A working farm. A shared life.
Lakeside Colony is a Hutterite farming community near Cranford, in southern Alberta's irrigated farm country between Lethbridge and Taber.
Hutterite communal life begins in Moravia
First colonies settle in Alberta
Our home in Lethbridge County
Our registered trucking operation
Out here the land is flat, the wind is steady and the summers are dry. Water from the irrigation canals is what turns this prairie into some of the most productive farmland in Canada.
We farm it together. The families of Lakeside Colony share the land, the equipment and the work, the same way Hutterite communities have done for nearly five hundred years.
Home Is the Colony
From the range road you see the shelterbelt first: rows of poplar and spruce planted to break the wind. Behind them are the family houses, the community kitchen, the church and school, the shops and the grain bins.
Families have their own homes, but meals are eaten together in the kitchen. Work is shared out by the community, and everything the colony earns goes back into the colony.
Harvest Waits for No One
When the crop is ready, everything else waits. Combines run until the dew comes down, the trucks shuttle grain back to the bins, and the kitchen sends meals out to the field.
In the fall come sugar beets, a crop this part of Alberta is known for. Beets get dug, piled and hauled before the ground freezes.
Keep Reading
Every Season Has Its Work
Seeding in spring, irrigating all summer, harvest in the fall, and in winter, fixing equipment in the shop and getting ready to start again.
Get in Touch