Across the province, a number of farms opened their doors to visitors, during Saskatchewan Open Farm Days on Aug. 10 and Aug. 11.
For Ward Hepting, vegetable farming has been the family business since before he was born. Now Hepting and his family operate Seven Meadows farm, a greenhouse-style horticulture farm, near Regina Beach.
Hepting said he’s happy to take the chance to talk to and educate the public on modern-day farming and bring awareness to the industry.
“(Farmers) have ventured out in multiple different ways with a great variety of products. We’re doing vegetables, we’re going be doing hard apple cider here soon, but there are people doing so many different things,” he said.
He credited modern technology for the farming industry’s ability to shift. However, Hepting said he feels that as the province urbanizes, residents are moving away from Saskatchewan’s farming roots.
He said he hopes to restore that connection to farm as he believes it can be vital both as a consumer and as an employee of the industry.
“There’s a lot of ingenuity that’s come out of Saskatchewan because of the rootedness in Saskatchewan agriculture and that’s desirable, all over the world. People desire that, so if you have a background as working on a farm in Sasktchewan and you have that experience, you literally are employable anywhere in the world,” Hepting said.
About half an hour east of Saskatoon is Wander’s Tiny Farm – a pig farm in Blucher, Sask., with a section of the farm that’s open for public visitations year round.
Owner Wander Sturris, who grew up in a farming community in the Netherlands, shared reflections from his childhood with Global News and said he hopes to share his experience with the kids of Saskatoon.
“I would take my little bicycle to a pig farmer down the road and there was a sheep farmer on the other side and there was a dairy farmer across the road from us, so I did a lot of things that I feel kids around here don’t have the opportunity (to do), especially if you live in the city,” said Sturris.
According to Sturris, many people visiting his farm, especially those from the city, have only ever seen farm animals in books – never up close. At his farm, livestock enclosures have signs on them with more information about the animals and their farming processes; he said he prefers to give people ample opportunity to learn, according to their own interests.
“There’s little signs all over the place, so you can kind of educate yourself. It’s a fun place to visit, educate yourself if you want to, if you don’t want to read a single sign, you don’t have to,” he said.