Skout Brewing and JGL Shepherd Hops Farm part of Open Farm Days Saskatchewan this Saturday
August 5, 2025, 10:46 am
Ashley Bochek
If you’ve ever been curious about where beer comes from and how it’s made, a tour is being offered Saturday, August 9 at JGL Shepherd farms where you can see the hops being grown, and taste the beer that’s made from them.
The tour is part of Saskatchewan Open Farm Days, in which farms across the province will open their gates to the public to help people better understand farming.
Gena Shepherd of Skout Brewing explains Open Farm Days, “It’s a province-wide initiative to try and help people visit local farms, see what ag is being produced in their area and become more connected to their local food source, or in our case beer source.”
She said Saskatchewan Agriculture reached out to JGL Shepherd Farms, the only commercial hop farm in Saskatchewan.
“They approached the farm first, and then because of Skout’s connection with them we got tied into doing a joint event together, so people can see the hops being gown, and then try the beer.”
She said this is a first for Skout Brewing and the hops farm. “Last year we did a joint farm tour where people could go tour the hops farm and then they could come to the brewery and do a brewery tour. So, we did that last year on our own. It wasn’t tied into Open Farm Days at all, and then the farm always does a brewer day where brewers from across Saskatchewan and Manitoba that use the hops would also come out around harvest time to check out the hops. They have done that every year as well.”
Open Farm Days will run August 9 and 10 but the hop farm will participate on Saturday, August 9.
“It’s just going to be one day. It is on for two days province-wide, but we’re just doing it for the one. The hops right now are at the top of the wire. They’ve grown sixteen feet in the air and it’s about ten acres. It’s sort of like a maze in a way that people can wander through and look at. There’s a full production facility at the farm too, with some interesting harvest equipment that people could check out. We’re going to be set up, they have a grain bin that’s been turned into an outdoor bar area. It will be set up with a bar there. We might have some snacks, maybe a fire depending on the weather on site.
“You don’t have to book a time or anything, we’re going to be set up between 1-6 pm on the Saturday and you can show up anytime between then. You can just put the JGL Shepherd Farm into google maps and it will pull up the address that’s in there and then you drive past the yard site over into the hop field to find everyone.”
She’s looking forward to the event.
“I’m excited, hopefully we get a good turn out. I think everyone has wanted to see the hops or they drive past them and haven’t seen them up close. It’s a good opportunity for people to go in and have a closer look. The grain bin bar we’ve always enjoyed as a post-harvest relaxation spot, so it will be fun to share with everyone else as well.
Aaron Grandguillot says the hop farm is the only local farm involved in Open Farm Days this year.
“I haven’t heard of any other farms, a lot of the other ones I have seen are closer to Regina and Saskatoon, which I think makes sense. People in the cities have less connection to where their food sources are, so it makes sense to have more of a push there.”
He is hoping a lot of people from around the area take the opportunity to tour the farm.
“I think mostly this year it will be from the surrounding communities. It would be nice if there were some people that came out from further away, but I think even if we had some locals came by that wanted to see it, that would be great. We’re planning another event for later in August that’s more of a dinner in the field event where hopefully Cork & Bone will be catering a meal.
So we are going to do two different types of events.
“We want people to know about the hops farm, it’s one of the only hops farms on the Prairies. It’s also not very common for people to be growing hops in this area of the world and there isn’t a lot of understanding of where hops come from. People always talk about where the barley is from, but a lot of the hops are coming from the US and this is one of the only places that you can get locally sourced hops so we just want to promote the farm.”
Grandguillot says he hopes it will make a difference for the Skout brand if people understand the whole story of the brewery and the locally grown hops.
“From Skout Brewing’s perspective, you see other breweries in the province and in the country that always talk about ‘this beer has been made with all Canadian grains’ in a lot of specific beer, but for us setting up in a smaller town close to the family farm that produces one of the ingredients, the hops, makes us unique. All of our beers are Canadian grown, all the ingredients, everything. So, it’s not just a special one-off for us. It’s actually just our whole purpose behind the beer. It is all Canadian, it’s all produced as locally as possible. So if more people are aware of that, we’re not just making our own beer here, but the beer we make is supporting the local economy from the ingredients, straight through to when you come enjoy a beer in our taproom. I think that’s cool and it’s unique. Not many breweries can do it, not many breweries have the connection that we’re lucky enough to have with a family farm producing the hops that was operating long before we even thought of doing a brewery. If people are aware of where their ingredients are coming from and they can really taste that in the glass I think that’s really cool, really interesting.”
Shepherd says the long-term plan for the hops farm is growing a diverse range of hops.
“Part of what we hope will happen with the hops farm over time is, a lot of breweries don’t feel like they can necessarily get certain flavours from Canadian grown hops and that’s why they source hops from across the world and I think for us it has been important to showcase that you can make many different styles of beer using hops grown from the farm. It’s not just one specific type of beer that you can make, you can make all types of styles.”
Shepherd says she thinks people who take the tour will learn a lot.
“A lot of people don’t know what hops necessarily are and then when you see how they’re grown, how they’re harvested, how they’re planted, and how they’re strung, it’s definitely different than farming anything else that’s grown in this area. It’s a lot more manual, it requires a lot of specialized or creative equipment, so it’s an interesting type of farm to tour as well.”
She says she is proud of the connection between the family hop farm and Skout Brewing.
“I’m always really proud of the connection. The family farm, it was an idea started by my brother, Justin, years ago, and I was always really impressed by what they were able to build there without really knowing from the start whether or not the hops would even grow or be successful in our climate. So I think any way we can help showcase their ingredients is important and means a lot to the both of us.”
She said it’s important for people to understand the range of Saskatchewan agriculture.
“I think we get used to thinking only of crop land being gigantic farms that are producing wheat, barley, corn and all those types of things here in Saskatchewan, but there are lots of smaller organizations and farms that are growing more niche crops or doing something more unique and I think it’s good to know what all Saskatchewan is producing right now.”
She said they are also working with Tourism Saskatchewan in an effort to highlight local breweries.
“It’s a part of the field-to-fork corridor that they’re are working on, someone is supposed to be coming the same day that the Communities in Bloom. Justin and I had met with them. They were gathering information, they had a consultant that was working on figuring out how to develop more of this field-to-fork corridor in Saskatchewan and we had met with them to talk about what we saw as the challenges in this particular area of making that happen.”
Anyone can drop by the hop farm on Open Farm Day August 9, 1-6 pm.
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