PEACE RIVER, Alta. – When your new farm has a house with a 180 degree view of the Peace River hills, a wrap-around porch and the rooms of a luxury hotel, do you move in?
Barbara and Kos Bos didn’t.
They moved into the hired help’s house beside the corrals and turned the 3,000 sq. foot dream home into a guest house.
“It pays the bills,” Kos said.
The couple didn’t plan to open a bed and breakfast when they emigrated from Holland two years ago, but it seemed a natural evolution when they bought a bison ranch overlooking some of the most beautiful scenery in the province.
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“It’s the best hiding place in the Peace,” Kos said.
Many of the couple’s clients work in the oil industry or at the nearby pulp mill and rent the house for meetings.
Barbara said opening the Wild Rose Guest Ranch has allowed her to keep social connections while still on the farm. The former nurse said she’s still taking care of people but just in a different way.
The couple also inherited a bison operation with high mesh fences, heavy duty handling corrals, squeezes, chutes and an auction ring in the barn. They weren’t interested in taking over that inheritance.
“I like wild but not that wild,” Kos said.
Instead, they put Red Angus cattle in the corrals and barley, canola, oats and grass in the field.
“The vets like to come to our place,” said Barbara, whose cattle are kept snug in the bison squeeze.
Catwalks over small pens give a bird’s-eye view of the sorting corral. The auction ring is used as a maternity pen for newborn calves.
“For a cattle operation it’s overkill, but it’s there so you use it,” said Kos.
When the Boses moved to Canada they knew they wanted to continue farming and travelled the province looking for the right farm.
“We wanted to make a step forward,” he said.
In Holland they grew row crops such as sugar beets, potatoes and tulip bulbs, which are not common in northern Alberta.
Kos brought along his knowledge and experience with biodiesel. A decade earlier, Holland mandated a shift to low sulfur diesel, which reduced pollution but created havoc with engines. A diesel pump specialist recommended Kos add canola oil to his fuel as a lubricant. It’s a practice he’s continued in Canada.
Their John Deere 6420 tractor runs completely on canola and the rest of his machinery runs on a diesel and canola blend. Using presses imported from Holland, he can press about four litres of oil an hour from the canola.
Bos starts his tractor using the diesel tank and switches to canola after the oil has warmed up. It is shifted back to diesel before it is shut off.
“When the price is good for canola I sell it all. When I have off grade or heated canola, I press it and you’re saving money,” he said.
Farmers who don’t want to run their equipment only on canola oil can add 15 to 20 litres of canola oil to their fuel tank before each filling, he said. It’s a few extra dollars in savings and adds lubrication to the diesel. Bos said the canola fuel works well until about -15 C, when it turns into margarine.
He uses extra canola oil in the cattle oiler and feeds the leftover meal to the calves.
When Kos looks at a granary of canola he sees fuel, not seed.
The Boses also custom graze about 90 cows, which they calve out. Experience with double muscle cattle in Holland, where every birth was a caesarean section, makes calving his cattle seem easy, especially with the heavy duty handling facilities.
The couple has other ideas for their farm and guest ranch, but want to become more settled in Canada before adding more ventures.
“First get it rolling and not take on any more enterprises than we have now, but make it run well,” he said.
“We cannot do everything at once.”
