Innehållsförteckning för Spring 2023 från Harrowsmith

Great gifts Dear Harrowsmith team, I really appreciated your sustainable gift selections and the ideas in your winter magazine. Because of you, my closest friends received the gifts of CSA (community supported agriculture) food boxes and they can’t wait to receive theirs! — Toni L Editor’s note: We’re glad you loved them — and that your friends did too! Gift giving happens all year round so find our ideas at www.harrowsmithmag.com/good-gifts. Fresh Air Hi Jennifer, I am going through the 2023 Almanac, back to front. (Dunno why, but I always go through magazines that way.) I liked the Clean Air article, and wanted to share something that really gets to me: the number of cars and trucks in our rural area that sit for 10, 20, 30 minutes with their…

The sun was not up when I arose.It lay sleeping, the clouds were close.The sky was shot with pink and grey,With a hint of promise of a new day. Spring was coming to Bow Lake,With a hint of what the day would make.But now it was a false dawn.All was silent and still asleep. A quiet world, but yetNature was poised for a great leapOf bird song, and frog croaking.Insects humming hungrily and dragonflies gliding. The wind was calm, the lake mirrored the heavens.A Special moment of solitude, reflection and wonder.The loon family emerged, skating effortlessly across the lake,Fishing so quietly, water the only testimony to their wake. My coffee in hand with steam and aromaAwakened my contact with nature.The sun tentatively sent its first beams of light.A gentle breeze…

Spring Almanac: Astronomy Harrowsmith’s astronomy expert, Robert Dick, outlines what you’ll see in the night sky this spring. March Venus appears very close to Jupiter at the beginning of the month. However, their actual distances from us are 205 million km and 664 million km, respectively. Even with Jupiter’s great distance, this giant planet still appears almost three times the apparent diameter of Venus. You can compare their apparent diameters in your binoculars or a small telescope if they are held very steady. During the new moon period around March 21, you can look for the faint zodiacal light. This faint wedge of light will angle up to the left from our western horizon. It may be tricky to see even under a dark sky, as the bright Venus may…

Sustainable living means we prioritize the use of natural and renewable resources instead of creating excess waste and depleting environmental resources for future generations. On the surface, it can be incredibly daunting to reduce our environmental footprint, especially when we see that others around us are not doing their part. But when we break it down into small steps, we realize we have more power than we thought. The accumulation of these choices from turning off your lights to save energy, to protecting endangered birds, to choosing products that are made with sustainably-sourced ingredients — that can make all the difference. To make sustainable living more accessible, we’ve created hundreds of planet-friendly activities and tips to help us all connect deeper with nature, and live cleaner and healthier. These are…

There is plenty to love about the humble potato: It’s inexpensive, comforting and oh so versatile. A member of the nightshade family, the potato is one of the world’s most popular staple starchy food crops and in Canada, potatoes comprise 52% of all the fresh vegetables we consume year-round. This shouldn’t be too surprising because we’ve been growing these mighty tubers for a long time — the first potato crop was planted in the late 1700s. More than 200 years later, potato production in Canada has become a $1 billion industry, with over 4.3 million metric tons of potatoes produced in 2019 alone. Canada is the world’s fifth-largest producer of potatoes, and the majority of Canada’s annual potato production is concentrated in Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Manitoba and Alberta.…

It’s my favourite time of year. I know I say that every spring. I can’t wait for the bulbs to pop up in my front garden and I am pretty sure I say that every spring, too. It’s definitely the time of year to dream big and here are 4 things I am looking most forward to this season: 1. Replacing my evergreen boxwoods with evergreen yews. As my back garden gets more and more shady (because I over planted it with beautiful trees that I love, more on that on page 80), the yews are performing much better and are more resilient to pests. I can’t image not having a robust evergreen structure in my wildish garden, so I want to plan for it as it starts to have…

Harrowsmith’s meteorology expert, Mark Sirois, shares the weather highlights each region in Canada can expect this spring. Atlantic Provinces Slightly warmer than normal temperatures can be expected this spring despite a cool start. Precipitation should be slightly above normal early and then get drier as the season moves along. Many foggy days early on over coastal areas as chilly air battles with warmer sea surface temperatures. Quebec Winter conditions will likely stick around into late March. By April we should see a progressive rebound in temperatures. April should be milder than normal followed by seasonable temperatures in May. Precipitation should be close to average, or slightly below for the period. Ontario It will start off colder than normal aided by persistent ice cover on the Great Lakes. Temperatures should start…

GROWING YOUR OWN FOOD allows you to have control over the quality and safety of the food you eat. When you grow your own fruits and vegetables, you know exactly what has been used to fertilize and treat the plants so you can avoid harmful pesticides and chemicals. Growing your own food will save you money and best of all, it is a great way to get outside, get some exercise and enjoy the fresh air. It can also be a fun and rewarding hobby that does good for the world by helping reduce your carbon footprint by limiting the need for the transportation of produce. Why Garden Organically? While many people garden organically for health, our favourite arguments for organic gardening revolve around the range of environmental benefits. Organic…

4 TIPS & LOTS OF TRICKS FOR CREATING A HOMESTEAD WORKSPACE As a Harrowsmith reader, you probably have an interest in hands-on skills for creating and repairing things in your life. And the first step to making skills a bigger part of your situation involves establishing an organized workspace. It needn’t be fancy, just effective. Let me share what works in my experience with real-life examples of how a workspace can be set up. 1 BE CREATIVE WHEN LOOKING FOR A GOOD PLACE TO WORK I’ve had some home workshop space on the go for more than 40 years, and these spaces have helped me make beautiful and useful things over the years, plus, I do extensive repairs. Besides being fun, a good workspace and the tools you’ll use…

SAVE THE SCRAPS My favourite way to prevent food waste, when it comes to produce, is to save all my scraps — leek tops, onion roots, shiitake stems, carrot tops, celery ends, tomato cores, etc. — in a zipper bag that lives in my freezer door. Once it’s full, I empty it into a slow cooker, cover with water and 8 hours later, I have the most delicious, and free, veggie stock ever. — Annabelle Waugh, freelance recipe developer, editor, food stylist and culinary instructor who has spent over 20 years working in the country’s top test kitchens. Her passion is creating trustworthy, delicious recipes that anyone can tackle. Sixty-three percent of the food Canadian households waste is considered “avoidable,” according to Love Food Hate Waste Canada. This means it…

Welcome Spring! This year, the official Spring Equinox (first day of spring) will occur on March 20th at 5:24 p.m. EDT for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere. Celebrate this day when the sun crosses the equator line and heads north bringing with it these signs of spring: Increasing birdsong. Buds getting bigger on trees and shrubs. Earthworms popping their heads out of the ground. Here’s what’s on our reading list this spring THE TINY BUT MIGHTY FARM: Cultivating high yields, community, and self-sufficiency from a home farm by Jill Ragan (2023). Jill Ragan of YouTube’s Whispering Willow Farm teaches you how to turn a typical suburban backyard into a productive mini farm. With Jill as your friendly and encouraging guide, you’ll learn how to grow food for your…

The spring equinox, also known as the vernal equinox, is the moment when the sun is directly above the Earth's equator, resulting in roughly equal amounts of daylight and darkness for most parts of the Earth. During the spring equinox, the tilt of the Earth's axis is not inclined towards or away from the sun, so the length of day and night is nearly equal everywhere on the Earth. This is why it's also called the "equal night" or "equal day" event. The spring equinox marks the beginning of astronomical spring in the Northern Hemisphere and the beginning of astronomical fall in the Southern Hemisphere. It also marks the time when the sun is rising and setting due east and west respectively, a phenomenon that occurs twice a year on…

For some crazy reason, I feel the need to call my brother and remind him where my will is just before I board my flight. And I do. “It's just a river cruise, I remind myself.” What have I got myself into this time? What I Got Myself Into This Time The Yukon. North. Free. Memories of the Gold Rush. A population of 43,000 people in an area the size of France. A finger on the Arctic Ocean and nestled next to Alaska. My cruise to Alaska starts at Dalton Post a few hours west of Whitehorse on the summer solstice. My route is the Tatshenshini River. Total crew: 3. Number of guests: 8. My boat is a bright sky-blue raft with yellow letters displaying the expedition company, Canadian River…

My garden is a work in progress, and it has been for a long time. This year I am celebrating two decades in the home I never thought I would be in for this long but now can’t imagine being anywhere else. I love my vibrant community, my fun and supportive neighbours, my imperfectly perfect 130-year-old Victorian house and best of all, my ever-changing urban garden. The transformations in my backyard (that was a sand pit when I moved in) have been well documented in other magazines and on several HGTV shows. Every time I look back on those images, I can’t believe that the gingko trees were so small, that there were no birds (because I hadn’t planted the crabapples or the firethorn yet) and that at one time…