I keep seeing videos and write-ups on how our neighbour south of the border saved the bison (buffalo). Not so. The Canadian government bought the last herd of buffalo from Montana in the 1890s of around 700 animals. The U.S. government was not interested. It took a year to move that herd on the “Buffalo Trail” from Montana to Wainwright, Alta. By the 1930s and ’40s, these bison multiplied in their thousands. Many were moved to Wood Buffalo in the Northwest Territories, many killed for meat and others brought into parks such as Banff and Jasper.
It’s primarily from these plains bison that we now have around 500,000 bison in North America. Canada did the major saving, not from the small, far-scattered buffalo groups such as those in Yellowstone. Canada also saved the much bigger wood bison by locating a herd of 250 in the Northwest Territories and bringing them south to Elk Island National Park near Edmonton. These wood buffalo have also been used to restock wood buffalo herds in Alaska and other parts of the world. Canada did the work and the U.S., as usual, shamelessly claims the credit.
Dog diets
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It’s chicken day
This issue’s recipe: honey lemon chicken. Chicken Day means getting whole processed birds from a local farmer, getting them home in coolers, cutting each up for bagging and freezing, then stripping the carcasses for stock and pet food.
I keep hearing “meat for dogs” in many commercials, as in, “Feed them pure meat and not the byproducts.” In fact, the byproducts of the meat industry are much more nutritious than plain meat. Byproducts are hearts, kidneys, livers and other organs that are far more nutritious than plain meat. There are those who keep their dogs on plain raw or cooked meat diets. Dog food? The dried stuff in particular is a carefully balanced diet well suited for dogs. In the “wild,” coyotes (wild dogs) eat all kinds of fruits and vegetables, from raspberries and apples to raw carrots and potatoes.
Seed sale
Home garden purchasing is another misunderstood issue. The carrot seed of the same variety may come from the same seed farm in France but may be sold by a number of seed companies. It’s a question of what you get for your dollar. As a Canadian, you can legally buy packaged seed from any seed company in the U.S. or Europe at any time, but you cannot send seed of any kind to the U.S. unless it has a valid Canadian inspection certificate.
Now get this right: you cannot take oranges into the U.S., since Canada imports oranges from around the world, but you can bring any number of oranges from the U.S. into Canada.
Keep home fires from burning
With the massive fire destruction in California and elsewhere, take heed. How many farms do you see with spruce trees or spruce or pine shelterbelts that are way too close to the farm house or farm buildings? Last year (2024) I knew of a farmhouse at one site and farm buildings at another location in Alberta that burned down. In past years such farms had cows, horses and sometimes sheep around the buildings and trees. Now that those animals have gone, grasses and brush spring up around the trees and spruce shelterbelts. It’s the grass tinder that can wipe out the shelterbelt or any nearby buildings. Get out the glyphosate — grasses are killed and spruce, after Aug. 1, is unharmed and fully tolerant to this herbicide. Get rid of the grass tinder.
On a related note, how many times have you been told that pine and spruce trees turn the soil acidic? You will note very close to, or right under, pine or spruce trees, you will see little or no vegetation. That’s because both pine and spruce trees retain their green needles during the winter and on warmer days, they may lose lots of moisture. What they do is not changing the acidity of the soil at all. Rather, they remove the surface soil moisture, which makes it impossible for weed seeds to germinate, or they may restrict the moisture of nearby grasses or brush, especially in the spring months. Pine trees do grow well on acidic soils but are not the cause of the acidity.
Dairy and diseases
Will the raw milk crowd go away? In the U.S., raw milk sells for up to $21 per U.S. gallon. Around four per cent of people may drink raw milk in a year but only one per cent drink it regularly. Now, raw milk has been shown, in some instances, to transmit the bird flu virus, as well as brucellosis, tuberculosis, listeria and campylobacter, to name a few more cow milk-borne diseases that could occasionally be present. Pasteurization makes the milk perfectly safe and as fully nutritious as ever.
Worms at work
Worm compost is treated like it has magic properties, but in reality, it’s no better than composted cow manure or not as good as poultry manure. In agricultural fields, especially with zero till, worms do wonders. A square yard of soil could contain more than a half mile of earthworm tunnels.
Darwin once observed that a layer of small stones, when left on a field surface, would in a few years, seem displaced, as worms would have moved earth from below ground and left it on top of those undisturbed stones. That’s how small stones appear to sink in the soil over time. The volume of soil moved by worms is stupendous.
Worm tunnels contribute hugely to soil drainage and soil aeration. A whole field of topsoil over the very many years may well have passed through the gut of earthworms. Earthworms, all nine or more of the common species on the Prairies, were introduced into Canada primarily from Europe. There were no earthworms in Canada prior to the coming of Europeans.
A grain of salt
Big-deal “sea salt” or Himalayan “pink salt” is all culinary nonsense. These salts are primarily sodium chloride but also have toxic trace elements such as lead, cadmium and arsenic, as well as silver, copper, et cetera, in parts per million (ppm) or parts per billion (ppb). Common table salt sold in Canada contains, in addition to pure refined salt (sodium chloride), iodine.
Iodine, often deficient in the Canadian population, has been added to the salt. Iodine is essential for the production of thyroid hormone. Thyroid hormone is essential for brain development, especially for children. Low or deficient iodine for hormone production has been shown to cause permanent brain damage. Keep your iodized salt!
Saw this quote recently: “Science progresses one funeral at a time.”
