Harrowsmith Fall 2020

JENNIFER BIRCH is a freelance writer with a penchant for such topics as lifestyle, food and sustainability. In fact, she’s a big advocate for sustainable travelling and encourages everyone to see what the world has to offer while making sure to make a good impact. AMANDA BULMAN is a chef, writer, filmmaker and standup comic from Prince Edward Island. Her first cookbook will be released sometime next year, but she isn’t allowed to say too much more because there are still some pesky contractual details to be worked out. She lives in colourful St. John’s, Newfoundland, with her husband and a rascally basset hound named Gabby. You can follow her adventures on Instagram@amandabulman. MARK AND BEN CULLEN Mark is an expert gardener, author, broadcaster and tree advocate and holds the…

It’s sometimes difficult to write these editor’s letters several months in advance of our publication date. I mean, it’s May 7 and the warblers and hummingbirds have yet to return to the Bruce Peninsula, Ontario, where I live. By the time this issue hits newsstands in August, many species will be readying to head south again. I can safely predict that birdsong, bees and our backyards will have proven to be the saving grace for many this past summer as the world continues to contend with the intense fallout of COVID-19. Canadian farmers have faced unexpected obstacles beyond the unpredictability of climate change. Every year, the Canadian agricultural industry employs about 60,000 temporary migrant workers. Though Canada closed its border to non-essential travel on March 21, 2020, farm workers were…

ONE POTATO, TWO POTATO Dear Ms. Torti, My name is Edna Juffermans and I am writing to you in regards to the Yukon Gold story (“No Small Potatoes,” Spring 2020). Mr. York von Sivers needs to hear a few more details about the Yukon Gold story. Yes, it did land Dr. Johnston infamy, but there is a little more to the story. To fill you in, my husband, John Juffermans, attended the University of Guelph in the late ’70s. He was in the horticulture diploma course. He enjoyed spending time with a Dr. Evans, who was involved in lily research. Dr. Evans was under Dr. Johnston’s umbrella of researchers. My husband, in chatting with Dr. Evans, discussed the study that was going on with potatoes. My father, Henry Boer, had…

Hardbite Chips Based in British Columbia, the Hardbite team is dedicated to designing the ultimate snack experience and was on the GMO bandwagon long before the buzzword buzzed. These chips are all natural, just like the landscape that the company is inspired by. Hardbite encourages celebrating nature by blasting down muddy tracks through the woods in anticipation of the ultimate reward: all-natural chips cooked in avocado oil. After pushing the boundaries outdoors, Hardbite challenges you to ramp up your taste buds in the same way. The chips are gluten-free and made with no preservatives. We’re talking no cholesterol, no trans fat, no artificial anything. Your adventure doesn’t have to end once your bike or kayak is back on the rack. Instead, explore the carefully curated flavour profiles that make Hardbite…

Rising by Sharon Wood (Douglas & McIntyre, 2019) Like many, Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air (1997) was my introduction to Everest and its inexplicable temptation. Sharon Wood takes us back a decade, to the spring of 1986. This is 10 years before the disastrous climb resulting in eight deaths that Krakauer witnessed and chronicled. Wood’s experience of Everest has its own dark shadows too. Despite being the first Canadian woman (and first woman in the Western Hemisphere) to summit Everest, the emotional mountain ranges she has continued to climb since have been her greatest feat. She had other blinding spindrift to contend with: a dissolving marriage, the static of stigma and a landscape of depression more daunting than Everest’s 8,848-metre shoulder. Rising is tightly tethered not only to the climb…

It was late 2017 when I first heard about Suzanne Crocker’s ambitious 100-mile diet, northof-60 style. She had started the 1-year challenge that summer, with her family in nervous tow. My selfish thought was, “What, no bananas? No avocados? For a year?” Crocker wrote about her emotional trials in Harrowsmith’s Spring 2018 issue, nearing the summit of their year-long edible Everest. This is a woman with fortitude and resilience! First We Eat, a film produced and directed by Crocker, had its virtual world première at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in May 2020. Her documentary couldn’t be more timely, as food security has become paramount in the lives of Canadians, regardless of where we call home. For Crocker, living just 300 km from the Arctic Circle—with no salt,…