Alpacas and other animals will have plenty of guests this weekend as Alberta’s farmers throw open their gates for Open Farm Days.
Alberta Open Farm Days takes place this year on Aug. 17 and 18. Now in its 12th year, this event encourages Albertans to visit local farms for a variety of free and paid experiences to learn more about the agriculture industry.
“It really gives Albertans an opportunity to plug into farm life they otherwise don’t get to encounter,” said Open Farm Days marketing co-ordinator Cameo Hanlon.
Hanlon said this year’s event features a record-breaking 170 farms and agri-businesses, any number of which guests can visit over the weekend.
At least six of those farms are in Sturgeon County. Guests can play mini-golf at Deb’s Greenhouse, pick haskap berries at Rosy Farms, check out the cows and cheeses of Lakeside Farmstead, dig into a luxurious long-table dinner at Prairie Gardens, and hang overnight with the woolly Mangalitsa pigs of New Beginnings Poultry and Ducks.
Starring the alpaca
This year’s Open Farm Days has been dubbed the Year of the Alpaca and has a special focus on these fuzzy, long-necked camel cousins. Hanlon said organizers picked this theme because the United Nations has declared 2024 to be the International Year of the Camelid, which is the animal family that includes alpacas, Bactrian camels, and llamas.
St. Albert residents can get up close and personal with alpacas this weekend at Aurora Alpacas nine minutes west of Morinville as part of Open Farm Days.
Aurora Alpacas co-owner Debbie Oyarzun said her family got their first two alpacas in 2017 after her son, Diego, fell in love with the animals upon seeing one at an Open Farm Days event. They now have 26, with three more cria (babies) expected later this summer.
“They’re very curious animals,” she said, and love to run around and play in the sprinklers.
“They’ll come up and eat out of your hand.”
Native to South America, alpacas first came to Canada in the late 1980s, with the first major shipment of them arriving in 1992 from Chile, the Open Farm Days website reports. There were about 28,500 alpacas in Canada in 2020, about 40 per cent of which dwelt in Alberta. Alpacas are smaller and more timid than llamas, and tend to have straight, pointy ears instead of banana-shaped ones. Their coats can be brown, white, black, fawn, grey, or various mixes, and can be shaved to produce about 10 pounds of soft, silky, strong, non-allergenic, and water-repellent wool.
Oyarzun said alpacas weigh less than 200 pounds and are easier to handle than many other farm animals. They generally don’t spit on people (unlike llamas), and spend most of their time eating grass, rolling in dirt, bouncing through the snow, or (when it’s really hot out) lying flat on the ground.
Oyarzun said guests who come to her farm during Open Farm Days can learn about alpacas, see how alpaca wool gets spun into fibre, and (on Aug. 18) sample Latin American food from the Sabor de Los Andes food truck.
Visit albertaopenfarmdays.ca for a full list of participating farms.
