City Slicker

Culture Club

Story By Jennifer Cockrall-King

There’s more to Bles-Wold Dairy’s ultra creamy estate yogurt than a handful of bacteria and a timer. There’s also the artistry

I’m an hour south of Edmonton, and the rolling farm-land is just acquiring the rosy glow of sunrise. Horses stand at their fences and snort great columns of steam as they survey the busy humans zipping north and south. I’ve driven the QE 2 several hundred times, and I’ve passed the colourful Bles-Wold Dairy and Yogurt sign so often, I can see it in my mind. There’s a curve and a then a dip in the road. Or it is a rise and a straightening of the highway? Never mind. I’ll know it when I get there.

Besides, on this clear, chilly morning, I’m enjoying the drive to Alberta’s only on-farm yogurt production facility. Bles-Wold is a premium product. It travels from the farm’s cows in the milking barn to the yogurt production facility in a matter of hours, and arrives on grocery shelves in a matter of days. This freshness and a tight control over production has meant business is booming.

Just as I start to second-guess my memory, I round a corner and the sign appears. I turn off the highway and I find myself scanning farms and driveways for signs of Bles-Wold. City girl that I am, I drive past the farm a couple of times before I admit defeat and call them on my cell. I get a few clues: it’s the only dairy farm on that stretch of road, so I’m told to look for cows and a dairy barn. I’m practically staring right at it. Embarrassed, I pull into the farmyard.

Just then, Tinie Eilers comes round the side of the farm’s red and white-trimmed wooden barn. This is where Tinie (pronounced TEE-ny) runs the yogurt business. Her husband Hennie Bos is in charge of the dairy a few steps away. Today I get to see two thriving businesses in one stop.

Tinie shows me into the barn and up to the coffee room, a second-storey perch where the more than half a dozen Bles-Wold staff come and go as their duties allow. In her soft Dutch accent, Tinie begins to explain how she, Hennie and their two kids ended up in central Alberta. Just then, Hennie joins us. He’s surprisingly perky for a guy who gets up every day at 5 a.m., but I guess that’s part of the business. Tinie and Hennie grew up on farms in Holland, and together had a dairy farm there for 20 years. But then Tinie puts it in terms that are easy to understand. “There are 16 million people in a country that fits between Edmonton and Calgary,” she says. Land in Holland is at a premium, and there’s little room for entrepreneurship. Lacombe, by contrast, had the right combination of fertile farmland, wide-open spaces and wide-open opportunities for an ambitious family farm.

In 1994, Tinie and Hennie, and their 13-year old daughter and their nine-year-old son arrived in Canada, and by February 1995, their new farm had a brand-new dairy facility and 60 Holsteins. They named the farm Bles-Wold, a hybrid of Hennie’s hometown, Blesdijke, and Tinie’s hometown, Steenwijkerwold.

Tinie credits Hennie with being the entrepreneur, but her yogurt business, which started as a hobby in 1996, has gained momentum. “I’m not a planner,” Tinie admits when I ask her if yogurt production was always part of the Bles-Wold vision. Instead, it was just a way for her to give her teenage diabetic daughter a nutritious breakfast that didn’t contain extra sugars.

Tinie would whip up batches of mild-tasting yogurt in the kitchen. “I’d give some to friends and neighbours and they seemed to like it,” continues Tinie. She also learned that Albertans like their yogurt sweeter and thicker than that found in Europe. Her taste testers also expressed a desire for fruit flavours. She obliged. Hennie encouraged her to think about making yogurt as a business. Since Tinie’s brother had a small commercial yogurt business on his farm in Holland, she asked him to send her a small (400-litre) pasteurizer and a recipe. In 1996, she took her farm-fresh yogurt to the Lacombe and Ponoka farmers’ markets, where it was a hit.

“Then the manager from the local Co-op store, Keith Meyers, came to us,” recalls Tinie. “That’s how it all started.” Bles-Wold yogurt made the leap from farmers’ markets to grocery stores. Tinie and Hennie took the growing pains in their stride. Tinie made her way through the dizzying labelling regulations with the help of agriculture advisors from Government of Alberta. These days, Bles-Wold yogurt, and now sour cream, is sold at 90 different locations across Alberta. The farm has a federally inspected facility, and the Bos-Eilers are working on expanding their territory to other provinces.

Anxious to see where this product is made, I ask for a tour. Tinie furrows her brow and tells me that due to the strict Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) guidelines and biological controls, she can’t allow me into the production plant. I could inadvertently bring in a bacteria or something that could spoil an entire 2,000-litre batch. (Yes, the initial pasteurizer has long-since been up-sized.) The culturing of the yogurt is a precise undertaking and there’s just no room for tourists.

There is, however, a window into the yogurt-making room and I peer into the space; it’s hospital-clean. The tile floor is gleaming white and the stainless steel pasteurizing tank and small filling line are also spotless. The milk from the nearby dairy arrives at the yogurt-processing plant via an underground pipe system. Because Bles-Wold’s dairy is commercial, certified under The Canadian Quality Milk Program, the products’ quality and the freshness are givens.

Cows’ milk starts out with close to four per cent fat, so Tinie’s next step is to separate the milk. Bles-Wold’s plain yogurt is made with two per cent milk, and the flavoured yogurts are made with 1.7 per cent. At 4,000 to 5,000 litres a week of yogurt, Tinie is using less than a day’s worth of the farm’s milk production. (Most Bles-Wold milk is sold into the province’s milk system.)

The milk is pasteurized (heated to a certain temperature under its boiling point for long enough to kill off undesirable bacteria) and then rapidly cooled. Then, says Tinie, the milk is incubated with cultures. Cultures are human-friendly, live bacteria that cause the milk to thicken and ferment somewhat. I naively ask how long Tinie allows the cultures to ferment. “Sorry, that’s a secret,” she blushes. Apparently, the length of the fermentation is what gives her yogurt a creamy, almost syrupy texture, while still being relatively low in fat.

Instead, she shows off the brand new packaging. Heat-sealed foil lids have replaced the plastic lids. And the labelling reflects a new feeding program that Hennie has started with the herd. He feeds the cows a mixed diet of alfalfa hay, barley silage, haylage, ground corn and, most recently, sunflower seeds. This latest nutritional addition results in milk that contains higher levels of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a fatty acid that, like omega-3 and omega-6, is being touted as a nutritionally important element, possibly warding off chronic diseases and obesity, while promoting heart and bone health. And this neatly illustrates a benefit of sourcing milk from a single farm’s herd. The milk isn’t pooled with other farm’s milk, so interested consumers can find out about a particular dairy’s feeding program.

Hennie invites me to meet the herd. His 230 cows are primarily Holsteins that produce 6,500 litres of milk per day, and it keeps Hennie and his staff busy with three milkings every 24 hours. Bles-Wold takes pains to keep the cows happy and healthy. The animals are taken to an exercise lot as often as possible, and only natural fertilizer – cow manure – is what he uses at this 450-acre farm to produce the hay and silage for the cow’s feed. Bles-Wold doesn’t use pesticides, insecticides or chemical fertilizers.

We walk over to the dairy barn, where there’s some activity. A calf has just been born, and one of the Hennie’s helpers is making sure that mom and baby are doing OK. The trembling little calf looks around, dazed and wet, but seems happy with the cleaning it’s getting from mom. Other young calves crane their necks in my direction, so I bravely ask if I can pet one. Several of them compete for a scratch on their forehead, and I even brave the kisses of one seriously affectionate little miss. We walk up the middle of the main barn, where the producing herd is currently located; I decline the invitations from the full-sized cows for a head scratch. My bravery has evaporated in the presence of these 700-kilogram (1,500-pound) animals, but I manage a quick moment with one friendly cow, numbered 996, a breakthrough for someone who couldn’t recognize a dairy farm a few hours ago.