Reading Time: 3 minutes On June 11, gin enthusiasts and distilleries — the latter including Saskatoon’s own Black Fox Farm and Distillery — celebrated World Gin Day. After spending an afternoon out at Black Fox, Liam O’Connor, for Glacier FarmMedia, spoke to its co-owner and head distiller John Cote about what the secret is to making a good Prairie […] Read more
What it takes to make gin on the Prairies
The new farm team
Katie and Andre Steppler are both running the show at Steppler Farms
Reading Time: 6 minutes It’s the biggest business day of the year for Katie and Andre Steppler. Bull sale. Standing on the sales block at their annual bull sale every March, the Stepplers run a perfectly orchestrated show in front of an audience of 200. Many more watch online. Amid the booming flow of the auctioneer’s chant, a bull […] Read more
Soil sisters
Guide Canada: When people assume that Jeanette Heffernan and Katie Sherratt are sisters, the pair don’t bother to correct them. They’ve learned it’s better to tackle one stereotype at a time
Reading Time: 8 minutes The two young women at Tipsy Willow Farm break a lot of preconceptions about farming. That’s true on many farms, of course, especially where the next generation is in their early twenties and they’re introducing new concepts to the family farm in order to launch their own farming careers. But it’s even more true here. […] Read more
Is farming on the cusp of being redefined?
The future could be much better than today. But will we decide that we want it?
Reading Time: 6 minutes Farming has been described as the backbone of civilization. Without the domestication of crops and livestock, society as we know it would have been impossible. So, since it’s so important, everyone knows what farming is, right? If you ask a random group of people what farming is, and what role farmers play in society, you […] Read more
Wild Rose Country is like nowhere else
Guide Canada: With their incredible blend of the traditional and the cutting edge, the ranches in Alberta’s foothills are unique not only for their lifestyle, but for their approach to business too
Reading Time: 3 minutes In the articles below, we travel to southwestern Alberta to hear first-hand what it’s like to ranch in the foothills, a region that’s every bit as romantic as it sounds, dominated by scenery, wildlife, unbelievable weather and pristine glacial rivers that feed Canada from the Rockies all the way east to Hudson’s Bay. For conservationists […] Read more
Like Nowhere Else: Mike Roberts
Guide Canada: Waldron Ranch is a grazing co-operative of 261 square kilometres
Reading Time: 5 minutes Waldron Ranch is 65,000 acres of unbroken foothills wedged between the Porcupine and Whaleback Hills in Alberta’s eastern slopes, and it is one of Canada’s most important ecological sites. These acres are a mixture of deeded, leased and forested areas. In the summertime the ranch is stocked with up to 8,000 cattle at a time. […] Read more
Like Nowhere Else: Tanis Cross
Guide Canada: "It’s so important to keep my mind open,” says Cross.
Reading Time: 3 minutes As you pull up the main drive to the A7 Ranche, you get a feeling there must be real history and tradition at work here, and you’d be right. This ranch been running cattle for 135 consecutive years, back to when Calgary had only been a town for three years. Tanis Cross represents the newest […] Read more
Like Nowhere Else: John Smith and Laura Laing
Guide Canada: For Smith and Laing, it has to be the right technology, whether new or old. Often it’s horses. Sometimes it's drones. And it’s always sustainable
Reading Time: 5 minutes In the same country that’s been ripped open by controversy over a new generation of massive open-pit coal mines, the husband-and-wife duo of John Smith and Laura Laing trail their cattle to pasture the way ranchers always have, by horseback. They could use ATVs but the horses generate less noise and keep the animals’ stress […] Read more
Farming in a postcard province
Guide Canada: Prince Edward Island’s agriculture, lobster and tourism industries share a single island — not always easily
Reading Time: 10 minutes On the first of May every spring, Kevin MacIsaac heads out on the water with his son-in-law, a lobster fisherman, to set the 300 traps they’re allowed under their quota system. For the next month, the pair are back out on the water to empty those traps — daily, at four in the morning. On […] Read more
Value adding, with a flourish
What does it take to thrive with a farm that value adds? The answer surprised Dana Thatcher, and it will likely surprise you too
Reading Time: 6 minutes When Dana Thatcher started getting compliments from the other teachers at school about the food she was bringing for lunch, little did she know it would lead to a thriving farm, food and agri-tourism business. “People were interested in what I was eating, and the fact that we had grown it,” Thatcher recalls. “That’s what […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
