Our Origins
In July 2005, our family Alan, Nicola, Sarah (7), and Cameron (1), landed in Calgary having never been to Alberta previously. Alan had secured a job with a trucking company based in Saskatoon, but operating from a depot in Edmonton, and the rest of us just tagged along, and made our home on an acreage near Vimy, Alberta.
Alan was brought up on a farm in Cumbria, England, and had worked in Agricultural related jobs since he graduated from school. He had worked for his last employer Stampers Haulage for 16 years, doing livestock and general haulage, and latterly as a dispatcher for farm inputs.
Nicola was brought up in a military family, moving around frequently, but from a family base in Lincolnshire, England. After graduation from school, she earned a Degree in Agriculture, and pursued an 11 year career with Carrs Billington Agriculture in various positions including Animal Feed Sales, Commodity Trading and Customer Service.
Once we moved to Alberta, Canada, we knew that we would like to operate our own business, but had no idea it would involve pigs and pork products. We quickly discovered that the high quality, lean British sausages we had been used to were not readily available here, and with the help of a knowledgeable neighbour we began to make our own. We soon discovered that these types of sausages were instantly popular, and we were pleased that so many customers, many of whom may not have previously tasted quality sausage, readily came back for more.
We quickly began the job of investigating potential markets, and the requirements for setting up an inspected food processing facility situated in the basement of our house. Six months of hard work followed and we were finally issued a food permit and began producing our first sausages in June 2006.
At the same time, almost by chance, we ended up buying a batch of Berkshire weaner pigs, which we set about raising for meat. Although we had never raised pigs before, and only had textbook knowledge of pigs, we realised that we rather liked working with them. In 2007 we started to invest in some breeding stock of our own, and now we are breeding our own pigs.
Little did we know what we had got into - the next two years were a whirlwind of growth and product development, till finally we realised that we had to expand. We needed two things – a bigger commercial kitchen, and more pasture land for our ever expanding herd of pigs. The acreage was finally put up for sale, and we set about the task of finding our new home.
In September 2008, we moved our farm, our business, and our home to Round Hill, Alberta. We are not sure what the neighbours thought – an English family, with funny looking Black pigs, making sausages that were neither smoked nor full of garlic! I think that twelve months on, they realise that we are just a decent hard working family, trying to make a living doing something just a little bit different from what is considered normal! It will still probably take us decades to be considered as locals! Hands together for Round Hill though, it is a great little community!
The Future
In January 2009 we opened our new 1500 ft2 meat processing facility, and throughout 2009 and now 2010 we have continued the investment of state of the art processing equipment. This has allowed our business to expand, and we now are proud to employ one full time qualified meat cutter, and several part time people, to work with us.
We still have plans for further expansion, and have lots of ideas for new, innovative products. We continue our quest to educate our customers about - the superior quality of our products; why we do things the way we do them; and why we continue to offer those British customers a taste of home.
Taking our business forward is an adventure for us, and a huge learning experience. To quote Alan’s grandfather - The day you stop learning is the day you die!
Keep checking back to the website to find out what we are doing next!
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