Month: December 2017

The Return of the Salmon

IT’S 1200 KILOMETRES FROM THE MOUTH OF THE COLUMBIA River, just north of Portland, to Osoyoos Lake in southern BC. Travelling by canoe or kayak would be an inspiring, though arduous, journey—heading east through Port- land, then twisting south and north through glacial valleys, farms laid out in squares along the river, and small towns with names like Sunnyslope and Longview, Pateros and Tonasket. Equally inspiring is that the Okanagan sockeye salmon make this trip every year, swimming the entire distance in as little as thirty days. Most of us probably think of grapevines and fruit trees when we think of the Okanagan, but the salmon have played an important role in the history of the valley, stretching back millennia. […]

» Read more

A Fresh Look at Pork

By Michael Marrapese – Photo by Carole Topalian In my mother’s kitchen there used to be a soup tin of grease left over from frying bacon on Sunday mornings. The fat got reused for cooking, adding flavour to many dishes. I have never had a similar can in my own kitchen, however; the trend for a while was to move away from animal fat, toward margarine and vegetable oils. Jump ahead 35 years and a number of big thinkers about food are accusing margarine of crimes against health and flavour. Many chefs are embracing butter and bacon with enthusiasm. Humans have been eating pork for a long time, and today it accounts for over a third of the meat consumed […]

» Read more

Cows, Milk and Marketing Boards

By Michael Marrapese During a recent trip to France, I stopped at a small agricultural store that sold not only tools, farm clothing, and fencing wire to farmers, but also local cheeses, wines, vinegars, jams, and cured meats. What surprised me the most were the clearly labelled containers of raw milk. In BC, only the BC Milk Marketing Board is allowed to distribute raw milk. It essentially manages the milk supply, buying milk from farmers across the province at a fixed price, transporting milk to producers and bottlers, testing for quality and microbial content, and ensuring a consistent product to secondary processors. Supply management, as the name implies, involves regulating, controlling, and manipulating the supply of a product in order […]

» Read more

Back to the Garden

By Michael Marrapese Photo by Brian Harris I grew up on the East Coast. Almost every kid had friends, aunts, uncles, or grandparents who lived on a farm. I remember playing in the corncribs, climbing trees in the orchards, picking baby corn, harvesting tomatoes in the summer, and binning potatoes in the fall. The smell of green peppers on a hot day and the taste of freshly pulled young carrots are still vivid memories forty years later. But a lot has changed. The children from family farms have moved into towns, and cities have sprawled to consume farmland. About eighty per cent of Canada’s population now lives concentrated in urban areas, on what was once productive farmland. In rural parts […]

» Read more