Power of Two: Matthew Vasilev and Katie Selbee of Twin Island Cider

Power of Two: Matthew Vasilev and Katie Selbee of Twin Island Cider

Power of Two: Matthew Vasilev and Katie Selbee of Twin Island Cider

Owners Katie Selbee and Matthew Vasilev drink their cider

Matthew Vasilev and Katie Selbee (Twin Island Cider)

July 14, 2022

“We met at UBC Farm over eight years ago – I was completing a Sustainable Farming Practicum there and Matthew was a new farm volunteer.”

Katie Selbee, a UBC Farm Practicum grad, and Matthew Vasilev, a former volunteer at the Farm, run Twin Island Cider together on Pender Island, where they make low-intervention apple and perry (pear) cider fermented using native yeasts.

Read more about how they balance cider making, orchard tending, and business running at Scout Magazine.

Hound found: on the hunt for truffles in British Columbia

Hound found: on the hunt for truffles in British Columbia

Man with dog, searching for truffles in the ground

Truffle Dog Team: John Kelly with Macchi

July 6, 2022

Dr. Shannon Berch, adjunct professor with the Faculty of Land and Food Systems and an associate member in Botany at the University of British Columbia, comments on the science of truffle cultivation. Berch leads the Truffle Establishment in British Columbia, a project at the UBC Farm which focuses on farming Mediterranean black winter truffles in a mutualistic symbiotic relationship with English oak trees.

Read the full story at Canadian Geographic Travel.

Food programs should be part of school

Food programs should be part of school

Children gathered around a program leader at the UBC Farm's children's program

June 29, 2022

“Children have the right to adequate, nourishing food. Yet, one in six B.C. families worries about or lacks enough money for food.”

Dr. Jennifer Black (Faculty of Land and Food Systems), an associate here at the CSFS, co-wrote about why B.C.’s next budget should support universal school food programs.

Read the full article at The Globe and Mail.

Get ready for the surprise inside this burger

Get ready for the surprise inside this burger

pile of beets at the UBC Farm

June 28, 2022

UBC residence chef Johnny Bridge combines the UBC Farm’s beets with Canadian beef for a fun and surprising experience. “Canadian beef is among the world’s best,” Bridge says. “Mix that with the UBC Farm, and it’s a chef’s dream. I wanted to highlight them both and create a flavour and visual treat.”

Find the full story at the Toronto Star.

B.C. honey bee keepers lost 32% of colonies over winter – which is higher than normal

B.C. honey bee keepers lost 32% of colonies over winter – which is higher than normal

Beekeeper tending to beehive at UBC Farm

June 27, 2022

CSFS Associate Dr. Leonard Foster (Michael Smith Lab; Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) said he suspects that weather patterns will play an increasingly significant role in honey bee colony loss.

Read more from: Black Press via Kelowna Capital News, Boundary Creek Times, Peace Arch News, Creston Valley Advance, Houston Today, Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows News, West Kelowna News, Terrace Standard.

xʷc̓ic̓əsəm Garden named one of the 100 Garden Moments of Canada

xʷc̓ic̓əsəm Garden named one of the 100 Garden Moments of Canada

xʷc̓ic̓əsəm garden signage

June 27, 2022

Congratulations to all our friends at the xʷc̓ic̓əsəm Garden! The xʷc̓ic̓əsəm Garden (Indigenous Health Research and Education Garden), located at the UBC Farm, has been recognized as one of the 100 Garden Moments of Canada – a list that will serve as the basis of Canada’s Garden Hall of Fame.

See the full list here.

Utilizing UBC Advanced Research Computing for Biodiversity Monitoring

Utilizing UBC Advanced Research Computing for Biodiversity Monitoring

Featuring Dr. Matthew Mitchell and Laura Super

Photo of Matthew and Laura standing at the UBC Farm

Dr. Matthew Mitchell and Laura Super at the UBC Farm (UBC IT Communications)

June 23, 2022

The CSFS’s Associate Dr. Matthew Mitchell and Faculty of Forestry PhD Candidate Laura Super discuss how they use UBC Advanced Research Computing (ARC) to answer questions about biodiversity conservation, landscape ecology, and the impacts of climate change.

ARC is being used for the Biodiversity Monitoring project at the UBC Farm, which helps us understand how biodiversity at the Farm is changing over time and how this affects important ecosystem services that aid people, help crops grow, and contribute to overall ecosystem sustainability.

Read the full article at UBC ARC.

Leonard Foster: B.C. bees face deadly virus

‘Higher than historical losses’: B.C. bees face growing threat of deadly virus

Dr. Leonard Foster

Dr. Leonard Foster

News Sources: CTV, Glacier Media via Vancouver is Awesome, Times Colonist, New Westminster Record, Delta Optimist, Powell River Peak, Prince George Citizen, Pique Newsmagazine, Tri-City News, Alaska Highway NewsCHEK News

June 6, 2022

CSFS Associate Dr. Leonard Foster (Michael Smith Lab; department of biochemistry and molecular biology) commented on how Canada has seen historical losses of bees due to the deformed wing virus. 

Students use AI to Tackle Heat Damage

UBC Students use Artifical Intelligence (AI) to Tackle Heat Damage

Apples in orchard

May 31, 2022

Students from UBC Sauder School of Business and UBC Faculty of Applied Science have teamed up on a project that uses AI to help prevent heat damage in fruit crops. When surface temperatures of fruit monitored by the AI reach a certain threshold, it initiates a cooling system.

You can see their pilot study set up at the UBC Farm this summer!

Read the full article at UBC Sauder.

Detecting Insects is Getting High-Tech on UBC Campus: Juli Carrillo and Quentin Geissmann

Detecting Insects is Getting High-Tech on UBC Campus

Drs. Juli Carrillo and Quentin Geissman inspect a Sticky Pi trap.

Drs. Juli Carrillo and Quentin Geissman inspect a Sticky Pi trap.

News Source: Reach Out magazine

May 24, 2022

A new “sticky” Campus as a Living Laboratory project will enable CSFS researchers Drs. Juli Carrillo and Quentin Geissmann to monitor insects in real-time, on a scale never done before.

“This project promises to help us understand insect biodiversity, which we know is both crucial to ecosystems, and affected by human activities,” says Juli Carrillo, CSFS Associate and Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems, and lead researcher of the Digital Detection Web for On-Campus Insects project.

Find news coverage on how the researchers are developing an ‘insect forecasting’ system on CTV, Global, MSN, Vancouver Is Awesome