It’s asparagus season in this part of the world, and for those of us who enjoy eating this slender vegetable, what a glorious season it is.
Tag Archives editorial notebook — page 2
When anything can happen and probably will
Our language, and how we say things, has borrowed much from the world of sports. Sayings such as “a win is a win,” “we gave it 110 percent” and “take one for the team” are commonplace. One of my favourites is used as an attempt to cover all our bases (see, there’s another one): “any […] Read more
A population explosion of the hoofed kind
We had been hearing stories at The Western Producer of large herds causing problems on prairie farms, and when reporter Brian Cross decided to take a look, he found farmers beside themselves as they dealt with what can best be described as farm invasions.
If it’s relaxed, competition is soon to follow
Our ability to turn the most relaxed activity into the most ferocious of competitions never ceases to amaze me. Take pickleball, for example. I don’t play myself, but it’s my understanding that it’s a cross between tennis and badminton. That’s perhaps over-simplifying things, but you get the drift. It’s supposed to be relaxing. When I […] Read more
Salad days for doomscrolling
Doomscrolling is a term I first came across in the early days of the pandemic. It denotes the process of moving through text on a computer or phone screen, typically on social media, to keep up to troublesome or ominous events. The interesting times we’re living in may be the heyday of doomscrolling. For instance, […] Read more
Don’t make fake ag news
Where does fake news come from? In the case of the Prairies this past week, its Saskatchewan’s provincial cabinet and a think-tank from Winnipeg. They aren’t alone. Politics and picking sides appear to be a pretty regular source of public lies designed to deceive. In Canadian agriculture we can’t afford to be involved in fake […] Read more
Matchmaker service much appreciated
The Western Producer has developed a reputation over the years for helping couples form romantic relationships through its personal ads. We’ve even written the occasional story about prairie couples who found love by answering a personal ad in the Producer. However, the paper recently played matchmaker of a different sort. The tale starts with Margaret […] Read more
Cheese: more versatile than you would think
In April we published a story about a Saskatchewan man who gave up his day job to become a full-time cheese maker. It blended how-to facts about cheese making with an inspiring look at the rewards drawn from following your dreams. What the article didn’t say is that Kevin Petty, the fore-mentioned cheese maker, used […] Read more
Simple, neat and wrong
“Farmers don’t need nitrogen fertilizers at all.” With urea prices triple what they were last year, this headline caught my attention. What was this breakthrough that was going to liberate farmers from one of their largest input costs? I clicked the link. Clover, it turns out, can be used to fix nitrogen and boost yields […] Read more
Boneyard of good intentions
The line between what stays in my farmyard and what gets discarded has drastically changed. Over the past week, I’ve been prepping the yard for the metal man, and I’ve been throwing things on the metal piles that sentimentality would have prevented in years past. It could have been the raccoons, groundhogs, skunks and other […] Read more
