🫐 Your Lac La Biche Farm Circle

A small hands-on farm out at Rich Lake, run by Crystal Tizzard, with a log barn, gardens, a greenhouse, a forest trail and a pond that draws in wildlife alongside the farm animals. Visits are built around doing rather than looking: animal sessions, garden and greenhouse learning, and helping with the harvest. School groups come out regularly, which tells you how well the teaching side of this farm works. Agritourism is a real part of the business here, not a sideline, and a stop makes your day considerably more interesting.

Good to know: Foggy Pond is a small operation without a public booking page, so get in touch ahead of time to arrange a visit and confirm what is running that week.

The perfect anchor for an agritourism day. Started in 1973 by a handful of local women from the Horticulture Society and now past its fiftieth year, this Alberta approved market fills the Lakeland Agricom every Friday afternoon with growers, bakers, food artisans and makers. Fresh off the farm vegetables and fruit, locally prepared meats, baking that is still warm, preserves, pottery and crafts. This is where you meet the people behind the food, and where you take a piece of Lac La Biche home with you.

Good to know: Fridays only, 3:00 to 6:00 pm, running Easter through Christmas. Build your day around that window. Christy Creek Honey is often a vendor here, so you can catch them twice.

For berry lovers, this is the stop. A family run orchard growing saskatoons, raspberries, haskap, strawberries, chokecherries, wild blueberries, rhubarb, apples and more, with no herbicides, no pesticides and no chemicals. U-pick is the headline experience, but what makes it special is what happens next: the fruit becomes their own handcrafted syrups, plus fruit wine and garlic vinegar. Fill a basket, then take home a bottle and watch the whole transformation from berry to syrup. Then drizzle it over pancakes, waffles, crepes or French toast and understand what the fuss is about.

Good to know: the U-pick opens for short windows as each fruit ripens, and it can close on short notice. Sign up for their email list on the website and you will be told the moment picking opens. Their syrups are at Bountiful Farmers' Market in south Edmonton year round, and the Athabasca Riverfront market on Saturdays.

A third generation, one hundred percent certified organic family farm run by Ty and Janice Shelton with their daughter Jolene and son Tyler. They finish more than two hundred head of grass fed cattle, raise Berkshire pigs on pasture, keep free range hens, and grow a large organic market garden alongside table and seed potatoes and small plantings of heritage grains. Biodynamic and holistic principles run through all of it. Their question for visitors is a good one: where does your food come from, and what does your food eat?

Good to know: Sand Springs sells direct through their online farm store and delivers to households, but stock is genuinely seasonal and sells out. Root vegetables come back in the fall, and beef and pork run in batches, so email or call to get on the list. Farm visits are arranged privately rather than offered on a schedule, so reach out before you plan the drive.