Sommaire pour Spring 2019 de Harrowsmith

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE About 25 years ago, Harrowsmith published a recipe for homemade blackberry wine. It did make the most marvellous wine, which we made every year until moving back to the city. Now we have moved back to an island off the B.C. coast and our property has numerous blackberry bushes, but we don’t have the recipe anymore. Is there anyway you can check the Harrowsmith archives to see if the recipe still exists? Daniel Lay, Gabriola Island, British Columbia Editor’s note: My great-grandmother used to make elderberry wine. I was too young to drink it. Shame! I do remember those West Coast blackberries. I moved there when I was 18 (bohemia!) and marvelled at the giant size of them growing free and wild all along the alleys…

The end is in sight. The end of winter as we know it, the chilly West Coast deluge of rain punctuated by rip-roaring storms for months on end, to be specific. Every lengthening, lightening day is leading up to that one glorious, undeniable first day of spring, when the sea air carries a subtle hint of warmth and the fragrance of spruce trees. By the end of January or definitely by early February, on the westernmost coast of Vancouver Island there is the possibility of hardy snowdrops, which emerge first from their bulbs to pip the purple and yellow crocuses at the post. No matter if a load of heavy, wet snow falls on our island, or hurricane-force winds blast every nook and cranny and rip the limbs off the…

Have you ever wondered who all the critters are that live in the undergrowth of the forest and under the rocks in your garden? Allow us to introduce a few of our silent and often unseen neighbours—those unlikely allies who quietly break down fallen leaves, defend our gardens from potential pests and help us to grow food. Worms Earthworms are one of the most efficient composters on the planet. Moving through the soil, these animals help to break down an enormous portion of organic material. They increase both aeration and water penetration into the soil, making more hospitable conditions for other organisms. It is thought that glaciers wiped out the earthworms from Canada, and nearly all earthworm species that are now found here are actually European species that were introduced…

Finishing outdoor wood tops the list of home improvement problems that I help Canadians with online, and this is because of something surprising. Two things, actually. Unprepared wood—both old and new—is a poor candidate for accepting a finish and hanging on to it for a long time. The second reason for trouble is that a large proportion of outdoor finishing products simply don’t have what it takes to last more than a year or two. All this is why I started testing different outdoor wood finishing products and strategies back in 1990. I’m still at it. The four steps you’ll find here cover everything I’ve learned since then. STEP 1 Identify your situation When it comes to outdoor wood, there are three main categories of surfaces: horizontal, vertical and furniture.…

“It made no sense doing what we did,” says Jenny Butcher as she tells the story of Little Brown Cow. The whimsical font and bold colours on the sign of the farm’s retail store pull people in, and it is Butcher and partner Wes Kuntz’s passion for their 70 Jersey cows, farming and food transparency that keep customers coming back. Eleven years ago, the couple made the very difficult decision to walk away from Kuntz’s family’s dairy farm business, leaving them financially with nothing. They had met at university and dreamed of becoming dairy farmers and processing their own milk, but they were disenfranchised with the modern farm model, where the farm gets larger and the only way to make more money is to keep getting larger. Their vision to…

One of the most sought-after seasonal beer styles each year is fresh hop (or wet hop) beer. Usually, hops are harvested and then immediately dried to avoid spoilage. Once processed into pellets, they can be kept in cold storage for a year or more. But fresh hop beers are brewed with hops fresh from the harvest, ideally within 24 hours of having been picked, so that uniquely fresh, grassy, green flavours will show up prominently in the beer. Fresh hop beers are prized for their terroir—what the hops from a specific place and time taste like. These beers are generally only available for a few weeks each fall, starting in late September or early October. In British Columbia, Victoria’s Driftwood Brewery kicked off the fresh hop craze in 2008 when…

There’s something that is always marvellous and reassuring about a full moon. It’s a reminder of renewal, hanging right above our heads. Spring also delivers this same reminder—in the form of resilient snowdrops, fairy-tale-like fiddleheads and muddy dog paws across the kitchen floor (and back). In this issue, Danielle French of South Pond Farms celebrates the magic of the flower moon by sharing her seasonal secrets (page 63). Her menu spotlights some of my spring favourites: sweet Johnny-jump-ups, wild leeks and rhubarb. You can recreate this full-moon feast in your home, too. Danielle’s full-moon feast is versatile, and with a little tweaking, it can even unfold on a condo balcony. It doesn’t matter where you are in Canada—we share the same moon. I love this connection and how Harrowsmith is…

Paul Noble moved his family onto a 100-acre farm just west of Arthur, Ontario, over three decades ago. His intention was to convert this chemically abused soil to pure, clean and totally organic pasture. Some of his family suffered from allergies, and Paul’s objective was to raise a few Golden Guernseys, a genetically pure and rare breed of cow, for the grass-fed nature and superior quality of the nutrient-rich milk they produce. He and his wife, Cathy, had read research by the Weston Price Foundation that indicated potential benefits for allergy and asthma sufferers who altered their diet to consume pure, organic, grass-fed products. Yet the biggest challenge of his entire farming career was still before him: how to heal this land from its decades of chemical abuse. Clean milk…

New wood can’t hang on to a finish well, and neither can old wood without prep work. The best surface for the longest finish life is a dry, freshly sanded one. Pressure-wash new wood, then let it dry before sanding with a 60- or 80-grit abrasive. By pressure washing first and sanding later, you’ll get faster and better results than sanding alone. A 6" diameter random orbit sander is an excellent tool for the job. It’s much more productive than the common 5" random orbit sanders. Buy lots of high-quality sanding discs and change them frequently.…

The former farmhouse now known as Therrien House was built around 1722 in the St-François district of Laval, Quebec’s third-largest city. It is believed to be one of the oldest homes on this island located just north of Montreal and bordered by the Des Prairies and Mille-Îles rivers. Historical records reveal that the original inhabitant, Pierre Beauchamp, a carpenter, was given the land by the Séminaire de Québec in 1718 and he himself built the house. In 1846, Charles Therrien acquired the house and the adjacent agricultural fields. For 140 years, several generations of the Therrien family occupied this fieldstone home, hence the name Therrien House. To this day, a large part of the land surrounding the house, which faces the Mille-Îles River, is still used for growing crops. On…

Alcoholic beverages have likely been part of human culture for as long as there have been humans. No doubt early humans hunted and gathered naturally fermented wild honey or fruit juices that tasted good and gave them a nice buzz. But the leap from that to making beer required something a little more advanced: farming. After the last ice age ended about 12,000 years ago, humans began settling down and domesticating plants and animals, particularly cereal grains. Some historians even theorize that humans first began farming so they could make beer (and bread) on a more regular basis. Farming and brewing have been intertwined ever since, but over the centuries, and especially since the Industrial Revolution, breweries have largely lost their direct connection with farms, instead purchasing the ingredients they…

For most Canadians, April is simply the bridge between a long winter and the promise of summer. In Prince Edward Island, however, April has been beefing up its profile, bringing Islanders out of hibernation in droves with the promise of, well, burgers. Entering its ninth year, PEI Burger Love has become one of the Island’s most highly anticipated food competitions of the year. The dearly held tradition has put the spotlight on P.E.I. beef and the importance of supporting the Island’s cattle producers. Ten summers ago, Robbie and Melody Dover, partners in life and business, decided to make an adventure out of road-tripping around their home province by searching for the best burger. A 100 percent Island beef burger with inventive toppings created by chef Ilona Daniel of Stanhope Beach…

Move aside, March lions and lambs. It’s the Chinese Year of the Pig! The pig is the 12th of the zodiac animals, and according to one myth, the Jade Emperor dictated the 12-year zodiac order according to the order in which the animals arrived to his party. Rumour has it that the pig was late because he overslept, while another version says that a wolf destroyed the pig’s house and the pig had to rebuild his home before he could set off. When the pig arrived, he was the last one and could only take 12th place. If you studied those ubiquitous zodiac animal paper placemats in Chinese restaurants as a kid, you might also know that each zodiac sign is connected to an element, and that there are five…

Gardeners have a bias toward green as the symbol of life and vitality in the garden. Fact is, life in the garden starts and ends with dark, black soil: in one teaspoon of soil, there are billions of living organisms. None of the green life above ground could happen if not for the little organisms teeming under the surface, and when the green life above the earth has run its course, that is exactly where it goes—back to the little organisms in the soil. Soil as a living thing has its own requirements: food, water and oxygen. We are most interested in the food aspect, because well-fed soil tends to take care of itself in terms of building both a healthy soil structure to promote aeration and a healthy relationship…

In 2016, Paul Eisener’s life was turned upside down by a blood cancer diagnosis. His life quickly shifted from a hectic work schedule and frequent travel throughout Ontario, the U.S. and Mexico as a program manager for an automotive supplier to blood tests, oncologists and cancer clinics. Facing an uncertain future and struggling with debilitating fatigue caused by daily oral chemotherapy medication, he found peace in the one place that soothed the anxiety of an uncertain future: his garden. “In that first year with cancer, the garden was my safe place,” he says. “I was always tired, in a little bit of pain and dealing with side effects while getting used to my medication. It was a place I could go, work and not think about my illness. And Millie,…

The story behind Victoria’s Phillips Brewing & Distilling’s origin is famous. Legend goes that when the banks all turned down Matt Phillips’s loan requests, he was undeterred and simply maxed out every credit card he could get his hands on to start his own brewery back in 2001. Today, the brewery is the biggest, most successful craft brewery in British Columbia, if not all of Canada. A few years ago, Phillips applied that same do-it-yourself approach to malting barley by building his own malting facility at his downtown brewery and working with farmers on Vancouver Island and elsewhere in B.C. to grow barley to supply the brewery’s needs. It’s proven to be a great success, as Phillips Brewing & Distilling uses its own malted barley in many of its beers,…

Despite growing up in one of Manitoba’s neighbouring provinces (Ontario), we never entertained the idea of taking a family road trip to Winnipeg and beyond, even though it was almost the same distance to Florida (2,000 km/1,240 miles and just as many fist fights over A&W fries in the back seat). The fifth province to join Confederation in 1870 (and not without some bloodshed) deserves a little limelight beyond what it’s naively synonymous with—Winterpeg, polar bears, Crown Royal production, and the ol’ joke that if your dog runs away, you can still see him running three days later because Manitoba is so flat. Manitoba is thought to be derived from the Cree word Maninto-wahpaow, which means “the narrows of the Great Spirit.” Lake Manitoba narrows to half a mile at…

Three Feathers When a respected elder is injured during a robbery in the film Three Feathers, three Indigenous youth must face a traditional sentencing circle. Despite the community wanting harsher justice, the boys are sent to live on the land for nine months with two Dene elders. Will this attempt at restorative justice bring the community closer to forgiving the actions of Flinch, Bryce and Rupert? Will this sentence strengthen the generational legacy? Will the boys learn to respect one another, their elders and the land? From setting up a teepee to hunting bison, survival (both emotional and physical) takes on a new dimension, as any idea of rebellion is short lived against the force of nature. The movie was filmed in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, a familiar landscape to…