IFAJ in Canada Became a Road Trip to Remember
By Chris Clayton, Ag Policy Editor for DTN/The Progressive Farmer
It’s 6 p.m. on July 3 on a back highway in Alberta somewhere around 150 kilometers southeast of Calgary when one of the three other reporters in my pickup — all of whom with their cell phone navigation systems on — tells me I missed a turn.
That was when I kind of remembered I needed to stop volunteering for things.
It was a minor hiccup on an unplanned road trip as part of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ) meeting in Canada.
Overall, IFAJ was an amazing experience; the Canadians were gracious hosts. An initial perception was that the choice of Olds College north of Calgary seemed like an odd location for an international group of agricultural journalists to gather for an annual meeting. Everything became clearer when we discovered Olds had its own beer brewing program that allowed IFAJ members to repeatedly taste the fruit of their labors. That was an A+ moment.
On a more work-related note, Olds College also has one of North America’s oldest meat-cutting schools. The slaughter facility and meat retail shop weren’t part of a formal tour, but I had already been pursuing an article about niche meat lockers and the need for butchers in the U.S. Taking the time to speak to the director of the Olds program helped add some meat to the bone for that article. Yes, I’m working the pun thing hard here.
The IFAJ contingent from outside of North America also got to experience a full-scale tornado warning on Canada Day (July 1). The winds were picking up, and clouds darkened as I drove around Olds with Western Producer’s Ed White — Canada’s Farm Writer of the Year — and everyone’s phone buzzed with a tornado alert. The storm cut south of Olds and significantly damaged a couple of farmhouses. Much like Midwesterners, a lot of people in Olds actually stopped to watch the funnel clouds form rather than take shelter from the tornado risk.
I drove my pickup to IFAJ in Calgary- about 1,400 miles from home- largely for my ego- to show the Europeans this is how we do it in America.
Then I found how venerable old-school American ag journalist Harlen Persinger also drove to Calgary. So, 25 years from now, I’m going to have to journey to IFAJ in Nova Scotia or someplace just to say I kept up with Harlen. Still, Harlen also won an IFAJ photo award this year, and I couldn’t win a photo contest if I convinced a bison and a wolverine to pose by a fencepost for me.
Practically speaking, my pickup was a travel necessity. I also had spent the week before in Wyoming and Montana, visiting a few ranches along the way, including camping for the weekend at a ranch festival. My tent didn’t hold up well in a Montana thunderstorm, but the pickup served me well. You can’t pull up to a ranch festival in Montana driving a rented Nissan Sentra.
My camping stove also came in handy at IFAJ when Argentina’s delegation was lamenting the lack of fresh coffee in the mid-afternoon. I whipped out my stove and coffee pot and valiantly rescued my fellow journalists from possible caffeine withdrawals. It was a proud moment.
My glorious pickup got me in trouble when an Irish journalist and a Finnish journalist asked me if I could take them to visit a couple of ranches east of Calgary. In the midst of drinking some free Olds College beer, I forgot I had already committed to take a Canadian journalist to Calgary as well.
Sure, we could visit a couple of ranches. No problem.
Well, it was a three-hour drive to the first ranch — the Gemstone Cattle Co., but we got there in time to see some gorgeous Herefords waiting patiently for the ranchers to drop the electric polywire so they could mob graze another field. The Doerksen family also celebrated the Monday holiday with an amazing lunch spread that included some glazed grilled beef strips that were out of this world.
The Doerksens then took us to visit a Hutterite colony nearby. I’m just going to state the three women journalists whom I chauffeured for the day didn’t seem to think there was a fair balance of labor and technology within the colony we visited.
Now, the whole hook for the day was that Rachel Martin, a reporter for the Irish Examiner, had wanted to visit this Irish sheep farmer who had moved to Alberta. It was 4 p.m., and we hadn’t made it there yet. We just had to make a slight detour to do a drive-thru visit at one of Alberta’s largest feedyards in Brooks.
It was 6:30 p.m., and we still hadn’t made it to the Irish sheep farmer’s place. I’m getting a little burned out and running a little low on that expensive Canadian petrol. The wind also was blowing about 30 mph at that point. We’re driving on a couple of meandering rural highways where Canada likely hides some of its witness protection people. Rachel keeps telling us at this point that the sheep farmer wants to know if we will stay and eat with them.
No, we don’t have time to eat. We’re still two hours from Calgary. The day is getting long. As we pull into a driveway with the Irish flag flying, Rachel promises we’ll be in and out of there in 20 minutes.
Alright cool.
Well, it turns out that the Irish man, Ray Nolan, and his wife, Nancy, were not just sheep farmers. While Nancy was frying some cuts of lamb and repeatedly asking if we had time to stay for dinner, Ray tells us about how the couple met as chefs at a five-star hotel in London. As Rachel later wrote, “Together, the couple have cooked for a reem of the rich and famous, including Nelson Mandela, the Queen, Princes Charles, Harry and William, and even Michael Jackson.”
And here we were — four ag journalists driving aimlessly around Alberta — in the Nolan family’s quaint farmstead, gaining our appreciation for lamb meat with every bit of our olfactory senses.
I mean, sure, we can stay for dinner — if you absolutely insist.
I should also point out I’m a lifelong Trekkie, and we were right outside of Vulcan, Alberta, of all places. But to enjoy a lamb dinner prepared by a chef who once cooked for Queen Elizabeth, I’ll skip the Vulcan tourism stuff this time. I still somehow ended up with a pair of Vulcan ears in my pickup.
As I crossed the border on July 4, heading back into the States, the border guard asked if I had anything to declare. I told him I had a bottle of maple syrup and a cooler of free beer. He told me, “Welcome home.”
I again want to thank the Agricultural Communicators Network for the stipend to help pay for attending IFAJ.