Reading Time: 6 minutes Glacier FarmMedia – Nestled in the colourfully chaotic flower garden encompassing Sideroad Farm, Amy Kitchen’s sun-browned face flits between appreciation and concern. Sixteen months past the initial pandemic lockdown in March 2020, Kitchen is in the enviable position of having her Grey County organic on-farm business rocket past its five-year growth plan. “There’s a lot […] Read more
Direct farm marketers shift gears during pandemic lockdown phase
Direct-to-consumer farm marketers learn to manage businesses that have grown much quicker than they expected
Bonjour, Montreal
Explore Montreal, use these tips to taste the culture, and discover where Canadian food is going
Reading Time: 7 minutes Finally! Another prospect of visiting Montreal and tasting its culinary riches. Be prepared for a treat made even lovelier because of our time apart and because the food scene manages to balance the past and the present and arrive with the best of all worlds in one city. If you’ll be a first-time visitor, you […] Read more
Facing facts
It’s still very early days, but agriculture is on its way to becoming a more diverse and inclusive sector
Reading Time: 11 minutes Canadian agriculture has a problem and needs to talk about it. Partly, it’s a human resource issue. Every year, Canada’s farms and agricultural businesses fall further behind. More and more traditional farm jobs go unfilled while, at the same time, new job descriptions are being created that demand even harder-to-find skills and vision. And it […] Read more
Moving towards a career with purpose
Discovering an interest in range management has broadened Jourdyn Sammons' educational opportunities
Reading Time: 3 minutes Glacier FarmMedia – When Jourdyn Sammons joined the University of Saskatchewan’s Range Team in her third year of undergraduate studies, it led to an exciting field of study that’s positively shaped her educational experience. “We talk about varying topics like ecology and grazing practices and multiple-use relationships, like how people can utilize rangeland for its facilities,” says Sammons, who grew up on a cow-calf and grain farm […] Read more
A better Canada
Guide Canada: Should this B.C. study become a template for other provinces, showing that farming paves the way for better days to come for the entire economy?
Reading Time: 5 minutes It’s tempting to talk about Canada’s pandemic recovery, but is it premature? Cases of COVID-19 keep making headlines, and the “new normal” Canadians so desperately want still seems remote and uncertain. One thing is absolutely clear, though. Agriculture and the agri-food sector have gotten back to to near normal operations, and they did so with […] Read more
Double team
It can be a roller coaster ride if your farm spouse is highly entrepreneurial. It is in other business sectors too. Now we can all start learning from each other
Reading Time: 11 minutes No matter what sector a person works in, and whether you’re husband or wife, if you’re an entrepreneur’s spouse, you are along for the ride, strapped in with no control over the steering wheel or the brake. On the farm, of course, both partners are dedicated, energetic and business-minded. But that doesn’t necessarily change the […] Read more
Capitalizing on co-operation
Agricultural co-ops are chasing new goals with the times. Could it be time for you to join a land-trust co-op? Or a branding co-op?
Reading Time: 6 minutes At first, this example might seem on the edge, but it illustrates a bigger point. When Chris Bodnar and Paige Dampier started farming in 2007, finding affordable land was a major roadblock. So, as founders of Close to Home Organics, they purchased a share in the Glen Valley Organic Farm Co-operative, which provided them affordable […] Read more
Turning Topsy right side up
What happens when a hippie commune learns that some strategic business skills could help it thrive?
Reading Time: 8 minutes When Topsy Farms started in 1971, the goal was simple. How could it need a complex business plan? Starting with five hippies, they were creating a commune on Amherst Island, just offshore in Lake Ontario west of Kingston. The goal was clear too — become a self-sustaining community, secluded from the outside world, a place […] Read more
Hospital food gets a local boost
Can local food create meaningful sales for farmers? Check out these institutional success stories
Reading Time: 7 minutes Putting the words “hospital” and “food” together in the same sentence doesn’t always spark much of an appetite. Mostly they conjure thoughts of a mediocre meal, something bland, tasteless and unimaginative. You might say the same thing about the way hospitals have procured their food too, with purchase systems that have been as bland, tasteless […] Read more
Growing that bright red berry
Guide Canada: Along the south shore of the St. Lawrence, an incredible fusion of the Old World and the New came together in 1981, and it’s still making waves today
Reading Time: 8 minutes When he was eight years old, Marc Bieler knew that when he grew up, he would be a farmer. What he didn’t know was that his road to fame and fortune would be paved with little red berries. Today, Bieler Cranberries Inc. is the largest single-site cranberry farm in Canada producing up to 40 million […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
