Educating consumers about where their food comes from can be a daunting task — but not at Alberta Open Farm Days.
“I think for a lot of people, farming was something they wanted to get away from,” said Charlotte Wasylik of Chatsworth Farms, a mixed family enterprise in east central Alberta.
[PHOTO GALLERY] Open Farm Days: A visit to Chatsworth Farms and Hartell Homestead
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“People didn’t want to do the hard work to get their food on the table. But now people are much more interested. And they care and appreciate the hard work that goes into that, so they want to learn more.”
Her family operation was one of 117 farms to participate in the increasingly popular event, which celebrated its tenth anniversary Aug. 13-14 with a return to relatively normal times following two years of operation under tight pandemic restrictions.
Chatsworth Farms grows grain, legumes and alfalfa as well as cattle, sheep, turkeys, ducks and chickens on more than 2,000 acres. It also does virtual farm tours.
“We try to show them as much as we possibly can during their visit,” said Wasylik, adding more than 250 people showed up this year.
“We had guided livestock and farmyard tours. We had machinery demonstrations, a farmers market and a barbecue that featured our own beef hotdogs, and garden tours.”
Hartell Homestead near Longview also participated in Open Farm Days this summer. Started by Nick Shipley as a place where people can truly buy local, the operation raises Highland cattle, ducks, chickens and goats, and is open to the public most days.
“When the pandemic hit, we opened up our farm to the public and started selling fresh produce and eggs and meat right off the farm here,” said Shipley. “We could have done subscription boxes, but we really wanted the public to have more interaction with their food and learn about where their food comes from. So we opened our farm and farm store.”
Shipley said he is particularly excited about raising Highland cattle because the breed seems well suited to the foothills.
“They are a phenomenal breed,” he said. “Where most cattle like your Angus and Simmental need to eat more at zero degrees, mine don’t take any extra until –25 C.
“And the meat is phenomenal. The downside is it takes three years to get your first paycheque.”
Something important is lost when people are disconnected from their food, said Chelsea Anderson of Farm 2 Table on 51 in Sexsmith, another participating farm.
“It doesn’t become valuable, or the value lessens somehow,” she said.
Farm 2 Table on 51 is a vegetable and flower operation that makes deliveries in the Grande Prairie area.
“I think one of my favourite things when I drop vegetable baskets off is I’ll get a text from people saying, ‘Oh, my husband ate a crunchy kale salad and he didn’t even know it was kale,’” said Anderson. “They will tell me that, ‘Oh, I made muffins with grated beets and my kids ate them.’”
Schatzy’s Homemade and Homegrown, a small family farm with a store near Barrhead, also participated in Open Farm Days. Owner Lindsay Schatz said educating children is needed when it comes to helping people connect to local food.
“Even just people who come out regularly on the weekends, I mean they’ve never seen a chicken in real life,” she said. “And so, when they see a chicken and they start to put together that’s what ends up on their plate, especially little kids, they’ll say, ‘Is this the chicken we eat?’ Suddenly they are making the connection that they are literally eating an animal, and this is what the animal looks like.”
Small-scale farms make education more accessible, said Schatz, adding she encourages people to get to know local farmers. Her area has many small farming operations, she noted.
“And also, we have a lake right by us, so we’ve got all of these people who live full time in the city and then they come out to the lake and they are able to visit a farm like ours,” she said. “And that’s when their eyes are opened to the possibility of buying meat from their local farmer when normally they wouldn’t even think of it.”
Alberta agriculture is extremely diverse, said Tim Carson, CEO of the Alberta Association of Agricultural Societies, adding Open Farm Days participants were able to sample a plethora of fresh food and visit many different kinds of operations around the province.
“Everything from alpacas to yaks at this year’s Open Farm Days,” said Carson. “The other side is rural tourism — the opportunity for folks to get out with a destination in mind and a chance to actually get out and visit our small communities and see our tremendous landscapes and experience things on an agri-tourism level.”
There are 291 agriculture societies across Alberta. The largest is the Calgary Stampede but a host of others form the heart of their communities, he said. They own and operate more than 700 facilities worth $1.1 billion.
“Those fairs, festivals, rodeos, concerts, all of that stuff happens in those communities and the ability to showcase rural life is a great feather in our hat as a provincial association, and utilizing Open Farm Days for that is tremendous,” he said.
The future of Open Farm Days is bright, said Carson. The organization’s vision for the future is to grow the number of farms that can run year-round tourism and education programs as well as providing products for consumers.
“The fact of the matter is the public finds this extremely fascinating,” he said. “The average Albertan now is two, sometimes three generations away from the farm — very urbanized— and don’t have a strong understanding of what it takes to put that food on their table. There is something intrinsically valuable about getting your hands in the dirt.”
