Two Cowboys: Giving Our Boots their Annual Service at Alberta Boot Company in Calgary, Alberta

Western Values

Once a year, when the snow starts to fall in Alberta, we put the winter tires on. It is also when we visit Ben Gerwing at Alberta Boot Company to have our boots serviced after a year of wear and tear.

As Alberta’s only western boot-maker, Alberta Boot Company enjoys a solid reputation for the build and quality of its products. The boots are still handmade, so they are durable and wearable, and when something goes wrong or wears out, they can be fixed. Ben and his team will even completely refurbish your beloved boots. It saves money. Most of all, it saves one the pain and discomfort of breaking in new boots.

We've said before that when you buy a pair of these boots, you better like them a lot. You will own and wear them for a long time because they are built with old-school values of craftsmanship and quality materials. Alberta Boot owners are part of the family. Over the last forty years, Ben's family business has become part of the western tradition and character of our great province, Alberta. Ben's grandfather started the business. He is now the custodian. He is also the next generation that is taking the boot business into the twenty-first century.

Observations

Alberta Boot is well known for its western boots. Fewer people know that Ben also makes contemporary half-boots, ideal for the office, the city or casual wear, and for warmer climates.

These newer boots are hand-made with the same solid construction, high-quality materials and are growing in popularity. The best part is that you can wear these boots year-round because, as with the cowboy style boots, you have a range of sole choices that will keep you from slipping, even in winter.

We checked in with Ben to learn more about the way boots are refurbished and he showed us some of his newer styles. We were on our way to New Zealand and were planning to buy a pair of Blundstones, or Blunnies as they are known Downunder (they are cheaper in New Zealand). When we saw what Ben was making, we decided that yet again, the Alberta Boot is a better choice.

It is a great boot that you can wear until it dies. Then, Ben will resuscitate and refurbish them for you and you can do it all over again. I have a pair that's been refurbished twice already and if I look after them, they will probably go another two rounds.

Once you buy a pair of boots from Ben and his team, you join a family of boot owners. You are walking in Alberta's hand-crafted history. We have our new style half boots booked and will pick them up for Christmas.

Hendrik van Wyk

Alberta Cowboy

2026 update: Since we filmed this, Alberta Boot was bought by a group of Calgary investors in 2021, moved into a 30,000 sq ft Beltline flagship where you can watch boots being made, and became the official boot of the Calgary Stampede. (Source: LiveWire Calgary The Globe and Mail)

Photos

Boot Architect

Alberta Proud

Boot Lane

Exposed

Shopping

New Styles

Nice Boots!

Traveling Cowboys: We've Found Rudolph and Friends at the 2017 Annual Millarville Christmas Market in Alberta.

Shoppers Stampede

There was a stampede in Millarville recently. You've had to see it to believe it.

Never have we seen the entrance to a famous market so jam-packed as it was at this year's fair. Some say the line of cars stretched all the way to edge of the Calgary city limit.

Luckily, with an exclusive invite from Lisa and her team, we made it to the front of the line on Friday 10 November. The plan was to meet some of this year's unique and new Christmas craft vendors as we kicked off our Christmas event coverage for 2017. We were pleasantly surprised with what we found.

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The Millarville Christmas Market was established in 1988 and is one of the premier craft and artisan shows in Alberta. It takes place on an early weekend of every November. The good thing about the market is the abundance of parking surrounding the grounds with free transportation into the event. This means that you don't have to carry all your shopping to your car, which is essential. You can expect to do a lot of shopping. Help is always welcome.

The Christmas market is not just a reincarnation of the very popular Millarville Farmers' Market. It is it something quite unique, stocked with more than the usual vendor mix we've become accustomed to. Lisa and her team added ample activities to distract from the sensory overload typical of these festivities. There is something for the entire family to eat, see and do. Be prepared to spend the whole day with the good people of the market going through the familiar rhythm of a Christmas event like meeting Santa, feeding the Cariboo (Reindeer) finding your children and losing your paycheck.

Observations

We love markets because there is always a surprise. The surprise comes when you talk to the vendors and learn more, not only about their products but about their motivation and passion for their work. There is always a story that needs to be discovered and shared.

This time, we discovered black garlic, a creative take on toilet plungers, met a legendary Blacksmith from Nanton, bought Italian marinated street food, tasted Alberta mustard and cheese, found oil for our beards and shared more laughs than we can remember.

The best part of our market experience is not discovering the unique and well-crafted goods of our artisans. It is the opportunity to spend the time to share the good cheer with our people, that comes with the celebration of the Christmas season's arrival.

That is why we love our markets and our people

Hendrik van Wyk

Christmas Cowboy

We earn our livelihood by producing great content and supporting inspiring people, businesses, and communities. We use Patreon to help us gain from our work. Please become a patron at http://www.travelingcowboys.com if you want to see more of this and other stories.

Photos

Rudolph 2.0

Rudolph Clones

Cheer!

Cowboy Welcome

Making Something

Traveling Cowboys: Two Birds Doing the Two Cowboys Production Van Fit-Out With Reclaimed Barn Wood from Alberta, Canada

Cabin In A Van

How many people can say that they've built a cabin in a van and that they did it with wood that is a hundred years old?

Clinton Pigeon and his team at Two Birds Furniture in Okotoks rose to the occasion to help the Traveling Cowboys with the final step in the build of the Two Cowboys production van. The brief was to create a comfortable work and living space within our Ford Transit that can accommodate our travels in all-weather circumstances. We want to take our studio on the road as we crisscross North America to feature destinations, communities, makers, and entrepreneurs all over the continent. The van is an essential item in our fleet that includes a Sprinter van from Leisure Vans, and an A-Class RV from Holiday Rambler that we purchased from Guarantee RV.

The objective of the construction of our production van was that it should allow for enough storage for all the production gear. It should be comfortable for long trips away from home. Ultimately, the project should showcase some of the best of Alberta's craftsmanship and the rich history of our area. We think the Two Birds succeeded in doing it!

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The Two Cowboys production van is a project that's been in the works for most of 2017. It started with the support of Cam Clark Ford helping us to procure a Ford Transit 350HD van in the early parts of summer.

The next big task was to install the required solar and battery power for the studio's equipment. Bucars RV stepped in to install solar, controllers, inverter, batteries and ventilation for charging our high-end camera gear and for operating our sensitive computer equipment, while on the road.

A business' vehicle is an ideal billboard for advertising. Spy Designs in Okotoks helped with an eye-catching branding design and applied the vinyl graphics so that everyone can identify the van on the road.

Canada throws all kinds of weather at you and the van needed to be insulated and heated for weather that can go between extremes of -35C and +40C. The insulation task fell on the shoulders of resident Cowboy, Braam Compton, who spent weeks researching the ideal solutions and several weekends installing it over the hot summer months. A vital part of the insulation journey was getting the required window coverings to trap heat inside or keep the hot sun out. We sourced custom window screens from Solar Screen in Australia.  The Espar Airtronic gasoline heater installation was done by Polar Mobility Research in Calgary.

Once all the "invisible" installations were out of the way, the Two Birds had a chance to work with us on the layout. Wood framing provided the structure for the arrangement. The framing was then clad with reclaimed timber sourced from an old Alberta barn. The design accommodated a work desk, fridge, shelving, closet, drop-in storage and a single bed for when a day gets too long.

Observations

A van is an invaluable business tool for our line of business. A well-designed and properly-constructed vehicle makes our day easy and allows us to reach the many destinations we cover and to work on the road while away from home base. We learned a lot with the build of this first one and did not doubt that there will be subsequent projects with improvements in our design and construction approach.

The most significant lessons we've learned from our project is how valuable the people are that committed to helping us with it. All of the businesses that contributed are patrons and supporters of the Two Cowboys mission. We gladly promote them at every opportunity we get. We appreciate their help to keep us on the road for telling the stories of our people and inspirational businesses in our local communities.

We are extending a sincere word of thank you in particular to the Two Birds for putting in days, nights and weekends to finish the project before winter finally arrived. We can now look forward to many miles and many more inspirational stories on the road.

If you want to know how exactly it was all done, then please consider becoming a friend of ours on Patreon. We will give you all the details of what to do, and what to avoid if you contemplate a similar endeavour. We may even help you with your project if you ask nicely.

Hendrik van Wyk

Van Cowboy

We earn our livelihood by producing great content and supporting inspiring people, businesses, and communities. We use Patreon to help us gain from our work. Please become a patron at http://www.travelingcowboys.com if you want to see more of this and other stories.

Photos

It starts with a plan...

Insulation Done

Framing Done

Stress Test!

Cladding

More Cladding

Bliss!

Two Cowboys: Connecting with Our Food at the Olds College National Meat Training Centre in Olds, Alberta

Where's the Beef?

What we eat and drink determines who we are. It is a big part of us and integral to what we do each day. Throughout our evolutionary journey, as it is for every other animal on earth, our food ultimately determined and enabled our species, homo sapiens, to claim its place and standing on this planet.

For humans, our involvement with food goes a little further. It also plays a large part in determining our identity. It defines our relationships with our environment and our fellow man. One can deduce a level of cultural and moral sophistication from civilization's connection with its food. It plays a pivotal role in defining a society.

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For a person, food is nourishment. Without food, famine is inevitable. If we don't eat well, we face disease. For a group, it is also a source of expression that influences and displays cultural convention, ritual, and perception. Families come together for celebration meals, heads of state dine together, and a nation's geopolitical and economic welfare is determined by its food production abilities. Food is security. Competition for resources to produce food is the principal source of revolution and of war. For eons, individual, tribal and national identities have been recognized through uniquely crafted dishes, ingredients, and meal preparations. It is fair to say that as humans, we have a fascinating love affair with what we eat.

Humanity now produces more food than ever before in history. Unfortunately, we are also more disconnected from our food now, than we've ever been.  Food manufacturing and industrialized levels of production have slowly been eroding our link with, understanding, and the role of our food, beyond the simple provisioning of sustenance. As a result, we may also be losing our sense of who we are, and in large part, of our societal identity.

We are also losing our ability to recognize and work with our food.  The art and production of food through baking, butchering, brewing and cheese making are falling by the wayside as our butchers, bakers, and cheesemakers depart, to be replaced by corporations with large processing facilities and factories focussed on a uniform, compliant output contributing to the bottom-line.

Even our chefs are spoiled by these companies, with pre-prepared manufactured products that merely requires heating and plating. The elementary art of cooking is under threat in the average meal preparation facility in North America. Fast Food is not food in the true sense of what it could and ultimately should be.

To illustrate my point further, we should only take a look at the degree of effort we put into making food unrecognizable. Celebrity chefs are beating a path to creating mouses, gels, pearls, pills, and pellets that is entirely void of resembling source ingredients. Meals come ready-made. Molecular Gastronomy, which should have remained a fascinating experiment, now trailblazes a departure from the familiar in favor of concepts such as multi-sensory cooking, modernist cuisine, culinary physics, and experimental cuisine.

The result is that we can now eat a perfectly looking, uniform, sterile, mostly synthetic, manufactured sandwiches containing the resemblance of meat, bread, and condiments, that is morally and culturally acceptable and available to the masses, across the planet. This is now our idea of "food"!

Should we be loving it?

Because food has always been closely linked with who we are, losing its origins and our linkages to what we eat have the inevitable result that we just succumb to also losing our sense of identity.  We mistakenly claim a false pretense of cultural "progress" and moral high ground when misguidedly people succumb to disorders, become vegan, or allow vegetarianism to take hold.

Human evolution did not result in equipping people to only eat plants, and unfortunately, no amount of moral or spiritual convention will change our biology in the short term. Maybe it is time again that our children know that milk comes from cow's teets? Chickens lay eggs. Renin and bacteria make cheese and meat come from dead and butchered animals. Substances like blood make for great sausage!

When we rediscover food, we may find our true primal selves again void of pretense, and stripped from our delusions of civility. When we have the pleasure of eating what we always ate, the way we did, with the people we treasure, we may then also have the joy of re-discovering who we truly are.

That is why we seek out great food, places to find it, and why we celebrate the stories of the people and producers connecting us with ourselves - with our true primal being - homo puretus!

The Last Butcher School

The Olds College Meat Processing Program is one of only two remaining in North America that offers an educational certificate in the whole process stream of meat, from slaughter, processing, preserving to retail. Where big plants once dominated the industry, we are glad to say that the revival of the art is back in Alberta!

Olds College teaches hands-on practical techniques and age-old science of meat processing for the highest premium quality cuts. Successful graduates gain the experience needed to start their own entrepreneurial business ventures or take their skills to Canada’s third largest industry.

Olds College is the National Meat Training Centre for Canada. Three times a year its program takes in a wide range of students from all over North America and as far away as Africa. They teach techniques for professional meat cutting, trimming, boning, breaking, wrapping, sausage-making and curing with professional sanitation and food safety applications, including HACCP. It is Alberta’s training site for humane handling and stunning, and the only program in North America that teaches slaughter skills and techniques such as skinning, eviscerating and carcass preparation.

The College boasts an extensive multi-purpose facility that is fully equipped to teach the value-added skill sets and knowledge for the meat industry. Its services are expanded to cater to large and small industry, from sausage making and dried, cured hams to the installation of an industrial canner. It also boasts a favorite retail counter where students learn applied retail merchandising and customer service skills in explaining the attributes and benefits of various products and cuts.

Observations

We are saddened by the fact that Olds College is one of only two remaining programs of its kind in North America. On the other hand, we are encouraged that it still exists, is more popular than ever, and a mere hour's drive from our home base in the Rocky Mountains. The retail shop is a favorite stop for our monthly meat purchases.

Alberta is famous for the quality of its agricultural produce and its rich heritage in producing quality feed for animal husbandry. We are convinced that Alberta boasts the best tasting beef, pork and, dare we say it, lamb (sorry, New Zealand)!

What we need now, is a supportive regulatory food production climate and consumers that invite our producers back to rearing fantastic animals and our butchers again into our towns. The Old-World fostered an appreciation for its producers, and the food that resulted for our ancestors were just incredible. In the New-World, we have the opportunity not only to re-rediscover this rich food heritage but cherish it more than ever. It is where we come from, what we can do, and who we ultimately are.

We are meat-loving Cowboys.

Hendrik van Wyk

Cowboy

We earn our livelihood by producing great content and supporting inspiring people, businesses, and communities. We use Patreon to help us gain from our work. Please become a patron at http://www.travelingcowboys.com if you want to see more of this and other stories.

Photos

Focus

Evolution

Bones

How It's Made

Hours