Meals Tripping: A Self-Drive Southern Alberta Meals Tour

Compiled by the Highway Journey Alberta staff

Final up to date on July 5, 2022

Whenever you get able to dive into a luxurious, freshly-cooked meal, do you ever surprise the place your meals comes from?

Chances are high – should you’re from Alberta – a lot of the meals in your plate was in all probability raised within the southern a part of the province. As a result of with over 4,470 farms, 11,000 companies, and over 4.2 million acres of land, southern Alberta is understood broadly as Canada’s Premier Meals Hall. Alongside rolling prairie hills are hundreds of grazing animals, with fertile farmland surrounding in abundance. And now, beneath an initiative put collectively by Tourism Lethbridge (the largest metropolis close to the middle of this space), these producers and their wares can be found to expertise for your self!

Drive Your Personal Southern Alberta Meals Tour

See operations first-hand and pattern a number of the 65+ merchandise produced inside Canada’s Premier Meals Hall. With a freestyle strategy to constructing your individual itinerary, you’re certain to have a full abdomen and a thoughts stuffed with reminiscences.

Learn on to pattern a number of the producers you’ll be able to go to your self, or curate your individual itinerary by way of the Tourism Lethbridge web site.

Broxburn Greens and Cafe

What started as a humble u-pick operation in 1994, Broxburn has grown right into a thriving produce farm and nourishing café spot. Devoted to essentially the most pure strategies of rising peppers, tomatoes, kale, onions, eggplants, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and a wide range of different greens with the least quantity of chemical intervention doable, Broxburn Greens are straightforward to identify (and odor) as the standard and care that goes into every bit of produce is outstanding and contemporary.

On the farm, every part is utilized to its full potential they usually recycle and reuse as a lot as doable to scale back waste. For instance, water runoff from the greenhouse is used to water the strawberries within the subject; coconut husk (“coco”) that grows the hydroponics within the greenhouse is used within the subject as mulch for the strawberries and raspberries, and the clippings off peppers are fed to their chickens. 

The Broxburn motto is ‘from plant to plate’ and that is greatest realized of their on-site café the place scrumptious home-cooked meals using the farm components is served. They incorporate contemporary produce from the greenhouses, subject crops, and different native suppliers into their meals, creating an genuine farm-to-table expertise.

Informational greenhouse excursions can be found to the general public throughout Alberta Open Farm Days. On every other day, a go to to Broxburn is a family-friendly expertise with a bit one thing for everybody, and a must-stop in your southern Alberta meals tour. Decide some contemporary strawberries from the sector, meander by way of the adjoining flower greenhouse, decide up some contemporary veggies from the shop and end with a chunk on the cafe!

Prairie Hill Farms

The incomparable haskap berry is a lesser-known berry that’s crammed to the brim with antioxidants. The title comes from a Japanese phrase that means “berry of lengthy life and good imaginative and prescient”. With skinny pores and skin, it is called a berry of longevity and is standard to make use of in baking.

Haskap berries come from varieties native to northern boreal forests in Asia, Europe, and North America. They just like the local weather of southern Alberta and the bushes develop by the acre on small farms. The Vandenberg household, who’re desirous to share the well being advantages of the fruit, created Prairie Hill Farms to not solely develop haskap berries, but in addition to course of them into varied gadgets. Haskap jam, BBQ sauce, berry juice, and extra are all accessible at their storefront.

Their 40 acres of haskap fields present a plethora of merchandise of their retail retailer, nevertheless, additionally they carry contemporary baked items, in addition to native produce, honey, and eggs from close by farms.

Crystal Springs Cheese

Should you’re like us and haven’t met a cheese but that you simply don’t like, then a go to to Crystal Springs Cheese is an actual deal with! They’re family-owned and operated, worldwide award-winning cheese makers with humble beginnings proper in southern Alberta.

Not solely do they elevate their very own dairy cows, however additionally they pump the milk over to the adjoining cheese manufacturing facility to supply kinds of cheese like feta, gouda, and cheddar, in addition to yogurts. All is on the market within the retail cheese retailer that additionally sells regionally sourced wine and beer, ice cream cones, and a collection of native and imported dry items (together with many hard-to-find treats from the Netherlands!).

Broek Pork Acres

Broek Pork Acres makes a speciality of elevating pork the old style approach. A real mother and pop endeavor, this native household farm focuses on high quality somewhat than amount, particularly elevating Heritage Breed Berkshire Pork (which is called the “Kobe beef” of the pork world).

Not solely are the pigs tended with care, however they’re every damaged down by hand of their farm processing facility – leading to an excellent piece of pork stuffed with juiciness, tenderness, and wealthy marbling. The Broek Pork farm represents the true pasture-to-plate course of, from rising and elevating the animals to their slaughtering, processing, and advertising on to prospects.

In addition they have a retail house to go to and buy their merchandise onsite. Almost certainly it is going to be a member of the household that greets you to let you know all about their pork that has no fillers, no added water, and no GMO components. Pattern a few of their merchandise and convey some residence to actually style the true distinction of household farm pork.

Little Gem Vineyard

It could be stunning to listen to that southern Alberta has scrumptious fruit wine, but it surely does certainly! Haskap berries make up the principle ingredient within the wines produced by Little Gem Vineyard. Showcasing two reds (one aged in oak), a rosé, a crisp cider, and a dessert wine, the haskap flavour comes by way of robust in all 5. Put collectively in a humble facility, when the batches are prepared, every bottle is positioned by hand to be corked, labels are adhered by hand, and packaged fastidiously.

Collectively, the group that varieties Little Gem have been farming in Nobleford, Alberta, for 3 generations, working exhausting to construct what they’ve. With a give attention to letting the pure notes of the haskap berry shine brightly by way of, they use low intervention strategies from the very starting as an alternative of utilizing extreme sulfites or different components, additionally they keep away from overprocessing their wine. The consequence? A fruity wine that also retains the haskap berry sweetness blended with totally different ranges of fermentation and carbonation relying on the wine of selection.

Little Gem doesn’t promote their wines onsite, however you’ll be able to discover their merchandise at a wide range of locations within the Lethbridge space.

Carry a full automotive and an empty abdomen!

A southern Alberta meals tour that highlights a number of the many producers within the area is an thrilling endeavor to deliver extra consciousness to how essential this area of Canada is. Meals manufacturing in Canada’s Premier Meals Hall is flourishing and visiting a number of the hardworking women and men who assist feed the world is a good way to actually immerse your self in a real farm-to-table expertise.

And if you are within the space, you can even attempt these components at many Lethbridge eating places, together with Italian Desk and Mocha Cabana. Should you’re in Image Butte, you can even pattern space meals at Cattleman’s Chophouse.

This southern Alberta meals tour publish was produced by us, delivered to you by Tourism Lethbridge.