As you travel through the Alberta countryside, past crops and cattle and barns and beehives, you’re actually driving past thousands of square miles of good food.
This past weekend’s Alberta Open Farm Days is part of an ongoing effort to connect consumers to the land and the people that produce everything we love to eat. A tour of the region introduced visitors to the grain and dairy farming techniques from yesteryear, along with modern sources of locally-grown fruit, vegetables, and specialty meat products.
And because we don’t live by bread alone, as the saying goes, you could also visit a coffee roastery and a flower farm.
St. Paul Museum had displays and demonstrations of how farm families grew and harvested food not all that long ago. Not far away, the Backroad Farmhouse Roasting Company was brewing fresh coffee and serving up homemade food.
Breana Malcolmson owns the small-batch roastery along with her husband Jeremy Yaremchuk. They embrace Open Farm Days as an opportunity to show consumers what products can be sourced locally.
Their operation is literally in a farmhouse on a back road.
“When we bought this place, I envisioned a place where people can come to. We definitely love hosting people,” Malcolmson said. She says a good cup of coffee isn’t just a hot drink—it’s an opportunity to take a break, to sit and socialize.
“It’s the opportunity for people to have that face to face and be open to sitting and enjoying a little bit more, because we’re such a busy society now,” she said. “It’s nice to slow down.”
The outfit sells its locally roasted and ground coffee by the pound.
Rocky Meadows Country Getaway, 350 Farms, and Providence Acres Flower Farm are all located in the M.D. of Bonnyville; all are also popular regular participants in Open Farm Days.
Rocky Meadows is a perennial favourite destination for its fresh locally-grown berries and other fruit, as well as for the delicious foods made on-site. They offer lots of fun activities in addition to their food products.
350 Farms is the local home of kunekune pigs—a New Zealand variety that the farm raises on open pasture. The 350 Farms operation practices regenerative farming, and the small pigs produce distinctive, delicious meat.
And while it’s good sustainable practice to find food locally, the same can be said for locally farmed flowers. The Thiessen family at Providence Acres have been growing and selling cut flowers for five years.
Lena Thiessen says our northern climate dictates the available flower varieties, but the farm is able to provide stunning and colourful arrangements of seasonal blossoms throughout the growing season and beyond.
“Just as the local food movement started to become more popular, this kind of came along with it—local flowers as well,” she said.
“The downside for us is that we do have a limited season. So if you’re going to need flowers in the winter, there is only so much I can do for you.”
But Thiessen says dried flowers are an attractive option during the cold season.
“A lot of flower farmers are doing dried flowers, and I’ve seen a lot of brides using dried flowers as their wedding flowers,” she said.
