It was an idyll of white flowers and buzzing bees in June. In July, it will be popping with bright fruit and filled with U-pickers. This is Wayne and Edith Smith’s Prairie adventure, their fruit farm of the same name, where the 1,000 dwarf sour cherry trees they grow have shed their spring blossoms and
Cherry on top
Carman couple Edith and Wayne Smith took up tending a not-so-small cherry orchard after retirement
Hay shortages loom for cattle sector
Many producers are having to graze their hayfields
Heavy rains and overland flooding have put the status of this year’s grazing and hay supplies in serious doubt, cattle producers say. It’s an evolving situation, but the financial impact of flooding and excess moisture will devastate producers especially since many have not recovered from 2011 flooding, says Manitoba Beef Producers. The association is meeting
Prairie ‘islanders’ struggling to keep spirits afloat
Inundated southwestern Manitobans rally in the face of unprecedented flood damage
It was when all the eggs, milk and bread were gone, and the canned goods started running out that staff at Pierson Co-op conceded things were getting “kind of scary.” “Everyone is just holding their breath. I’m not sure how long we can keep on like this,” said Louise Goforth July 3. She was tending
One good thing about rain
RecipeSwap: Garden Fresh Potato Salad, Cheese Baked Zucchini, Cucumber Cream Soup, and more!
Was your garden slow to start this spring? Mine limped along too. Then we had that little sprinkle over the July long weekend. Outside inspecting it the first dry evening afterward, I found masses of squeaky pea vines, huge frilly lettuces, bouquets of basil and parsley, zucchini plants that may take over the planet, dill
Voluntary guidelines recommend best practices for hiring youth
Canadian Agricultural Safety Association staff say guidelines are geared to employers but are also useful to anyone with young people working with them in ag worksites
Now that the calendar has flipped to July, many teens get a job working on a neighbour’s farm or in some other agriculturally related job. While many bring their youthful energy and a ‘can do’ attitude to their workplace, they also think they’ll never get hurt and are indifferent to risk. When that youthful naiveté is
Have you tried quinoa yet?
RecipeSwap: Quinoa Veggie Burgers, Minestrone Quinoa Soup, Norquin Quinoa Salad
Remember when we puzzled over how to pronounce quinoa? Was that kwin-o-ah? Or kwee no-ah? The ancient grain, or rather seed (pronounced keen-wa for anyone still wondering) had a year dedicated to it in 2013 by the United Nations. That piqued a lot of interest in its nutritional and eating qualities to say the least.
Do you know where this barn is?
Manitoba historian Gordon Goldsborough is volunteering with the Manitoba Historical Society to map historic sites in Manitoba. He is seeking help from Co-operator readers to relocate barns and other buildings featured in a 1981 photo series that ran in this newspaper.
If you know where that old barn or farmhouse or church in your area is — or was — a Manitoba historian needs your help. In early 1981 the Co-operator worked with provincial Manitoba Historic Resources Branch staff to photograph and publish a series on rural buildings in Manitoba. Over about two years, the paper
Found it!
This sturdy 88×30-foot specimen is one example of a barn from the 1980s series that Goldsborough was able to find. It stands in excellent condition, almost as straight and true as when it was constructed in 1927 for Jean Comte of the Notre Dame de Lourdes area. Sitting on two-foot-thick limestone walls, the barn is now
Bring on the barley
RecipeSwap: Wild Rice, Barley and Fruit Salad, Easy Cabbage Casserole, Prairie Streusel-Topped Cake
Anita Stewart, a well-known food writer in Canada, has high praise for a new barley cookbook. She calls it “a glimpse into the future of the food life of North America.” Go Barley: Modern Recipes for an Ancient Grain, with 100-plus recipes, was released this spring, written by home economists Pat Inglis and Linda Whitworth,
Leaf it to Lloyd
Local farmer composts several hundred tonnes of grass and leaves for use as fertilizer on his small hobby farm
Stonewall residents love their picture-perfect lawns, but all that watering, fertilizing and mowing create a pile of grass clippings. Leaves and grass clippings amount to nearly 450 tonnes of yard waste generated annually in their community, say town of Stonewall staff. And it all might end up as a methane-emitting mountain of mush in a
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
