![]() Human ingenuity has produced an extraordinary range of technology for nurturing, harvesting, processing and utilizing the bounty of the land. Eric Mitchell visiting the mural and some of the artists Berries and tree fruits have been grown successfully with records of apple trees being established in the late 1800’s. Some crops persisted like potatoes others were experimental such as ginseng. The kitchen garden and vegetable field crops provided a rich cornucopia of vegetables for home and market. In the future, we are told, there may be grasshopper farms. Hunting and fishing remain valuable sources of food for many families. While cattle-ranching has predominated, farmers have raised pigs, sheep, goats, rabbits and chickens, even ostriches. Some once-common game animals have disappeared, others have acclimatized to settlement. Before the arrival of Europeans, the land was a rich larder of game: fur, feather and fin. Hunting, fishing and animal husbandry have always contributed to the local diet. ![]() Hay stacks, hay barns, square bales and round silos and silage pits: each method has been adapted and refined and in turn each type of farming has defined the seasonal lives of local farming families. Farming these crops, they utilized the latest technology from horse drawn plows through steam driven combines to gasoline powered swathers. Finding the glacial soil rich, they planted grain and hay. With colonization, settlers pre-empted and fenced both range and valley bottom land. Shirley Bird, Robin LeDrew and Julianna Alexander at the grand opening As Eric Mitchell (Okanagan Nation) says, “ never quit harvesting our food even when hunting and fishing regulations were put in place.” The four food chiefs of the Okanagan: Skmxist (BEAR), Ntytyix (SPRING SALMON), Spitlem (BITTER-ROOT) and Siya? (SASKATOON BERRY) frame this mural. The knowledge of exactly when and exactly where to harvest from the valley bottom to the mountain tops was passed down from generation to generation. They managed the health of the land by selective burning to create grazing areas for game and to promote hundreds of preferred edible plants. Everything they did was rooted in their geography. Following the retreat of the glaciers the people of the Interior Plateau Region of BC (the Okanagan and Secwepemc) lived here for ten thousand years. ![]() This mural celebrates the surrounding land for its capacity to produce food.
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