Michael Raine

Growing grain has changed a great deal over the past few years and the way it is stored has also changed. As well, seasonal demand for grain bins has shifted dramatically this year. Normally dealers receive the bulk of their orders in June and July for harvest delivery. The 1997 season began much earlier. “We […] Read more

SHELL LAKE, Sask. – Eight forges flame, lined up on the rolling acres at the edge of Saskatchewan’s northern parkland. The beat of a blacksmith’s hammer is a metronome linking prairie people to a slower-paced era. A small crowd gathers. “People are always amazed when they see how raw steel can be formed before their […] Read more

To the uninitiated, it might look like farmers are trying to kill their crops by spraying an undiscriminating herbicide before harvest. But pre-harvest applications of glyphosate-based herbicides are actually aimed at killing perennial and winter annual plants that take advantage of standing stubble. If properly applied, the crops show little effect. “Newer approaches to tillage […] Read more

REGINA – A total of 424 farmers signed in at a rally organized by Canadian Farmers for Justice near Regina last week. Harvest pressures came second for many producers attending the event in 37 C heat, and interior temperatures rose beyond that during two hours in a steel-walled structure. Speeches by Farmers for Justice board […] Read more

GOODLANDS, Man. – Whether too little moisture or too much, there seem to be few happy mediums in the southern prairies. Grant Maddess was forced to choose between cultivator and sprayer when his pea crop thrust itself from the parched soil in mid June. “I didn’t know whether to spray for weeds or just plow […] Read more

Free heat. When it comes to drying grain, pro- ducers love the sound of those two words. An early winter across much of the Prairies last year spawned the need for Allan Callaway’s innovation. Wet grain harvested in the face of falling snow was clogging up the granaries on the Callaway farm near Davidson, Sask. […] Read more

Governments have pooh-poohed any suggestion that bossy bingo could be rigged, but that hasn’t stopped people from suggesting this type of gambling might be up to its calves in questionable practices. Bossy bingo, as it is known in Ontario, cow patty bingo in the West and cow stool pool in the Maritimes, is a form […] Read more

Not all designer fashions are born in the finer houses of European cities or tested on the couture runways of New York, Paris or Milan. Some are conceived in the minds of plant breeders and tested in university laboratories. Altering canola plants to provide oils designed to meet the demands of the public has become […] Read more

New crops always pose new questions. What if the quality doesn’t meet standards for human food? What if the crop is late and hit by frost, or if the agronomics are off the first year? What can farmers do with their crop then? How can they sell it? Chickpeas are causing this dilemma as new […] Read more

Midge, like tiny orange mosquitoes sucking the life blood from prairie cereal crops, are beginning their annual feast. This year, the populations are up and conditions are right for a bug banquet, say entomologists. Spreading across the Prairies and into the American great plains over the past decade, the orange wheat midge has found a […] Read more