When Alberta Agriculture called for farms to open their doors to the public for one or two days a year to help educate people about farm-life, Cornel and Cremona Primrose decided it was a great idea.
The pair are both farm-bred; he on a grain and cattle operation near Big Valley, and she on a dairy and grain operation near Erskine. For them, farm life is normal life, but they're under no illusions about how the urban residents of Canada view farming.
“There's a lot of information out there,” Cornel Primrose said. “Animal welfare is a big deal to us.”
When walking into Primrose Farm's dairy barn, there's no headstalls, no shackled cattle attached to suction machines for milking, no crowded pack of bovine flesh. The barn, spacious, is made to be comfortable, with soft ground for the cattle to stand or lie on.
The milking is done by automatic machines that the cow walks into whenever she pleases, for a special bit of treat feed, a quick bath and milking. When she's had enough, she leaves the machine.
Cornel Primrose said that while some tourists in the industry said his barn should have “twice as many” animals in the barn, he sees no need to crowd them.
“I think it's important to have healthy, happy animals,” he said. “If they're going to spend most of their life in a barn, it should be a comfortable one.”
If the herd is to expand, he said the family would likely build new facilities rather than crowd the barn.
He and Cremona, plus daughters Ceaxna, 5 and Careese, 7, are the labourers are on the farm, which also raises free-range chickens, goats, and pigs.
The cattle raised by the family are Fleckzieh cattle, a “dual-purpose” cattle breed that can either be raised for beef or for dairy. On the Primrose farm, it means there's always an outlet for the non-milking cattle that come from the farm.
“We started milking cows in 2003,” Cornel Primrose said. “As it evolved, we went toward dairy. We found we had more passion in it.”
The next big project is a processing plant on the farm, so they can sell their own milk without selling into Alberta's supply management program.
“How people see food is evolving,” Primrose said. “They want to know where it came from, how the animals are treated. 'Free-Range' and 'Organic' mean nothing.”
He said that the province's supply management program – which sees milk from all sources “pooled together” before it's purchased by milk retailers – it outdated.
“You won't see 'Primrose Milk' out there, because it's impossible to tell where the milk has come from, and it's been mixed with other milk,” he explained.
By having the milk processed on Primrose Farms, though, he can sell it as being from the farm. For the family, who values animal welfare, that's very important. There's no steroids injected into the animals, antibiotics are kept to a bare minimum, and when the animals need feed that the farm doesn't grow on its own, the farm buys from vendors it knows.
About 50 people came to the farm to visit the milking plant, the cows, the pigs and goats, and chickens on Sunday, Aug. 23. Some people misread the literature and showed up a day early, which while unexpected, was a welcome visit, Cornel Primrose noted.
“We're just friendly people,” he noted with a laugh. “Any time people come to visit, we're happy.”
It's the second year the family took part in Open Farm Days in Alberta, and it's something that will likely happen again next year.
“People are coming to a farm,” Cremona Primrose said of her discussions with other farmers, who balked at opening their gates to the public. “A real farm, not a Hollywood farm. They know it's not going to be spotless.”
Jonathan Poole and his mother, Elizabeth Brost, travelled all the way from Calgary to Primrose Farms, which is located just south of the Byemoor/Endiang turn-off on Highway 56.
“I was interested in the goats, and this was the only farm that said they had them,” Poole said, as he fed alfalfa to one of the goats through the fence.
The two said they were really enjoying the trip, as they weren't entirely sure what goes on behind the farm gate, being from a city.
Which was exactly the point of taking part in the event, Cornel Primrose noted, as he prepared to take a new group of tourists through the dairy area.