Shop to Sheep to Skein to School: Anna Hunter's Canadian Wool Odyssey

Voices in Wool with Clara Parkes

In this episode, Clara talks with Canadian wool advocate, fiber farmer, and mill owner Anna Hunter of Long Way Homestead.

Until a few years ago, Anna was happily ensconced in East Vancouver running a yarn store. But in 2015, the country beckoned. She and her husband Luke moved to Eastern Manitoba to start a family and a farm.

When she discovered there was no local mill to process her freshly shorn Shetland fleeces, she decided to build a mill herself.

Now Anna is sharing everything she learned with the next generation of wool people through her Field School. And very soon, she'll be bringing domestically sourced and manufactured wool pellets to Manitoba. ‌
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‌As you'll hear, Anna's goal is far larger than just her own sheep and skeins and pellets. She wants to revolutionize and revitalize the Canadian wool industry as we know it.

In the interview, we talked about Anna's life trajectory from urban yarn store owner to rural farmer, the challenges and costs (both financial and human) of starting a wool processing mill, the current limitations of the Canadian wool industry, the possibilities for the future, and her ultimate vision for a thriving regenerative textile infrastructure in Canada.

‌Links

• Read, explore, and shop at Long Way Homestead
• Support Anna's Canadian wool research and advocacy work on Patreon
• Visit Anna's other project, Canadianwool.org

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