Alberta Beef Magazine

Another winter storm raged outside, we were sitting in Bob and Gina Church’s geo thermally heated home in the Hamptons, Calgary (formerly Pat Burn’s CK Ranch). Bob said, “You know that several times, during the past, this entire part of western Canada was covered by sheets of ice thousands of feet thick, that was followed by eras of tropical seas and jungles. All of the area my family ranched is glacial morraine.” I nodded and Bob looked out the window to the valley below, deer meandered through.

He could have slowed down, could have had a man beside him, could have made any number of different choices. But he was in a rush. He wanted the job done. And – like every farmer – he’d taken similar risks a hundred, a thousand times before. On September 22nd, 2009, fate called his bluff. For 35 years, Ray and Leona Murphy have raised cattle on 3500 acres near Bonneyville, Alberta.

More than 50 years ago, Tom and Mary (Hallet) Biggs claimed a piece of grass land south of Coronation and north east of Hanna and called it TK Ranches. There, they learned how to encourage a living from the endangered Northern Fescue Grasslands or prairie wool. They raised a British based herd with mostly Angus and in the late 1906’s added Charolais and Simmental through AI. The Simmental experiment was short lived but Tom stuck with the Charolais.

Everyone in eastern Alberta knows Tom Osadczuk and his sons Dan, Mark and Justin and daughter Gina. Why Tom even went to school with Happy Campbell’s kids. Tom is a horseman, a cattleman, father, grandfather and a man committed to the land and his life. He has chosen well over the years and despite incredible adversity has persisted in building his ranch, his dream. It is one of the finest cattle operations I have ever seen. The Rafter T Cattle Co. Ltd.

When Cameron Olson was nine years-old his family moved southeast of Calgary to Rockyview County to his grandparent’s farm. While his mom had grown up around cows and had attended 4-H, her son had no idea what was in store in the country for them. “Even though we didn’t have any cattle, mom thought I would like 4-H so she encouraged me to get involved,” remembers Cameron Olson. “The first year I built a model train set. The second year we bought an Angus cross steer from the neighbour to show.

No one expects to get an early Saturday morning phone call from a member of the provincial cabinet, but Evan Berger, Alberta’s new agriculture minister called to do an interview before heading out to finish harvesting his canola. In 1978 Berger left the family farm near Nanton to take welding engineering technology at SAIT.

Round Rock Ranching Being able to marry sound production practices that affect the bottom line and improve the environment are pillars that uphold the long term vision for Round Rock Ranching at Vermilion. Since 2006, the fifth generation McGrath family including Sean and Tanya McGrath and their three young children in partnership with Sean’s parents Fred and Anne, have operated under the vision statement, “The best beef in a better world”. “My dad has always been an early adopter of new ideas.

Westman Farms had its beginning in 1926 when Doug and Murray Westman’s grandparents John Batke farmed the location where Westman Farms currently stands. Walden and Dorothy Westman, papa and nan to them, decided to stop driving a taxi in the town of Vermilion in 1957 to follow his dream of farming. Change came slowly, but then again, nothing happens on farms in a year or two. Progress is measured in lives, in decades and over generations when it comes to judging success in agriculture.

Canadian beef producers have experienced many challenges the past few years. They have tackled drought, COVID-19 related bottlenecks, inflation, supply chain breakdowns and global instability. In addition, the federal government continues to impose policies that increase costs for producers and cut into their bottom line. The carbon tax drives up costs at every stage in the supply chain. In an industry with tight margins, these costs have significant impacts.