Agriculture

Lettuce off the grid

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 …

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Haska-What Now?

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 …

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Carrie Boles – Green Thumbs

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 …

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Feeding the North

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 …

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Color Me Blue

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 …

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(Hot) Water Water Everywhere (Iceland Age part 1)

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 …

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Haiti after Hurricane Matthew

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 …

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A Feast For All

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.

4-H is Good for Kids

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 …

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Here’s Your New Home, Bees

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 …

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Pioneer Agronomist

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 …

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Local Food, Local Politics

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. …

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Eat Your (Northern) Broccoli!

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, …

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Making a Mark(et)

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 …

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