Alberta
Pierogi From The Ground Up
In Strathcona County, Alberta, family recipes and traditions are taking root 7,500 km from where they began
By Izabela Jaroszynski
When Agnes Kulinski first saw the property that would become her family's home in Strathcona County, Alberta, she looked out at the field and instinctively knew what she wanted to do with it.
“That's where we're going to grow potatoes,” she remembers thinking.
By cultivating the soil, Agnes was going back to her roots, to where her family's food story began in rural Poland.
Agnes grew up in Poland, where almost everything her family ate was made from scratch. One of her earliest memories is gathering with the family in the kitchen the day before Christmas Eve and making pierogi.
“I must have already known how to make pierogi at that point because no one was teaching me. I was right in there," Agnes says, recalling how everyone would protect the pierogi so they wouldn't all get eaten up before the traditional Wigilia.
When she was 16, her family immigrated to Canada, settling in Windsor, Ontario. Her parents opened a Polish restaurant, where they made the foods they knew from home: pierogi filled with farmer's cheese or sauerkraut, cabbage rolls and other familiar dishes.
Agnes helped out, but eventually left the restaurant behind, moving across the country to Alberta to study. Agnes earned a BSc and MSc in Experimental Medicine, followed by an MBA in Technology Commercialization. She was working at a university when her parents decided to retire.
"When my parents retired, I started thinking about the family recipes and how to make sure we didn't lose them," she said. The idea for a new business began to take root.
Agnes's parents came west and taught her the recipes they had developed over the years, which became the foundation for Pierogerie, the business Agnes started in 2016.
Pierogerie makes certified organic pierogi in an artisanal way, using traditional family recipes. You'll find traditional flavours like farmer's cheese and sauerkraut, but also flavours that have evolved since the family came to Canada.
Agnes started the business out of a commercial kitchen in Edmonton, but quickly moved into her current space at the Strathcona property. Here, the couple not only make the pierogi, but they organically grow many of the ingredients needed to make them, making Pierogerie Alberta’s only certified organic pierogi-maker,
The pierogi can be purchased online, directly at the farm store in Strathcona County, or in retailers throughout Alberta.
By growing many of the ingredients herself, Agnes has not only preserved her family's recipes, she has retraced the roots of her family's farming traditions.
“It's almost like we're evolving the recipe,” she says. “We're taking it from a field like my grandparents used to do.”
Only now, that field is in Alberta.
On their 34-acre property, Agnes and her husband have about seven acres of farmland. Each year, they cultivate two of those acres to crow potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, garlic and herbs. Every year they rotate where they grow these crops within the seven acres so as to maintain soil health.
A good potato harvest can yield around 20,000 pounds.
There has been some trial and error. Agnes experimented with different potato varieties, including Viking, a creamy potato that made a beautiful pierogi filling but tended to split in dry Alberta conditions. Eventually, she settled on the much more cooperative Russet Burbank.
Growing organically can also mean getting your hands dirty in ways you hadn't planned. When potato beetles appeared, Agnes headed into the field each evening and picked them off by hand. But the payoff is worth it to Agnes, who has a passion for driving innovation in food systems.
On June 19, 2026, the Pierogerie farm and kitchen was officially inaugurated as the first ÉCONOMUSÉE Pierogi Maker. Joining this artisans-at-work network, which invites visitors to see how a craft is done, was an important and exciting milestone for Pierogerie, Agnes says.
Visitors learn about growing organic ingredients, get a behind-the-scenes look at the craft of traditional pierogi-making, participate in hands-on cooking workshops, and hear the family stories behind the business.
Photo: Pierogerie
Photo: Pierogerie
"My mom helped us prepare the stories," Agnes says, adding that the stories are presented on panels in English, French, and Polish.
Pierogi have long been at home on the Prairies, where generations of newcomers have adapted old recipes to what was available here.
More than three decades after leaving Poland, Agnes has found a way to grow a little piece of home in Alberta soil.