n THE CARILLON STEINBACH, MAN. C2
n www.thecarillon.com
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2025
MATTHEW FRANK THE CARILLON
Bundles of wool waiting to be sold at Christel Lanthier’s vendor stall.
Fibre industry flexes muscles in Manitoba
by MATTHEW FRANK F or Remko Stalman, sheep shearing is more than cutting wool. It’s all about the tech- nique. As he grabs a sheep with a coat ready to be cut, it squirms, kicking its legs to break free. But with each buzzing pass of the shears, Stalman shifts his feet, the sheep settles and quiets. The whole process takes only three minutes to get a complete wool fleece. “I don’t look at a shearer anymore to see how he’s shearing or how the wool comes off,” the 45-year-old told The Carillon . “To me, it’s how does he position his feet? Where does his feet go? How does the sheep lay? That’s the technique that if you can get good at it, then you’ll have good sheep.” Stalman started raising sheep at his farm eight kilometres east of La Broquerie in 2016. His farm has now grown to 450 ewes. In 2019, Stalman decided to start shearing both his and other farms’ sheep. But during many shearings, he saw the cut wool wasted and land on burn piles because there were no use for the fleeces. “It’s a little sad that you have to push the wool on the burn pile,” he said. But events like Manitoba Fibre Festival, held on Sept 5 and 6, have helped educate people about the province’s wool industry and how it can be better used, Stalman said. The festival marked its 13th year, and hosted Manitoba-based ven- dors and wool producers who show- cased the wool’s life-cycle, from sheep to scarf. The wool industry in the province is still young, and the demand is slowly growing, Stalman said. He said more resources and train- ing are needed for shearing in Man- itoba. Stalman learned how to shear through YouTube videos and an ex- perienced farmer gave him a crash course. That’s left him to be mostly self-taught, despite Stalman want- ing to improve his leg position and technique while shearing, “Some things you learn, you think you did it right, but then you do little things wrong, or I teach myself the wrong way of doing things,” he said.
MATTHEW FRANK THE CARILLON
Remko Stalman maneuvers a sheep to cut a complete fleece.
The Manitoba Sheep Association offers a sheering course annually, which Stalman has taken for the last three years. But having more one- on-one teaching is the only way for him to get better, he said. “It sometimes looks hard and sometimes it is hard. Depends on the sheep, on the wool, on the cli- mate, it is one of the hardest jobs
in the world,” Stalman said. “But it’s amazing, if you have the technique, what you can do.” Once he finished buzzing the sheep, Anna Hunter scooped up the fresh wool and carried it to a neigh- bouring table. There, she unfurled it with a toss and shook fleece free of any debris. Once she threw the fleece on the table, she “skirted”
wool, which cleans and assesses the quality of the wool while Hunter picks through it. Cleaning the fleece is one of the most important things to preserve the wool’s value, she said. Hunter is one of the festival organizers and owns a 30 sheep-farm in Ste Gen- eviève. Originally from Vancouver, the
46-year-old described herself as a “chronic knitter.” That love drove her to open a yarn shop in Vancou- ver because she wanted to sell Cana- dian-made yarn. But while running the shop, she couldn’t find much to fill her store.
See ‘Wool can be used’ on 3C
MATTHEW FRANK THE CARILLON Christel Lanthier holds yarn made from her sheep. Each bundle of yarn has the picture and name from the sheep its from.
MATTHEW FRANK THE CARILLON One of Christel Lanthier’s felted wool vests on display the Manitoba Fibre Festival. Lanthier uses a combination of natural dyes grown from her garden to colour the vests.
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