Rick Gamble, mayor of Dunnottar, has been a tireless advocate for the health of Lake Winnipeg.

Commitment to a cleaner lake and greener living earns community recognition

Dunnottar has made outstanding efforts to protect Lake Winnipeg, say officials with 
East Interlake Conservation District

Dunnottar has a tree-lined pathway, curbside recycling and makes the yard waste it composts available to local residents to use in this lakeside village’s large number of community gardens. It does water conservation education too. Someday the local government hopes to heat its municipal office with solar panels. But it’s how this small village of

Bruce Berry of Almost Urban Vegetables uses composted manure to power his plants.

Winter no barrier to composting

Manure composting has many benefits, including concentrated nutrients, 
reduced volume, no smell and easy transport

Like any recipe, making a good composted manure requires the right ingredients, a proper mixer and some heat. “There are a lot of misconceptions as to what composting actually is, some think that if you have a pile of manure it’s called composting, it really isn’t,” said Mario Tenuta. “So we want to talk to


Tips on naturally recycling your kitchen wastes

Tips on naturally recycling your kitchen wastes

Prairie Fare: Spinach Artichoke Dip (Slow Cooker)

Julie, Julie, how does your garden grow?” people often ask me when inspired by my maiden name. Yes, that reminds me of the “Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?” nursery rhyme. Fortunately, people leave out the “quite contrary” part. Well, they usually do. This year, my garden has hosted rabbits enjoying buffets

group of schoolchildren recycling

Earth Day should be celebrated every day

A Manitoba Hutterite Colony takes on the challenge of ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’

“I think I’ll be counting bags in my sleep tonight,” a seventh-grader chuckled. A group of us were on the floor in my classroom, around a mountain of plastic bags we were counting for the Bag Up Manitoba program. Since getting involved in this program some years ago, the most our school ever collected was

Pork council stung by province’s stance on hog barn expansion

The Manitoba Pork Council is shocked and disappointed by Conservation and Water Stewardship 
Minister Gord Mackintosh’s stance on hog barn expansion

The Manitoba government is playing politics when it comes to hog barns, says the Manitoba Pork Council. Reacting to a letter from Conservation and Water Stewardship Minister Gord Mackintosh and published in the Manitoba Co-operator, council chairman Karl Kynoch said he was extremely disappointed by the minister’s position on hog barn expansion and alternative manure-handling


PHOTO: thinkstock

Insect farms: Investors see big profits in thinking small

Flies fed garbage become an environmentally friendly source of protein

When it comes to resolving a big global food problem, a new breed of farmers and their financial backers are thinking small. Work on the world’s largest fly farm has begun in South Africa after the European firm behind the project won much-needed funding from investors, propelling the use of insects as livestock feed beyond

Lloyd Jensen, a part-time farmer just outside Stonewall, composts several hundred tonnes of yard waste the town produces annually.  
PHOTOs: LORRAINE STEVENSON


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

Cold weather isn’t an obstacle to anaerobic digesters in Manitoba

Manitoba’s first anaerobic digester will be completed this fall and experts 
say it will prove that our cold winters are no problem

Manitoba’s challenging climate won’t leave producers out in the cold when it comes to anaerobic digesters, says a University of Manitoba researcher. “If you insulate it properly and it’s heated, there shouldn’t be any obstacles to having this technology,” PhD candidate Elsie Jordaan said during a presentation sponsored by the National Centre for Livestock and


Slaughterhouse incorporates anaerobic digester

Most of Kenya’s cattle are produced by members of the Maasai tribe, who are traditional nomadic herdsmen. In 1981, a group of Maasai families formed an association and established the Keekonyokie livestock market and slaughterhouse in Kiserian, an hour southwest of Nairobi. The market allows them to earn more by selling directly to customers, and

Resort taps into “cow power” to get skiers to the summit

Reuters / Cow manure will be used to power skiers to the top of a Vermont resort this winter as part of a growing effort to generate electricity from a byproduct of the state’s iconic dairy farms. Killington, one of the largest ski resorts in New England, will use 300,000 kilowatt hours of electricity made