-19 pandemic
Some local garden seed companies have temporarily stopped taking orders amid abnormally high demand for fruit and vegetable seeds this spring. Headingley-based T&T Seeds said between March 15 and April 4, sales were up 167 per cent from the same period last year. Overall, T&T has seen a 56 per cent increase in demand for
‘Cautiously optimistic’ about flood prospect for Manitoba
Seasonally average weather should head off the worst of flooding along the Red River
Flooding along the Red River remains on track to hit at or below 2006 levels. “Everything is, at the present time, under control,” said Ralph Groening, reeve of the RM of Morris. Groening said he’s “cautiously optimistic” that they’ll see a relatively insignificant flood. At the end of March, the province’s flood outlook predicted that with average weather conditions,
Temporary foreign workers finally on their way
Workers remain a critical issue for Canadian farms, says CFA president Mary Robinson
International workers have begun to trickle onto Manitoba farms. On Beth Connery’s farm, near Portage la Prairie, seven Jamaican men were a few days into their 14-day quarantine when she spoke to the Co-operator on April 15. “It’s nice to get started,” Connery said. “This will get us going.” Each year, about 60,000 temporary foreign
Pandemic both boom and bust for food industry
Hoarding, volatility of food markets force producers to adapt
Grocery shopping just looks different now — be it the lines on the floor directing shoppers where to stand, to the safety reminders over the store PA, to the empty space where the flour used to be. For food producers, it’s also a strange new world with restaurant and food-service orders abruptly nixed and the
Home education highlights gaps in rural internet
School divisions are adapting with print materials, phone calls, adjusted expectations
Science experiments get complicated with twin toddlers running around. Kaity, 10, and her mom Heather Janssens started an experiment on evaporation — filling a cup of water and coming back periodically to mark the water level to show if it dropped. They took a break to play outside, and when they came in it looked
Brewer, distiller find ‘insane’ demand after pivot to hand sanitizer
Two small Manitoba craft beverage operations are swamped with orders for alcohol-based sanitizer
It was supposed to be a cool way to help out. Now it’s all they can do to keep up. “It’s been insane,” said Lindsay Gillanders, spokesperson for Capital K Distillery. “We thought we’d produce a little bit of it,” Gillanders said. “We had no idea that the shortage of hand sanitizer was so severe.”
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
