2020 ended with more than one elephant in the room. It was difficult to count the elephants, however, which seems odd since they’re elephants.   One gargantuan white heap became the dominant... Read more

We want cows to lie down as much as they want. We want housing that cows will like and we want housing that is easy for cows to use. This whole topic has been a subject of much research into... Read more

Thinking back to Christmas 2019, it is hard not to feel at least a little down at the drastic change in the 2020 Holiday. No parties of any kind, no traveling for any reason, no visiting fam... Read more

My lunch club has been operating for nearly 20 years now. My wife calls it the ‘Old Guys’ but its formal name is the Monday Lunch Club that Meets on Wednesdays. We like to talk politics beca... Read more

Business risk management programs have been news items again in the farm press, and with farm organizations and commodity groups. That’s no surprise in such an unpredictable year. Things nee... Read more

In the fall of 2019, Ontario farmers planted one of the biggest winter wheat crops in our history. With unseeded acres resulting from the wet spring, and new crop wheat bids more attractive... Read more

Clean is good. We all love clean. A clean shirt, a clean house, a clean and clear conscience. So, what’s not to love about a Clean Fuel Standard? A lot.The Clean Fuel Standard is not so much... Read more

Recently, I mentioned a public opinion survey where people were asked their opinion of individual, paired or group housing of pre-weaned dairy calves. In the survey, the majority of people w... Read more

I live in a haunted house. It’s been haunted for at least a century now by all accounts . . . I mean by all the neighbours’ accounts. As a writer I rely heavily on the neighbours for inspira... Read more

What does a Food Basics kind of guy do when standing in line at a grocery store checkout counter and the shopper in front has an unbelievable amount of packaged food to be scanned? Many peop... Read more

Like most rural families, we dislike mosquitoes and black flies. They make summer work miserable. Therefore, we have always appreciated having bats on the farm and try not to disturb them. T... Read more

In 2018, Brazil passed the United States and became the world’s largest producer of soybeans. That makes it extremely important for Ontario soybean growers to pay attention to crop progress... Read more

Note 1: This is not about the U.S. election. Note 2: For every 100 scary headlines about positive COVID tests there should be at least one appeal for calm. Recent computer models predicted t... Read more

So far, up to 25 % of restaurants in the country have now closed for the season and perhaps for good. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce expects 60 % of restaurants to close permanently by Nov... Read more

On March 11, when the WHO proclaimed that COVID-19 was a pandemic, I was working in Nova Scotia. We had planned to work with veterinary clinics to run seminars for dairy farmers all week. We... Read more

Since it’s more dangerous for a healthy child to ride a bicycle to school than it is to be in school in this pandemic, healthy children can go to school.But you might think the fires of hell... Read more

Many people tell me that we really shouldn’t be sending our kids back to school. I have a lot of educators and health care types in my family and they warn darkly that the virus is bound to... Read more

Vegetable gardens are now as richly productive as they are going to get and the urge to preserve the bounty is in full swing. We’ve had some let downs this year, largely, we believe to the s... Read more

I love my tractors and the front-end loaders. Like most farmers, I have a “few” tractors around. Five to be exact and one backhoe. They range from 40 hp up to 160 hp. The higher horsepower t... Read more

“Temporary foreign workers are entitled to the same benefits and protections as any other worker in Ontario.”  Those aren’t my words, although they are 100 per cent true. They were pulled fr... Read more

One of the core principles of a marketing plan is to put grain growers in a position where they can make a sale in order to take advantage of rallies as they occur and, even more importantly... Read more

The Canadian Federation of Agriculture asked the federal government for $2.6 billion to get through an economic lockdown created not by a pandemic, but by government response to a pandemic.... Read more

This summer has been the first time in my life that I’ve been reluctant to tell people what I do for a living. If it comes up in conversation, I try to find a way to change the subject. I’m... Read more

Dry cow management is a big topic right now. Part of the reason is because there is so much discussion about whether treating every quarter of every cow with an antibiotic dry cow treatment... Read more

As farmers, we are trained from birth to solve mysteries. Most of them present to us as puzzles, as in, why do I never have a half-inch wrench in this toolbox when there are at least a dozen... Read more

At this time of writing, we have another Grade A/proAction inspection pending. The inspector arrives at 1 p.m. Everyone keep away!! This was originally scheduled for April 28 but it was post... Read more

By Maynard van der Galien I have a heavy duty shop vac in my garage/workshop that is primarily used to clean out the seed drill after planting. The two-inch hose sucks up the seeds in no tim... Read more

Forecasting the markets is a bit like forecasting the weather. Meteorologists know from historical experience the combination of air temperature changes and barometric pressures that it take... Read more

The National Post ran a story in late June about a COVID-19 outbreak at a Kingston, Ontario, nail salon, after six employees and 12 patrons tested positive. The headline read: “COVID-19 outb... Read more

Veterinary experts pretty much agree that getting enough colostrum soon after birth goes a long way to keeping calves healthy and giving them a good start. There are recommendations on ways... Read more

It is June 21 and baking hot with no rain! It has been like this for awhile. No matter how many times we check, the weatherman still dangles the possibility of a little rain, enticingly a fe... Read more

About 10 years ago, Rhonda’s diner in the village closed its doors and left a bunch of us orphaned. We could not for the life of us understand why a person would not want to rise at five in... Read more

Ever wonder why you see so many large houses that were built more than a century ago, when money was scarce and times were tough? You see large homes throughout the countryside. And in areas... Read more

The winter wheat crop is certainly one of the good news stories for Ontario agriculture in 2020. Great seeding conditions last fall enabled a large acreage to be planted, and excellent sprin... Read more

Rural people have been unfairly burdened by lockdown measures in this pandemic. They are also unfairly burdened by media hysteria. Whether it’s from nightly newscasts that whip up fear or th... Read more

I was chatting on the phone with my friend in the city this week, comparing notes about life in the lockdown. “There is a shortage of red wine vinegar,” he reported. He lives in an apartment... Read more

When a dairy cow gets clinical mastitis again in the same quarter, it is easy to think that the first treatment didn’t work. When this happens, it is possible that the first treatment failed... Read more

It would appear that the ongoing COVID-19 issue is changing how many people look at providing for themselves and it is probably for the better. We already know of at least seven friends and... Read more

Right from the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) crisis here in mid-March when schools and churches were shut down, I set some strict rules for myself on how to deal with it.... Read more

One of the most frustrating things for farmers who monitor grain prices through the spring of 2020 has been the apparent reluctance of values to move meaningfully. For an eight-week period t... Read more

Conservative MP Michael Barrett (Leeds-Grenville –Thousand Islands) was red-in-the-face incensed when he demanded an answer during the once-a-week social-distancing question period in the Ho... Read more

Everyone is talking about COVID-19 right now — and I hope that everyone is safe. Other coronaviruses are relatively common as causes of diseases in livestock including cattle. We have known... Read more

My big livestock protection dog was sitting beside the dinner table listening to a family discussion about how we would all have to look after each other through the pandemic. The very next... Read more

The other day I watched and admired how fertilizer was applied to a fall wheat field with a truck on wide tires. The job didn’t take long. The method of spreading fertilizer has changed beyo... Read more

In March, people were told to stay home and stay put to avoid the coronavirus. We thought everyone was vulnerable and just about anyone could die. Then last month we began to learn that as m... Read more

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems as though the markets have been awash in bad news regarding either waning demand, confounded supply chains, or both. However, since we all... Read more

Country people don’t call it Coronavirus or COVID-19. They refer to it as: ‘That s—t thing that is going around.’ I replied to the friend who sent this by asking if she had been at our kitch... Read more