April - no foolin’ 
Planting season’s on its way

    While I have crocuses blooming in a sheltered corner of the house and Barred owls hooting at night in the tree outside my window, all signs of spring, Prince Edward Islanders have another way of heralding the change of seasons: the annual Easter Beef Show and Sale that brings out scores of Islanders ready for a good time. That is especially what the sale is all about, as friends, neighbors, and the business community enter into friendly competition to see who can out-bid the other for the the winningest cattle.
    Four generations of the Sanderson family on Prince Edward Island have been raising cattle and showing the cream of their herd at the show and sale that this year took place March 3 and 4 in Charlottetown. And so it was fitting that Randy Sanderson’s Spud Island Farms’ steer was judged grand champion (and went on to sell for $5.75 a pound to a couple of P.E.I. businessmen). Trevor MacDonald’s story about the show and sale can be found on Atlantic Beef & Sheep’s webpage at www.RuralLife.ca.

Barn swallows and the Zika virus
    The same week our provincial daily published a story about Brazil stepping up measures to control the Zika virus carried by a species of mosquito and suspected of causing a birth defect resulting in babies with small heads (microcephaly), it carried another about the disappearance of Barn swallows.
    Swallows and other birds that sweep insects (including lots of mosquitoes) from the air while in flight are in serious decline. We are encouraged to do what we can to provide Barn swallows nesting sites, and many do. But is the population of swallows dwindling because there are not as many old barns around as once was the case – as some believe – or is it mosquito abatement programs in Latin America where our birds spend their winters? Already, in the panic over a suspected link between Zika and microcephaly, pressure builds to release more genetically modified male mosquitoes in more countries to breed with Zika-bearing females and cause them to lay eggs that die, and there are calls to unleash DDT.  

“Year in Review:”  It’s free!
    Happy New Year! In celebration, a first issue of DvL Publishing Inc.’s “Year in Review” has been included as a bonus with your subscription to Rural Delivery. This first-ever review is a collection of stories, photos, commentary, and other gleanings from 2015, intended to provide a taste of all four of our rural life magazines. The idea for the review came from Chassity, our general manager, who marshalled the help of everyone else in the organization to put it together. Our thanks to advertisers who made it possible to publish and distribute the “Year in Review” at no cost to readers.

Fall harvest
Lingering doubts about global warming have been dashed once again on this shore. A foot of snow, we hear, struck  Riviere-du-Loup last week, but here cattle are still on pasture and, but for a couple of mornings, there has been no need to break out the windshield ice scraper. Hot dog.
    Ducked into the garden last evening to harvest late carrots, leeks for dinner, and to dig up a clump of parsley to move to the greenhouse where we might have a fresh sprig or two longer into the season. The greenhouse is not heated and before long most of the vegetables growing there will take a frigid bow and exit the stage. New lettuce may survive beneath row covers.

Great radio takes a hit
Stan Carew dead at 64

    Stan Carew, who ruined sleeping-in Saturdays and Sundays for many years by providing one of the most entertaining radio programs on CBC, has died. He announced in May that he would be retiring in September. We were planning to invite readers to contribute to a tribute to Stan in a coming issue. 
    It never came across that Stan was just doing his job as he spun records and in later years CDs on his “Weekend Mornings” show. There was no microphone between him and his Maritime-wide audience. It was more like a great big family gathered around his kitchen table sharing stories, wishing family members well, and guessing the names of mystery artists – often on the basis of little more than a couple of notes or words to an old song. Over all those years I never guessed the name of a single Mystery Vocalist, yet around that table there was always someone of sharp ear and mind ready to nail the answer. 

She won “Gold!”
    We are pleased as can be over Rachel Brighton’s Atlantic Journalism Gold Award (Business Reporting: Any Medium) for her in-depth feature on the milk processing industry, “Big dairy comes east: Consolidation makes ‘local' elusive,” published in our June 2014, issue. Here’s a photo of Rachel with her three boys, (from left) Rupert, Harry, and Jesse Lillford-Brighton, shortly after receiving the award May 9 in Halifax at the annual AJA gala. (The complete list of Gold and Silver winners can be found by following the Atlantic Journalism Awards link at RuralLife.ca.)

NFU on the March, and other stuff

    Out on snowshoes for the first time in years I came across tracks I took to have been left behind by the cow and calf. The tracks came to a four-foot high pagewire fence – and continued on. Cow and calf maybe, of the endangered Mainland moose variety.
    Earlier this week our five miles of road in from the highway melted free of ice, iceholes, and ruts for the first time in six weeks. The blizzard now forecast for later today should make short work of the reprieve. 
    The Atlantic Farm Mechanization Show held every two years is behind us, Prince Edward Island’s annual Easter Beef Show and Sale is on, and the Nappan Test Station bull sale is just around the corner April 4. These are all signs that the winter of 2014-15 is behind. Gone but not soon to be forgotten. 

Dirty business
    We are one month into the United Nation’s proclaimed International Year of Soils. “Soil, where food begins,” is the rallying cry. I’ve two books to suggest for a soils reading list, one new, one old. The new or relatively new book (2007) is “Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations” by MacArthur Foundation “Genius” award winner David Montgomery. In his book, the star attraction at Horticulture Nova Scotia’s annual gathering three years ago wrote that, “Throughout history, societies grew and prospered as long as there was new land to plow or the soil remained productive. Things eventually fell apart when neither remained possible.” So, how are we doing? 
    The other book is “Soils and Men,” the 1938 Yearbook of Agriculture from the USDA. The chapter, “Soils and Society,” by then Chief of the Soil Survey Division, Charles Kellogg, is a treasure chest of insights into things we’ve had these 75 years since to get right, but have not. 
    “The art of agriculture is inseparable from the art of homemaking,” Kellogg wrote. 

Wrestling with seeds

    It is a beautiful Saturday morning after a hard cold night. I stuff the outdoor boiler with wood and wonder where the truck that was going to deliver several cords of maple and birch disappeared to.
    The sun shines bright on the bay and only a gentle wind stirs the water. We don’t want white caps this day that’s set aside for the sixth annual bird count in the Port Joli Migratory Water Fowl Sanctuary and surrounding inlets. The count is organized by provincial chapters of Bird Studies Canada and the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

About ACORNs and shooting first
    It’s deer season. The height of fall color is already a memory with the most brilliant red and blaze-orange maples having shed their capes. Yellow birch and bronze oak now punctuate dark evergreens that dominate forests here on the shore. 
    We have been blessed by a warm fall season. While there have been pockets of frost, nothing like a killer found its way here. Still picking raspberries, tomatoes that the chickens missed (they’ve gained entry to the garden while a new and larger gate is being readied) will be plenty to eat around here at least through January. I’ve yet to bring in carrots and beets, and to plant garlic.

There’s a nip in the air
    It is a cold morning, approaching zero, and the garden needs tending. In anticipation of a frost I covered tomatoes and peppers last evening, left squash to fend for itself, and uprooted basil that now I must strip and will process with olive oil and refrigerate until the week coming when there will be time to whip up some pesto. 

Gardens, gas, and Gaza
    The garden flourishes. I freeze and pickle, dry stuff, and give stuff away. The squash, three varieties, are doing well, unlike last year when for some reason the crop was meager. 
    My own gardening and food storage efforts are feeble compared to those of Bill and Linda Rose whose story is told by Sandra Phinney in this issue of RD.

Oh happy day
    The sun is shining, the air is warm, a breeze is blowing – and the garden, slowly recovering from hurricane Arthur (which brought no rain this side of the vortex) is drying out. Arthur’s powerful blasts from every point of the compass over 24 hours flattened some vegetables and even twisted a few cabbage and broccoli plants off at ground level. How fortunate that unlike so many of you farmers in Arthur’s path I’m not trying to make a living off the land; only growing enough to feed myself and guests. 

Jack, we hardly knew ye
    It’s Saturday morning, sun up before six and a bright morning at that here on Nova Scotia’s western South Shore. Stan Carew is on the bedside radio telling his CBC listeners that most face another gray, cloudy day. 
    Stan’s also relating the sad news that writer (and so much more) Jack MacAndrew died in hospital yesterday morning. 81. Cancer. That was quick.

Security begins at home
    As I grub in the greenhouse planting lettuce, tomatoes, some cole crops, I’m realizing food security begins at home. It is not a new or brilliant thought, but one we might keep in the forefront of our minds as we putter along here in the country.

Now hiring
    No, it’s not an April Fool’s joke. The hunt is on again for an editor, a person with a way with words and manure on his or her boots. One without the other doesn’t seem to work. Finding the individual with the combination of skills and background needed to run with the tasks at DvL Publishing Inc. is becoming a full time and tedious job.