Let there be light

RD: One of the few good things coming out of the COVID-19 scare is renewed public interest in vegetable gardening for better food security. Chronicle Herald writer John Demont devoted a recent column to it. Quoting Halifax gardening guru Niki Jabbour, he touched on the importance of adequate sunlight.

As a longtime gardener myself, I can vouch for that. One of my worst early blunders involved that very thing. Early one spring, wanting to rest a third of my decades-old main plot and to have less grass to mow, I winter-fallowed that third in ryegrass and tilled up a section of lawn of about equal size. The new section adjoined our mini-orchard but looked sunny enough – until the apple and plum trees leafed out.

By June, half my new plot was in shade every sunny afternoon. Not only that, I’d forgotten – and me a forester! – that all trees, besides having stout anchor roots, put out shallow feeder roots that extend at least to their drip line. By August, those shallow roots were starving and parching my veggies. By fall, the garden crops were spindly and sparse, my lawn harvest experiment a flop. Live and learn.

So take Niki’s and my advice on sunshine. Ideally, choose a south-facing exposure with no tall trees or buildings in the way. Failing that, visualize your least shady summer spot, and dig there. Salad greens excepted, most garden crops prefer at least eight hours of full light per day. Do this, along with composting, pH testing, and perhaps liming if there’s moss, and your garden will thank you. So will your spirit, in these troubling times – for the healing, for the savings, for the sense of accomplishment. While you’re at it, involve friends or neighbours, especially children, in your labour of love.

Gary Saunders
Clifton, N.S.

Let there be blight
RD: In reading Rural Delivery, May 2020, “Spare the Plow, Sustain the Soil” (by Nicole Kitchener, pg. 20), and “Permanent Solutions” (by George Fullerton, pg. 36), and “Watershed Moment” in Atlantic Forestry Review, March 2019 (by David Foster, pg. 18), I cannot come to the way of thinking that is being presented. First and foremost, working the land is good, as found in Genesis 3:23: “God sent him forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken.” And now we have our government applying a carbon tax to all that we are tilling, then asking farmers and foresters to help with “banking carbon into the land.”

We have been allowing big companies to inflate their prices, and we will allow them to return a portion to the farmers and foresters. The government of the day will make jobs for government first and foremost, and the Canadian Forage and Grasslands Association and the forestry management groups second, and we will give what is left of the carbon tax money to a small group of farmers and foresters who can jump through the hoops and the paperwork trail. Watch out for your property taxes on the farmland or woodland.

In the beginning God made the trees, the grasslands, and the forests from something called carbon, for our use, and now we have governments trying to think of a way to cash in on what God did. Time to wake up here, Canadians, and smell the roses. But look down under and you will see a pest – its name is government and it is getting bigger and sucking the life out of this garden of life that God has given to you.

Todd Hirtle
New Germany, N.S.

Bigger not better
RD: The recent closures of meat packing plants in Alberta, Quebec, and several American states due to the COVID-19 pandemic are shedding light on the tremendous expense of this style of massive meat processing operation. The expense borne by the workers at the plants is the greatest of all, their health threatened so severely, even causing death to two Cargill workers in Alberta. However, the expense doesn’t stop there, as consumers are expected to see meat prices jump, farmers have seen the prices paid for their animals drop by more than 30 percent, and taxpayers will ultimately pay the price to help bail out this sector.

Several decades ago when the move to close smaller slaughterhouses in favour of building huge plants was happening, the rationale was that there were going to be tremendous efficiencies. National Farmers Union studies showed that the promised efficiencies simply did not materialize. The spread between what famers are paid for their animals and what consumers pay for meat has grown. The working conditions at the plants are stressful at the best of times, and downright dangerous now. Farmers suddenly have nowhere to sell their animals, and consumers are starting to see less meat on the shelves.

A move to build smaller, safer slaughter plants in each province would help to disperse the threats to food security. We could assure meat supply from local farms to meet local demands. If one plant was forced to close, it would not disrupt the food chain across the entire country. Providing safe, secure food from local farms is entirely possible without putting meat packing workers at risk. Surely we’ve learned that bigger is not always better.

Vicki Burns, Winnipeg, Man.
Fred Tait, Rossendale, Man.