While you may have missed it last year, Country Roads Holstein Club’s dairy tour is once again part of Barrhead’s Street Festival, and club president Arjan Otten says the whole point is to raise awareness of where Alberta’s milk comes from.
Last year, there was too much competition from a baseball game and rodeo at the Westlock Ag Fair that were both going on simultaneously, Otten said, which drew spectators away from the tour.
“Alberta Milk is sponsoring the tour again this year and is providing us with a fake cow that will be hooked up to a milking machine, for participants to experience, and is completely new to the tour,” he said, adding that free chocolate milk and other items will be given out throughout the day.
“We’ve held these tours for three years now and it is basically a shuttle-service from Barrhead to an area dairy farm, where you will learn the processes involved in turning raw milk into drinkable products, and the tour takes about thirty minutes,” he said, adding the farm to be visited this year lies north of the town.
“It won’t be the same farm that was visited last year,” he said, adding the reasoning behind not revealing the location is because then people will go on their own, and the effort expended in organizing the tour will then have been wasted.
Otten said a bus will be parked in front of the post office on main street on June 11, and starting at 10 a.m., will run every 30 minutes until 3 p.m.
“In the past we’ve had between 200-300 people attend and we’re hoping the interest will be equal or greater this year,” he said, adding the tours are open to everyone.
“We want the public to be aware of where their milk products come from, what the Blue Cow logo means for consumers, and also the commitment dairy producers put into their work,” Otten said.
“The industry is changing in strides and things are getting bigger all the time. Albertans are big on family farms and as an Alberta Dairy Farmer myself, I know we all want our neighbours to be drinking milk that is 100 per cent Canadian. It’s always good to keep things local.”
For more information about Country Roads Holstein Club, or to see pictures of previous tours, visit the club’s Facebook page.
