Reading Time: 3 minutes In the middle of August, my neighbour Vern Bunton and his son were leaning on the box of my half-ton down by the mailbox enjoying a visit, when I made a polite remark about the lovely crop of beans young Matthew had grown on 50 acres across the road. This was Matthew’s first crop and […] Read more
The stars align
10,000 years of bad food
Reading Time: 3 minutes My grandfather was a part-time medical doctor and a full-time food nut. He’s been gone for 40 years now but I still think of him pretty much every time I open the fridge. He hopped from one loony idea to another over the course of his career, lecturing his patients and every member of his […] Read more
Surfing for perfect pork
Reading Time: 3 minutes I have a tech-savvy neighbour, Sully, who jets across the continent every week advising corporate moguls about social media in the Age of Information. Quite frequently, Sully and his gorgeous young wife Sophie take a drive up the Petunia Valley Sideroad (which we affectionately refer to as the off-ramp of the information highway) and join […] Read more
Saving face on the Sideroad
Reading Time: 3 minutes I took the family to one of the neighbourhood parties at the Fisher place down on the River Road over the holidays. It was a pretty typical mix of farm and small-town families. The men stood in the heated garage, holding beers and moaning about the price of pinto beans and foliar fungicides. The women […] Read more
A farmer’s hierarchy of needs
Reading Time: 3 minutes In the same way that spring produces the first gin and tonic moments on the veranda and frog songs that waft up from the marsh in the evening, it also produces two famous lists on the fridge: those things which must be done and another that fantasizes what might be done if we had the […] Read more
The gleaner
Reading Time: 3 minutes Many years ago, my wife picked up a cast-iron, hand-cranked corn sheller at an auction, just about the same time Bob Pargeter passed over his cornfield next door with his new combine. I noticed there were all sorts of intact corncobs lying on the ground at the corners of the fields where the machine turned […] Read more
Myth Of Persephone
Reading Time: 3 minutes It was not a marriage made in heaven. Petunia Valley’s fair board and the Persephone Little Theatre may have been hatched in the same log cabin 150 years ago, but they split up almost immediately and have lived separately for six generations. So when we heard that the two groups had joined forces to fundraise […] Read more
Politics As Usual
Reading Time: 3 minutes When our ancestors arrived here in Petunia Valley many years ago, they were absolutely thrilled to discover that they would not be expected to live on just potatoes, as they had back home in Ireland. In Canada, they could eat potatoes and pork. It’s been seven generations now, but we’ve never really gotten over that […] Read more
The Little Red Schoolhouse
Reading Time: 3 minutes Every day I drive past the Gothic two-storey brick building where I received my early schooling. It stands, sturdy and uncompromising, on the last windy drumlin on the highway going into town, a monument to the straight row and fact-based system of education we threw out the window 40 years ago. SS #12 was decommissioned […] Read more
Caution: Children Working Here
Reading Time: 3 minutes When my eldest daughter Kissable turned 13, she asked us to help her find a part-time job. So, we talked to the catering manager of the ski club at the base of Pipesmoke Mountain, about five miles west of the farm, and he invited us to bring her over for a chat. When Kissable heard […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
