Flagstaff Featured Business: Twin Oak Farms
The Flagstaff Region Featured Business is a monthly newspaper and web feature presented in partnership by Flagstaff County and The Community Press.
Twin Oak Farms Ltd.
Box 156; Lougheed
780-888-6007 or
780-385-1302
Dan and Shelly Skoberg never set out to build a burgeoning bacon business during the pandemic – it just happened that way.
The Lougheed-area farmers had been raising pigs and decided in the spring of 2020 to try making their own bacon.
“We usually get our bacon done at the butchers and it’s good, but we just wanted to try and do it ourselves and see what we could come up with,” Dan explains.
They went to work, striving to create the optimal recipe to dry cure and process bacon. After a lot of trial and error, and some fine-tuning, the husband-and-wife team eventually settled upon what they deemed to be the ideal original flavour. After more experimenting, Dan and Shelly also came up with what they considered was the perfect maple flavour.
They weren’t the only ones who thought so.
“We started sharing it with family and friends,” Shelly recalls, “and everybody was: ‘Wow, that’s a really good product!’”
Along with glowing reviews for their original and maple offerings, Dan and Shelly were inundated with requests for more.
That’s when they decided to go bigger.
In December of 2020, the fifth-generation owners of Twin Oak Farms started selling some of their bacon. In January of 2021, their first batch of bacon hit Facebook and – to their utter amazement – sold out in less than a week.
From there, it was a steep learning curve for the newly minted bacon aficionados – from nutrition labels, to packaging, to getting government inspected. But Dan and Shelly plowed ahead, creating an inspiring made-in-Flagstaff success story. And along the way, the Skobergs built a new production building, aka the bacon barn.
These days, Twin Oak Farms bacon is retailed in 24 locations across Alberta, including grocery stores, as well as some restaurants and distributors.
“We never ever dreamt that this would be where we are today,” Shelly says, noting they recently hired a local employee. “It’s definitely bigger than we ever thought.”
Consumers now have their choice of seven mouth-watering flavours: original, maple, maple bourbon, honey garlic, jalapeno, apple pie and traditional.
“The funny thing is they are all good sellers in their own certain areas,” Shelly notes. “Like, for instance, the Vegreville area is a honey garlic area. The Provost area is a sweet jalapeno area. I would think that our two top flavours would be original and maple, but for the most part, they all sell really well, just in different areas.”
The Skobergs take great pride in sourcing their products and services – everything from their pork and specialty spices to their packaging – from as many local and Alberta businesses as possible.
For instance, they get all of their pork belly from Trochu-based Sunterra Meats, which gets its hogs out of Alberta.
“They’ve been a really good partner and they’ve been a great supplier,” Dan praises. “We get good, consistent, quality products out of them. I couldn’t ask for anything better out of Sunterra.”
Spices, meanwhile, are sourced from 1908 Barbeque, a Wainwright-based business owned by Marty Yurchak and Shawn Murphy.
“They custom-build all of our spices,” Dan explains. “They’ve been really good. They create all kinds of spices out there, but they create some unique ones just for us.”
For Twin Oak Farms bacon, the only two ingredients that don’t come out of Alberta are maple syrup and bourbon. The maple syrup comes from Eastern Canada, while the bourbon comes from Kentucky.
“You can’t get bourbon in Canada. It’s only produced in Kentucky,” Dan says. “So our bourbon comes out of Kentucky, but yet again, it’s sourced from a local place.”
Twin Oak Farms, established in 1905, is located two miles east of Lougheed just off Highway 13. The Skoberg family farms approximately 3,700 acres of cropland, growing wheat, barley, oats, canola and alfalfa, as well as custom farming roughly 2,000 more acres for others. Their diversified farm also consists of a variety of livestock.
Dan, a member at large of the Flagstaff County Agricultural Service Board, says they’re poised to expand their bacon business “the best we can economically and feasibly outside of our area” in 2022.
Most recently, Twin Oak Farms bacon has been used in two local school fundraisers. The Skobergs see this fundraising involvement as a prime opportunity to help give back to a community that has been so incredibly supportive.
“Flagstaff is near and dear to my heart,” says Shelly, who also holds a full-time position with UFA.
“The people are so supportive here. When they try the product, they spread the word, and not just within Flagstaff. They spread it amongst Alberta, B.C., and Saskatchewan. We can’t go into those provinces (B.C. and Saskatchewan), but they spread the word there. They take it in their vehicles and they go there with our product.
“Flagstaff is just very supportive of local businesses, and Flagstaff County has been great with their opportunities and all their programs that they do for their local Flagstaff County businesses.”
Check out the feature in print in the March 9 edition of The Community Press – available for digital purchase anytime. Never miss an issue, become a SUBSCRIBER today!
The Flagstaff Region Featured Business is a monthly newspaper and web feature presented in partnership by Flagstaff County and The Community Press.
