It could have been the hog barn. It might have been the wide-open spaces. Or maybe it was the sight of a 79-year-old man running down a mountain trail after a five-kilometre hike that left a contingent of European livestock producers with some stunning and often overwhelming impressions of how their counterparts live and work in Alberta.

Early in May, a Dutch airliner deposited the founder of Holland-based MS Schippers and 10 guests at the airport in Calgary, where they were to embark on a week-long adventure that they could never had imagined or maybe would not have believed had someone described it for them.

The 10 producers – Schippers customers from Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands – had won their seats on the tour by entering a contest that company ran last year.

Starting with a visit to a massive ranch in Southern Alberta and carrying on from there to see a Hutterite Colony at Gadsby, a grain terminal at Lacombe and the Schippers Canada warehouse and headquarters, the tour wrapped up with three days exploring some of the most popular tourist attractions in Alberta’s mountain parks.

Dutch producer Hanneke van den Corput, who raises and sells beef and pork with her husband, Dion, said she was most surprised by the scope and scale of the hog barn at Hartland Colony.

Although they were not able to enter the barn because of biosecurity measures in place there, the van den Corputs got to look through the windows to observe the electronic sorters Hartland uses to move pigs from pen to pen as they grow.

Even though she and Dion have some Canadian experience from working at a hog farm in Ontario, the Hartland system was an eye-opener for them.

Even in Ontario, the amount of space available for raising hogs pales in comparison to the vastness of the Alberta prairies, she said.

The van den Corputs operate the pig farm established by Hanneke’s grandfather in 1945, located near the village of Vught in the southern area of the Netherlands. She and Dion took over from her parents in 2001 and in 2015; they started selling beef, pork and poultry directly from the farm. Cattle and hogs are killed and processed by an offsite contractor, while chicken products are supplied by a poultry farm near Tilburg, located about 30 southwest of Vught.

The couple sells its products online, with customers able to pick up their orders from a site across the road from the farm. Customers are given a code which allows them to open the freezer and pick up their orders.

Hanneke said that, while she and Dion have talked about opportunities in Canada, they have no plans to pull up stakes and leave their thriving business. The biggest deterrent to emigrating, said Hanneke, is Canada’s cold weather.

While the Alberta tour was not meant to entice newcomers, the topic certainly came up for discussion during the tour, said Arian de Bekker, general manager for Schippers Canada Ltd. and the group’s tour guide for the first three days.

Most of the producers on the tour said it might be something they would have considered when they were younger, but all are by now well established and not interested in starting over, said de Bekker.

Like the van den Corputs, others in the party were overwhelmed at times by the vast spaces on the prairies and surprised by many of the things that Canadians and Albertans take for granted, including Hutterite Colonies, inland grain terminals and cattle ranching. Tour members were amazed at the amount of land and the relative simplicity of operations on a working ranch they visited in Madden on the morning after their arrival, said de Bekker.

Others in the group echoed Hanneke’s statement that hiking the Johnson Canyon Trail on the last day before departure was certainly a highlight, he said. This time, however, it was one of their own who amazed them all. Harrie Kuijken, 79 years old, decided to join the hike and was determined to go the full distance. Kuijken felt so energized by the time he reached the end of the five-kilometre trail that he ran all the way back, said de Bekker. Of course, there wasn’t a day goes by that the tour didn’t make at least one stop at a Tim Hortons, he said.

MS Schippers was founded in the Netherlands in 1966 by Martien Schippers, who accompanied the 10 producers for the Alberta tour, and is now operated by his sons. Schippers Canada was started up in Lacombe by Matt Veldhuis, who operated it as a franchise for a few years before returning control to the parent company so he could seek other opportunities.

Veldhuis and his family spent a couple of years in Australia and now live in Okotoks, said de Bekker.

Please visit www.puurvleeskopen.nl for a closer look at the van den Corputs and their operation. Google browsers are capable of translating the pages into English. •

— By Brenda Kossowan