As you turn off Dunning Road, a sign tacked to a post says playfully \u201cBuffalo Boulevard\u201d just across from two young bison munching hay. The long driveway then runs past open fields about as far as you can see before it veers left to the Bearbrook Game Meats retail store.<\/p>\n
A family operation now decades old and in its third generation near the village of Navan, Bearbrook raises some very big livestock on their property \u2013 bison, elk and deer \u2013 but the route to today\u2019s farm was a much longer and more winding one than the current driveway, according to owner Heidi Clement.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy grandparents were farming in Germany in 1928. They came to Canada in 1962 and bought a 200-acre dairy farm in Leonard. My parents, Walter and Inge Henn, bought their own farm in 1969 on Frank Kenny Road and raised hogs and geese. They then bought the dairy farm on Russell Road in 1973 and expanded its range to exotic livestock and turned it into a tourism business.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Henns bought the property on Dunning Road in 1979 and started Bearbrook Game Meats in 2009.<\/p>\n
Over the course of his career, Walter Henn launched a number of entrepreneurial pursuits in addition to farming: selling refurbished refrigeration equipment around the world including to the Soviet bloc, working real estate markets (including developing an on-farm hotel), helping establish the Ottawa farmers\u2019 market, and launching a petting zoo and the agritourism venture.<\/p>\n
Henn\u2019s Ark<\/strong><\/p>\n At the farm\u2019s peak, there were roughly 600 animals living on the Bearbrook property \u2013 today they own 100 acres and rent 50 \u2013 which then included wild boar, deer, emu, ostrich, goats, sheep, chickens and geese; they\u2019ve also had pheasants, llamas, donkeys and even zebus, the humped cattle species. Currently, you might see white or blue peacocks gracing the farm just for their beauty.<\/p>\n Call it the \u201cark effect:\u201d exotic animal always seemed to capture Henn\u2019s imagination, says Clement of her father, who died in 2016 and when she took over.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had a neighbor down the road who brought in some bison, which Dad thought was cool. And then the neighbour brought in some deer and Dad thought that was cool too. And then he bought some emus. And then he got some ostriches. And then he got some wild boar. And we had sheep. And we had goats.\u201d<\/p>\n Back in the day, they had their own butcher shop and abattoir, too. (As a sidebar which shows the changes in local agriculture, the number of local abattoirs licensed in Ontario has decreased from 229 in 1999 to 115 in 2020: this means that as consumer demand for locally-produced food has increased significantly, processing capacity \u2013 and therefore family-farm growth \u2013 has sadly slumped.)<\/p>\n Today, Bearbrook has pared down the number of animals they raise and care for: in addition to the majestic elk and bison that roam the pastureland and wooded lots, Bearbrook raises red deer, free-range chickens and free-range turkeys. You can also visit the farm to see their beautiful English fallow deer, too (but they\u2019re not for sale).<\/p>\n A host of exotic and everyday ingredients<\/strong><\/p>\n Large chest freezers queued end to end in the retail store are labelled variously \u201cexotic birds,\u201d \u201cassorted livers and hearts,\u201d \u201cfrozen breads and bread doughs\u201d and a host of prepared condiments, snacks and frozen foods including cabbage rolls, fish, rabbit, mixed-game chili, and at least a dozen different sausages.<\/p>\n There\u2019s both tourti\u00e8re and cipaille, and Clement says that the products they sell are \u201c99 per cent\u201d local and Canadian.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have water buffalo and water buffalo cheese from a farm in Stirling,\u201d says Clement. \u201cBut we also have kangaroo and get caribou from Finland.\u201d<\/p>\n For any of Bearbrook\u2019s foods, you can purchase them directly at the on-farm retail store that\u2019s open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., by phone order, and through their online ordering system. There\u2019s free delivery over a certain dollar amount and within 100 kilometres.<\/p>\n As for farmers\u2019 markets, in season, they also sell at the Orleans, Lansdowne, Navan, Carp, Kanata and Westboro markets, in addition to a number of Christmas markets.<\/p>\n Bearbrook employs about 22 people (10 full-time with some part-time seasonal employees in addition to family); when I visited, matriarch Inge Henn, age 82, was working at a desk in an office.<\/p>\n Clement says that her son Josh and daughter-in-law Shanice are considering taking over the business eventually to keep the generational nature of the farm rolling.<\/p>\n Sales are important but so is an educated customer<\/strong><\/p>\n Increasing numbers of customers are interested in the health aspects of a game meat like bison: it\u2019s low in saturated fat and high in protein.<\/p>\n As for animal welfare, the large Bearbrook livestock \u2013 the elk, deer and bison \u2013 live outside year-round in a spacious environment similar to that of their wild kin. The animals are healthy, relaxed and less prone to disease, says Clement.<\/p>\n While logistics and sales at Bearbrook \u2013 a business which takes a cut in pay when the six summer farmers\u2019 markets they attend close until April \u2013 are Clement\u2019s primary focus, she\u2019s also serious about getting the message out about the benefits of supporting local farms in general.<\/p>\n Describing so-called exotic meats as \u201ca growing market with customers,\u201d Clement says it was a more difficult sell earlier in their history when people were not as open-minded to try new things as they are now.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople were beef, pork, chicken, turkey, and that was it. Some fish. Now with the internet and cooking shows and chefs and social media, people are realizing that they\u2019re missing out. The market has expanded.\u201d<\/p>\n She wants customers to know that \u201cfarming is never easy\u201d and faces obstacles like rising feed and transportation costs, ongoing infrastructure maintenance like fencing and gravel for roadways, veterinary and abattoir bills, and, of course, the weather \u2013 storms that do significant property damage, or drought years that force a grass-fed operation like Bearbrook to buy expensive hay.<\/p>\n Prices for everything keep going up, Clements acknowledges, but she adds those facts certainly don\u2019t prevent Bearbrook from being an important agricultural experience for customers.<\/p>\n \u201cThe farm is open to the public, so anyone can come here during our daily hours of operation and take a tour, bring the kids to learn. We want more people to understand what we do and know about the food they put on their table. We put out the best products that we possibly can.\u201d<\/p>\n Food writer Andrew Coppolino lives in Rockland. He is the author of \u201cFarm to Table\u201d and co-author of \u201cCooking with Shakespeare.\u201d Follow him on Instagram @andrewcoppolino.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As you turn off Dunning Road, a sign tacked to a post says playfully \u201cBuffalo Boulevard\u201d just across from two young bison munching hay. The long driveway then runs past open fields about as far as you can see before it veers left to the Bearbrook Game Meats retail store. A family operation now decades […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":104398,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-affaires"],"acf":[],"featured_media_global":[],"yoast_head":"\n