Revaluing Canadian Wool, One Sheep at a Time – Long Way Homestead

The Canadian wool industry is in a crisis; it’s become underappreciated, which has led farmers to reduce the quality of their wool, devaluing the product even further. 

“Farmers didn’t see any value in their wool,” said Anna Hunter. “[Which] led to this cycle that we just keep going in…where wool isn’t really worth anything and no one is willing to pay for it.” 

This wool crisis hits home hard for Anna who owns and operates Long Way Homestead, a fibre farm and wool mill near Ste-Geneviève, MB, south-east of Winnipeg.

Recently, Anna wrote a book highlighting the wool industry and its farmers across Canada to showcase the creative work they’re doing and how it contributes to a sustainable, circular economy. She teamed up with her neighbour and friend, Christel Lanthier, who took beautiful photos for the book which was published in early 2023. 

“I interviewed 12 different farmers across the country who are doing these innovative things with wool, but also integrating that with land management and regenerative agriculture,” Anna said. “Even a lot of knitters don’t know how many sheep breeds there are across the country and why they’re better suited to certain land bases than others.” 

The book, titled Sheep, Shepherd & Land, tells the story of Canadian wool and how we can change the industry as a whole and move it forward in the interest of sustainability. 

Creating connection for people to the source of their materials is key to reducing waste, and it’s the baseline for everything Long Way Homestead does, which all started with their SponsorSHEEP program in the spring of 2016. 

“[People] get to choose a sheep, name it, and they get monthly emails,” Anna said of the program. “They get photos at the end of the year, and they get a product from that animal. It just really connects them with the lifecycle of their textiles.” 

Anna has been a lover of fibre arts for a long time, having learned to knit at a very young age, and she has always been conscious of the environmental impacts of textiles. In 2009, she started a retail yarn store in Vancouver that specialized in wool that had been grown within 100 miles of the Vancouver lower mainland, but she quickly found she just couldn’t source it.  

“Then my husband and I had two kids and we just decided we wanted more for them and for us,” she said. “We moved to Manitoba to start homesteading and we sort of thought we’d find a smaller spot and grow enough food for our family and a few sheep so I could continue working with wool.” 

Anna quickly realized after a bit of research that there was an opportunity to turn that vision into a viable business while also having an impact in the larger community around fibre, yarn, textiles, and access to local materials. 

In 2018, Anna added a wool processing mill—which turns raw fibres into usable products like bedding and clothing—to her farm with help from an MWEC loan.  

“Probably the biggest way that [MWEC] impacted our journey was by believing enough in our plan to finance it,” Anna said. “When we went to traditional banks or even other farming organizations that provide financing, they said we didn’t have any proof that what we were suggesting we were planning to do would be financially viable. No one was willing to take a chance on us.” 

Anna’s struggles with seeking financing are not unusual, especially within the agriculture industry where inherited farms, land and equipment, passed-down knowledge, and generational wealth are commonplace.

“[MWEC] provided us with our initial loan to buy the mill equipment, and not only the financial support, but also the practical and emotional support of starting a new business and working alongside us,” Anna said. “I don’t think our business would be here without that support because we were turned away from so many other places.”

Long Way Homestead works primarily with fibre artists by selling yarn, roving, or batting to folks who knit, crochet, hand spin, or weave. Recently, they created a new product that turns dirty, uncleanable scraps of wool into pellets that are an all-natural fertilizer. This new product has allowed them to expand their customer base to gardeners looking for sustainable alternatives to traditional fertilizers.  

“My passion is to inspire all the different communities that have a stake in the sheep or wool industry on how we can actually start revaluing wool and use it in place of synthetics or less sustainable materials,” Anna said. “As a country, I feel we’re much more connected to the traceability of our food and we don’t think about that as often when it comes to our clothing.” 

Anna speaks to farming, knitting, textile, and fashion communities all over Canada about how to grow their local economies with wool.  

“We have the capacity to build that up in our own country and to provide jobs and regenerate the land and support our local rural economies,” she said. 

The new wool pellets are a huge step forward in making wool valuable again by taking a waste product and giving it a new purpose and making it marketable. 

“I really see it as a way forward for the industry,” Anna said. “It has the opportunity to inject money into the hands of sheep farmers who right now see it as a loss, and to me that’s a really exciting way to start looking at a problem that hasn’t had a clear path forward for a really long time.” 

Even though the issues within the Canadian wool industry can’t be solved overnight, Anna’s dedication is slowly turning the dial toward sustainability.

“My business is so closely connected to my vision for the world,” Anna said. “And that helps me keep on and stay motivated because it’s not about me; It’s about a bigger community and a bigger problem or challenge that I feel I can contribute to changing.” 

Learn more about what Long Way Homestead does at longwayhomestead.com.