Alberta Open Farm Days Goes This Weekend

Aug 16, 2021

Experience, Learn, Grow that's the theme behind this year's Alberta Open Farm Days.

The Alberta Ag Societies is once again hosting this weekend's event.

Marketing Coordinator, Nicola Doherty says it's an opportunity for farmers to open up their doors and invite their neighbours in.

"It's a chance for the community neighbours or neighbours from a couple of hours away to come and see a working farm. For people that are not familiar, they can find out how farming is done."

Alberta's Open Farm Days run this weekend August 14th and 15th.

She says the objective is to have some education around agriculture, with a hands-on experience.

"For visitors to meet the farmer, but then for the farmers also to connect with people that they would potentially be selling their products to. So there's an education piece, but then there's the tourism piece where we're getting people out of their bubbles. From a city perspective, it's going out into rural communities, visiting towns, and locations across the province."

This year's Open Farm Days gives people the opportunity to visit traditional and organic farming operations, brewing companies and wineries, visit vegetable producers and bee operators.

There's a chance to check out where your vegetables and honey come from as well as see a wide variety of livestock with visits to a horse ranch, cattle, poultry and goat operations, alpaca's, and even a yak ranch.

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Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.