Hutterites originated in Austria, but moved from country to country for 300 years, persecuted for their communal life and property ownership, nonviolence, pacifism, adult baptism and unwillingness to swear oaths of allegiance. In 1874, Czar Alexander II withdrew Catherine the Great’s century-old commitment to allow Hutterites to live in peace, without compulsory military service. So a delegation went to North America, looking for land. When they returned, the great migration began.

Hutterite travellers bought tickets in steerage, the cheapest spot on a steamship. They brought wicker baskets and burlap sacks full of food, provisions to feed themselves and their families during the two-week voyage as well as the long trek west, and “hope chests” of seeds for their new gardens in their new land. The voyage was arduous, and some travellers died; children whose parents didn’t survive became wards of close relatives.

The Dakota Territories had been selected as the target: in the western U.S., land was plentiful and inexpensive. The U.S. government had passed the Naturalization Act of 1870, which prioritized white European-born settlers at the expense of would-be Chinese arrivals. Indigenous residents at that point were being forced onto reservations by government-led wars across the Plains, along with the 1871 Indian Appropriations Act, which ended treaty negotiations. Hutterite emigrants who had been successful farmers but left everything behind had hope of buying land, without any knowledge of the Indigenous nations who were forced off their territories to make room for white settlers.

Some Hutterites settled at established U.S. colonies (brotherhoods or bruderhofs, in three Hutterite sects) in South Dakota, while others, known as prairieleit, or “prairie people” opted for private land ownership near Freeman, South Dakota. They stayed for some years, then traveled north across the Medicine Line in early 1900 to take up residence in the North-West Territories of Canada, in what would become known as Alberta and Saskatchewan.

My ancestors, all prairieleit, settled around the towns of Borden, Langham, Dalmeny and Radisson, west of Saskatoon along the banks of the North Saskatchewan River, flat and fertile land that surely struck a note of recognition in the eyes of the travelers from Ukraine. Individual men bought land and proved up ground for homesteads. Women dug in their storage chests and pulled out shriveled seeds they had carefully sequestered when they left the old country. Gardens were planted, hardy crops similar to what they’d grown in their fields close to the Sea of Azuv: wheat, cabbage, potatoes, carrots and beets.

Those vegetables, especially the beets, were a lodestar for the homes left behind. Eating beets is the closest we come to eating a mouthful of minerals. Densely textured, richly coloured and earthy, even in seed form, beets are reminiscent of dirt. So roast your roots, and share them. First we eat. Then we’ll share stories of our ancestors.

Next time: the Irish famine and potatoes.

Cooking beets — and what to do with them 

Beets are easy to cook, in a rainbow of colours: purple, white, golden and Chioggia — concentric pink circles shot through with white. Purple are most intensely flavoured, followed in descending order; the palest colours are mildest. Shape influences flavour, too; oval beets are milder than round ones.

Refrigerated beets keep for months if they are wrapped in paper towels in airtight containers or plastic bags.

Beets can be steamed, boiled or roasted. Stovetop cooking is messy if beets leak all over the stovetop. Use the oven! To roast beets, wrap half a dozen beets of similar size in a double layer of foil, and toss them into a hot oven. They cook more quickly in small packets than on large covered trays. Large beets take an hour at least to roast. Squeeze to test for doneness; they should give under your fingers. 

Peel beets after cooking; raw beets bleed profusely if they are peeled or sliced, so cook them clothed. Let them cool a bit, then rub them with a tea towel to slip them out of their skins. Anthocyanin, the colour in purple beets, is water-soluble, but is set by acids. Wash your hands before you get lemon juice on those purple stains, or they endure as long as henna hand painting. Toss purple beets minimally to avoid staining everything. Keep them separate from other components until the last minute, or toss them in separate bowls and serve them side by side. 

For a stellar winter salad, serve golden beets on red leaf lettuce or radicchio, and red beets on green leaf or with spears of Belgian endive. Then choose a red-skinned apple to slice beside the golden beets, and a green-skinned apple to pair with the red beets. Top with citrus vinaigrette, a bit of chèvre and some toasted nuts. 

Cooked beets are great in salads, risotto and pasta, wearing only olive oil and fruit-based vinegar, or dressed up. Many flavours love beets: cabbages, radicchio and endive; nuts and nut oils; all citrus; vanilla; apples; mustard or dill are classic pairings, as is duck, and all cured or smoked pork. Potatoes and beets make red flannel hash; cabbage and onions combine with beets to make borscht, with or without meat. Try sparing amounts of sweet spices such as paprika, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, cinnamon or allspice; add handfuls of herbs such as tarragon, chives, dill, fennel or parsley. Use beets in chocolate cakes, sorbets or ice creams, as a reminder that beets are a source of sugar.

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That’s what a recent two-year study aimed to address, with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada researchers looking at practical ways to limit lygus damage in faba beans. They focused on the pest’s tendency to migrate into faba from other crops as they mature and dry down.

Lygus feed on a wide range of hosts and are drawn to plants with flowers and tender tissue. That makes flowering time critical. Unfortunately for faba beans, their pod fill stage often lines up with the drydown period in nearby crops, which draws in lygus bugs at the worst possible time.

Trap cropping

That’s where trap crops come in. The idea is simple: plant something even more attractive than faba beans along the field edge, draw lygus in and hit them with an insecticide before they move on.

Trap cropping isn’t a new concept. AAFC entomologist Héctor Cárcamo, who led the lygus bug study, points out it was common for farmers to use trap crops to control wheat stem sawfly before resistant, solid-stem wheat varieties became available.

“Farmers would plant things like oats along the borders and ditches,” he says.

Nowadays, trap crops are more common in regions with smaller fields, where farmers can afford to manage more complex systems. On the Prairies, where farms are large and time is tight, adding extra steps such as planting and managing a separate trap crop can be a tough sell.

Still, Cárcamo believes there’s untapped potential.

“There are opportunities we’re missing in terms of reducing insecticide costs and the environmental impacts of spraying,” he says.

There’s also the looming threat of resistance. Lygus has already shown signs of resistance to some pyrethroids like Matador in cotton in the U.S.

“We should be taking whatever steps we can to reduce repeated applications of the same insecticides,” says Cárcamo.

What they tested

The research team used both lab and field trials to test how lygus responds to different crops. In the lab, they offered bugs a choice between faba beans and five other species: flax, peas, canola, safflower and alfalfa.

While there were hints that lygus males caused more damage when canola was in the mix, nothing significantly outperformed faba beans in terms of attractiveness. Cárcamo isn’t surprised.

“You’re in a very artificial environment in the lab,” he says. “What you see there doesn’t always play out in the field.”

The real insights came from side-by-side field trials at Lethbridge and Vauxhall, Alta., where faba beans were grown next to each potential trap crop. Researchers monitored lygus numbers and necrotic seed damage in the faba plots and tested two different insecticides to see how spraying affected outcomes.

What they found

First off, not every crop worked equally well. Peas and flax had the lowest lygus numbers, meaning they were less attractive and offered little trap potential.

Canola, on the other hand, was a major lygus magnet. Unfortunately, the bugs didn’t stop there: they spilled into the faba plots and caused serious seed damage.

“It was very clear they love canola and all the brassicaceae crops,” says Cárcamo. “But the problem is they also like faba beans enough to cause damage.”

Canola attracts lygus effectively, but to work as a trap crop, it has to be paired with well-timed insecticide applications. Otherwise, the bugs may still reach the faba beans.

Safflower appears to hold lygus bugs for longer. In 2022, faba beans beside safflower had significantly less damage than those next to canola. This lines up with findings from cotton systems in other countries, where safflower has been used as an effective trap crop.

Sunflowers, tested in 2023, also attracted high lygus numbers. Damage in adjacent faba plots was still present, but researchers observed high levels of parasitism by beneficial wasps such as Peristenus. That opens the door to more integrated strategies.

“There’s potential to use crops like sunflowers not just to attract lygus, but to support natural enemies,” Cárcamo says.

For organic growers, especially, safflower could be a good candidate.

“That might be the crop where you can hope to retain the lygus bug the longest,” Cárcamo says. “They like it better than faba beans, so the damage should be less.”

He cautions that trap cropping alone won’t reduce lygus populations, but it may help delay damage long enough to make a difference.

In a situation like this, he adds, there’s a need to integrate trap crops with natural enemies such as parasitoid wasps that attack the baby lygus. And for non-organic farmers, if needed, he recommends using selective insecticides that are soft on the beneficial insects essential for faba seed set.

Role of insecticides

The insecticide trials also revealed key insights. In 2022, the team used Beleaf, a product with low impact on pollinators and beneficials. It didn’t significantly reduce damage.

In 2023, they switched to lambda-cyhalothrin, a more aggressive pyrethroid. That spray reduced both lygus numbers and seed damage, but with greater risk to non-target insects.

What’s next?

Cárcamo says this work is still in its early days. Larger-scale trials in commercial fields are needed to confirm which trap crops work best and how to fine-tune the approach.

One scenario he’d like to test involves planting strips of faba beans and peas side by side, with canola along the field edges to act as a trap. But he doesn’t recommend farmers try this before the idea has been tested more.

“I’d like to look into the possibility of doing an experiment with a farmer,” he says. “That way, we can try it at a smaller scale first and monitor before scaling up to a full field.”

This year, he’s shifting focus slightly to test similar ideas in lentils, which will involve more real-world testing, including trials in lentil fields and work on natural enemy populations.

“We’re now looking for lentil growers to participate,” he says. “We want to measure how many natural enemies are present in the field.”

He’s also exploring options that could prove helpful for organic growers. In the lab, his team is testing insect-killing fungi — known as entomopathogens — on alfalfa weevils. The fungi work, but they’re slow, often taking two weeks to kill the insect.

“So you’d need a crop with a long flowering period, like safflower, to hold the pests long enough for the fungus to do its job,” he explains.

For now, trap crops will likely remain a tough sell for Canadian farmers. But the research shows that with the right crop, timing and spray strategy, they might give farmers — organic or otherwise — another tool to manage this tricky pest.

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That would almost be a joke except that President Trump appears to be such an unpredictable character, with a very strong protectionist attitude, and not a great grasp of self-control that migrating ducks — with no photo ID and no passport — could figuratively and literally be a target of U.S. reprisal.

According to a recent Western Producer article by writer Robert Arnason, the millions of ducks winging across North American flyways may be chief culprits in the spread of some serious weeds on both sides of the border — the first water hemp weed plants in Manitoba and palmer amaranth (type of pigweed) moving across Missouri.

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Where did they come from, how did they get there? A University of Missouri researcher has been looking into the possible causes — migrating ducks are leading suspects.

The guts of the issue

The researchers looked at the guts of 283 hunting-harvested ducks and extracted about 14,500 weed seeds, which represented 50 different species of weeds including water hemp and palmer amaranth. Ducks apparently like weed seeds. Snow geese didn’t ingest nearly as many weed seeds and there was no mention of Canada geese which I believe are genetically programmed to only poop on pathways, sidewalks and golf courses, so pose no threat to crops.

From my farm boy, duck-rearing days I recall ducks have a fairly effective digestive system using a well-muscled gizzard to grind their food. However, these researchers fed weed seeds to live ducks and in a less than appealing task learned that 15 to 20 per cent of smaller weed seeds made it through the gut of the ducks without being digested.

And considering that birds poop every 10 minutes or so (they might pace themselves a bit on long flights) it’s more than likely when walking around wetlands and grain fields that seeds could be deposited.

And seeds can easily be carried from one area to another. Ducks Unlimited’s book of little known facts says on average ducks fly 80 km/hr. so in eight hours of flying time could travel 640 kilometres (with a tail wind that could increase to 1,000 kilometres) —more than enough distance to get them from Grand Forks, North Dakota to Regina, Sask., or Fargo, N.D. to Steinbach, Man., and vice-versa.

If this news ever makes it to Washington, D.C., it’s hard to predict what the consequences would be. Sure these snow birds might winter in the southern U.S. but if they are nesting and hatching on the Canadian Prairies or even further north then I would guess that country-of-origin labelling pegs them as Canadian ducks. (Yes I dug out that COOL term because it wouldn’t surprise me, World Trade Order ruling or not, country-of-origin labelling will be back on the agenda before this administration has run its course.)

Mexicans are bad, Muslims are bad, so it stands to Trump-reason Canadian ducks carrying problematic weed seeds on their annual migration are bad too. We Canadians cannot control our ducks.

If a mile-high net goes up along the U.S. border to prevent birds from flying, there probably isn’t much the Canadian government can say or do.

The world might not be scared, but I sense a certain amount of “walking on egg shells” around the Trump administration. Anyone that so far contradicts him is either fired or ridiculed.

Prime Minister Trudeau was criticized by the opposition for not taking a stronger stand (or any stand really) on Trump’s decision to ban, just not allow, Muslims from seven different countries to travel to the U.S.

Trudeau, the able boxer that he is, could have come out swinging with a condemnation of this ban that’s not a ban, but I sense people are choosing their words carefully around the unpredictable Trump. He could lash out or retaliate with who knows what measure that could have far deeper consequences than an unreasonable ban on a few innocent people crossing the U.S. border. Worst case scenario it could affect maple syrup trade.

For the “mature” readers in the crowd I remember one episode of the old “Twilight Zone” (probably 40 years ago now) where there was a little kid with extraordinary powers, and all the adults were dancing around him and doing everything possible to keep him happy because if Billy got unhappy, he would make you “disappear.”

I don’t know if we are quite in that position with Donny Trump, but I’m getting a few of those vibes.

So to all migratory birds, for the sake of continental order perhaps you could curb these annual migrations that have gone on for 5,000 years or more. Would it really be so bad if you had to stay home all year, at least for the next four winters. I know it is asking a lot but world peace may depend on it.

If any species can appreciate this request it is waterfowl — Canada is now sharing a nest box with one very strange duck.

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Avian influenza spreads when wild birds come into contact with commercial/small flocks, the agency said, urging producers and small flock owners to check their biosecurity plans to stop disease from “flying, walking or rolling” into their flocks.

People can also carry avian flu viruses on their hands and boots, or bring it in on vehicle tires, the agency said, noting farms’ staff and service providers can also pose a risk to flock health.

Specifically, the agency said, two Canadian commercial poultry flocks recently tested positive for the H1N1 influenza virus, which causes human respiratory illness and can be transmitted from people to poultry.

H1N1 may go unnoticed in poultry or can cause mild respiratory illness and decreased egg production, CFIA said.

H1N1’s impact on poultry is less severe than that of highly-pathogenic (“high-path”) avian flu, but prevention is still important to minimize the potential for new viruses to develop in bird populations.

For that reason, anyone with respiratory illnesses should avoid contact with poultry, the agency said.

The U.S. cases of high-path avian flu to which CFIA refers were an H7N8 strain found in a commercial poultry flock in Indiana in January.

However, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) last week said the Indiana case is considered closed.

All infected premises have been depopulated, cleaned and disinfected, APHIS said, and the U.S. has fulfilled all the requirements to again self-declare itself free from high-path avian flu. — AGCanada.com Network

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The survey from a scientist at Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is the second this month to show the numbers on the mend, but the population is still well below a high in the one billion range two decades ago.

The monarch’s recent comeback is due to favourable weather and the planting of more milkweed, an important plant to keep numbers up on its migration route, the NRDC survey said.

“Today’s news provides a hopeful indication that we are helping them head in the right direction and curbing the loss of this magnificent butterfly. But we must be careful not to declare victory too soon,” said Sylvia Fallon, a senior scientist with the New York-based not-for-profit group.

She based her findings in large part on studies showing areas where the butterflies congregate when they spend the winter in Mexico’s Oyamel forest. They have suffered mightily over the years from the expansion of farmland, sprawling housing developments and the clear-cutting of natural landscapes along their migration path, experts say.

Monarchs lay eggs only on milkweed plants, which grow wild throughout the U.S. But the milkweed, on which their larvae feed, can cause stomach problems for cattle that eat it, so ranchers and farmers destroy it, NRDC researchers said.

The butterflies congregate in Mexico and then go through several generations as they fly north on their long migration to Canada.

Their plight has become an international issue. In February 2014, the U.S., Mexico and Canada agreed to set up a joint task force to protect the butterflies.

While an estimated one billion monarchs migrated in 1996, only about 35 million made the trip in 2013, according to Marcus Kronforst, a professor of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago who has studied monarchs.

— Reporting for Reuters by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas.

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The Agriculture Department will consider using the method, condemned by animal rights groups as cruel, if there are no other ways to kill flocks within 24 hours of flu infections being detected, according to a statement.

The agency has set a goal to cull infected flocks within a day to prevent the virus from spreading, after over 48 million chickens and turkeys died from December through June in the nation’s worst-ever animal disease outbreak.

More than two months have passed since the last infection was detected. However, officials are preparing for the potential return of the flu this fall because wild ducks, which are thought to carry the virus, will begin migrating.

Shutting off ventilation systems is “considered by some to be less humane than other methods” of culling flocks, USDA said in a statement this week.

However, the method, known as ventilation shutdown, is a “necessary alternative” because of the need to control and eradicate the virus, according to the agency.

It takes about 30 to 40 minutes for the birds to die from heat stress during ventilation shutdown, said T.J. Myers, associate deputy director of surveillance, preparedness, and response services for USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. USDA has never used the method, he said.

The government is trying to improve its response to the flu after farmers and lawmakers complained the agency moved too slowly in killing infected flocks and disposing of them. Delays can contribute to the spread of the disease and keep farmers out of business.

Shutting down ventilation systems in poultry houses “essentially bakes the birds to death,” according to the Humane Society of the United States.

“Animals suffer immensely with any outbreak of an epidemic like avian influenza, and we shouldn’t compound the problems for birds by subjecting them to a particularly miserable and protracted means of euthanasia,” said Michael Blackwell, the Humane Society’s chief veterinary officer.

The government’s first choices for culling infected poultry will be suffocating them with foam or in chambers filled with carbon dioxide, methods that were widely used this spring with turkeys and egg-laying hens, according to the USDA.

The agency said it plans to approve the use of ventilation shutdown on a case-by-case basis.

— Tom Polansek reports on agriculture and ag commodity markets for Reuters from Chicago.

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“With the fall weather quickly approaching, resulting in colder temperatures and wild bird migrations, the threat of re-emergence of (highly pathogenic avian influenza) is real,” the Feather Board Command Centre, the emergency response arm of the province’s poultry and egg boards, said in a notice last week.

Farmers will want to stick “rigorously” to their daily biosecurity measures, and “consider appropriate additional biosecurity measures to help prevent disease occurrence and spread,” the FBCC said.

Among those biosecurity measures, the centre recommends each farmer and farm employee and anyone else entering poultry barns put on clean footwear and protective clothing and follow all biosecurity protocols on “every entry” into barns.

Farmers, workers and visitors are also urged to “minimize” their visits to other poultry or egg production sites — and to avoid any co-mingling or other contact between their birds and wild or “outside” birds. Wild birds and rodents around barns should also be kept under “adequate” control.

Farmers should also steer clear of exchanging or sharing equipment with other poultry farms, and should make sure all vehicles and farm equipment used in and around the barns are washed and disinfected, the FBCC said. Farm laneways should also be restricted or secured.

A pressure washer or hose should be kept handy to wash tires and equipment, not only for on-farm equipment but for use on visiting service vehicles, the centre said.

If possible, the centre said, farmers should heat-treat barns and bedding before placing new chicks or poults. Heat treatment involves heating the barn and/or bedding to 30 C for at least three days before use.

A poultry farmer should “immediately” contact a veterinarian and his or her feather board if a farm’s birds show any signs of illness, the centre added.

“Good progress”

Ontario saw three farms — two turkey farms and a broiler breeder operation — infected with high-path H5N2 in April. British Columbia, where 11 commercial farms and two backyard flocks had avian flu infections in early 2015, was declared avian flu-free in June.

Barring any new cases during its required three-month surveillance period, Canada is on track to regain its status as free of high-path avian flu, as per World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) standards, by about the end of October.

In the U.S., where 223 farms in 15 states were hit by avian flu outbreaks between last December and mid-June this year, affecting over 48 million birds, the federal agriculture department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has now lifted all restrictions on poultry and poultry product traffic from 11 of those states.

The four remaining states — Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota and Nebraska — are “making good progress and control areas in those states are being removed, as they meet the time elements and other measures for release,” APHIS deputy administrator Dr. John Clifford said Monday in a report to the OIE.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has lifted its restrictions on travellers’ cross-border imports of live birds, raw poultry meat and eggs from seven of those 15 states as of Sept. 1.

CFIA’s cross-border restrictions remain in place on such products from Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas and Iowa. Commercial-level imports to Canada are also still restricted from the avian flu quarantine zones in those eight states.

Such products pose no food safety risk, CFIA said, noting its limits are meant to keep avian flu from spreading to poultry into other parts of Canada. — AGCanada.com Network

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