Farmstand Tour invites visitors to 'market on wheels'

As harvest season begins, Experience Alberta is inviting visitors to Strathcona County on Sept. 6 for a Farmstand Tour. The self-guided trip, described by organizer Jacquie Fenske as "a market on wheels," invites you to travel from stand to stand from 10am to 3pm, discovering locally grown, baked, raised, and handmade goods, meeting the makers behind them along the way.

Among the participating businesses are Herbal Roots Greenhouses, where you'll also find Art by Linda Finstad; Chicks N Chaps, which makes mustard and horseradish; Meat Me @ Codiak, a farm and beef shop run by the Kiziak family; JW Farm Fresh, known for its sourdough; and Bar OA Farms, a flower farm and agritourism business near Fort Saskatchewan.

Bar OA was unable to participate in Alberta Open Farm Days in August because the stormy summer was so hard on the flowers, owner Bryanna Kumpula-Yung told Taproot. But she's ready to receive visitors this weekend; this is the kind of experience that the farm offers to create a sustainable, diversified business on less than an acre. "How do I get high value? I bring people. I give them an experience … so it's not just a commodity crop where I cut and sell wholesale or cut and sell a bouquet," she said. (Stay tuned for more on agritourism from Kumpula-Yung and Eiblis Doherty of Strathcona County's tourism department in a future Taproot story.)