Food security is an ongoing concern for northerners, as remote communities as well as Whitehorse struggle with access to reliable and affordable produce from southern suppliers. Executives at the Yukon-based power company Solvest Inc. think they’ve found a solution. The company is in the pilot phase of a project that aims to provide an off-the-grid …
Raspberries, blueberries, crowberries and cranberries: being on Yukon time means planning your weekends around where to pick once the – dare I say it? – latter part of summer rolls around and hints at fall. There is one berry fairly new to the Yukon scene that is well over and done with by the time …
Etienne Tardif, gloved and clothed in white, his face behind a dark mesh veil, slowly lifts a tray from one of his stacked beehives. He’s in a meadow just off the Annie Lake Road, south of Whitehorse. “Whoah… this is heavy,” Tardif says. He looks closely at the tray, laden with sealed bees’ eggs and …
Carrie Boles’ green thumb sprouted back in her hometown, the grassland ecosystem of Winnipeg , Manitoba. While working on a degree in cultural anthropology at the University of Winnipeg, Boles happened to live in a house packed with gardeners. As each roommate brought home the literal fruits of their labour, the horticultural bug was infectious …
Food is important to me because I have a large family. Five boys under the age of nine” says Sonny Gray, CEO of North Star Agriculture Corp., as his company will soon announce plans to start construction in the Yukon. Like many in the Yukon he’s concerned about fresh produce. Yukoners like to buy local …
It struck me a couple days ago that I have gotten out of the habit of baking, and was missing having nibbly bites about for those mid-meal moments that require just a little something. I briefly mentally bemoaned my lack of muffins, before remembering that this is one of the things that I can actually …
This past fall they also did the Government of Yukon Agricultural Branch’s North of 60 Conference banquet and sourced almost 90 per cent of the ingredients for the dinner from local farmers. In the north this is especially a challenge as the conference is in November, so a lot of fresh produce isn’t available and …
A square, two-storey guest house with bare, small rooms and a simple kitchen is snugged in between the trailer-cum-farmhouse and the sheep barn. The collection of buildings looks tiny against a sweeping backdrop: a deep valley that winds away from the mouth of the fjord, hemmed in by high cliffs. A woman perhaps in her …
Although Iceland has been getting a lot of press lately as a hot – metaphorically and geologically speaking – tourist destination, it hardly seems a likely go-to spot for an agricultural experience. That however is exactly what landed me in the middle of the blustery North Atlantic in October along with seven other Yukoners. We …
(Hot) Water Water Everywhere (Iceland Age part 1) Read More »
The eye of Hurricane Matthew hit the Tiburon Peninsula, the southwest tip of Haiti, on October 4th. With winds that blew 230 kilometres an hour and up to 500 millimetres of rain in two days, it was the strongest storm to hit the country in 50 years, according to the NASA website. The storm stripped …
Harvest time. At the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in (TH) Teaching and Working Farm, there will be a feast to celebrate a summer’s worth of hard work.
Whether you have a green thumb or not, you’re invited to the Horticultural Exhibition in Dawson City on Aug. 13. Tarie Castellarin and Helen Dewell have been involved in organizing the exhibition since 2013. The event itself dates back to the early 1900s. “In the past, the exhibition was huge and used to be four …
Kids and horses, life doesn’t get much better than that. 4-H is thriving in the Yukon. We are the Spirit Riders 4-H Horse Club, based in Whitehorse and loving everything. We are a district club operating under the umbrella of 4-H Yukon and regionally under 4-H British Columbia. 4-H has been around the Yukon for …
We saw the queen recently. She wasn’t wearing a crown. She was sporting a big blue dot on her thorax though. The Cheshire Beekeepers’ Association, founded in 1899, has great information about queen marking on its website. The queen is much easier to locate in the hive when marked. Queen records are easily kept. Most …
The Hidden Histories Society Yukon collects stories and research on people of Asian and Black heritage who have contributed to the Yukon. It’s been doing this for 15 years. Yoshikazu (Joe) Tsukamoto was an early pioneer in the development of northern agricultural research and practice in Yukon. Here is his story. The Early Years Yoshikazu …
There was a time in my life when my father called me a professional volunteer. Working for a handsome wage was much less of a priority in my youth. It started with summer camps, and continued to take me all over the world to share pieces of myself with others; yet, I would argue I …
Now that spring has officially sprung, local farmers are waiting for the ground to warm up enough to put seeds and seedlings into the earth. Every year, farming is a gamble. It takes a pile of money to get started, and then farmers are at the mercy of factors such as frost and insects. Eaters …
Food has been in the news. A lot of it has to do with the issue of food security, food safety and the costs of the food we eat. Locally, we’re working hard, literally, to make sure we have an adequate supply of good, wholesome, sustainably produced food for an increasing portion of the year. …
Want to proudly face your beer bottle label forward at parties this summer? Purchasing an organic beer is one way to do just that. When it comes to the environmental impact of drinking beer, the three biggies are transportation of product and ingredients, water consumption and the production of ingredients. We will hit up the …
This past September, I was privileged to attend the seventh annual Circumpolar Agricultural Conference in Alta, Norway. Alta lies just below the 70°N latitude, which makes it a bit farther north than Old Crow. The Circumpolar Agricultural Association (CAA) was founded in 1995 in response to the ideas created at the first Circumpolar Agricultural Conference, …
From swiss chard to arctic charr, from jelly to jewelry – all this and more is on offer at the Fireweed Community Market at Shipyards Park. The market, which runs from 3-8 pm every Thursday from mid-May to mid-September, first set up shop in its present location in 2005. “In the late ’90s, I visited …
