AgNow | Oct 2025

STEINBACH, MAN. THE CARILLON n C3

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2025

www.thecarillon.com n

MATTHEW FRANK THE CARILLON

Three sheep waiting to be sheared.

Wool can be used for fertilizer Continued from page 2C

to Manitoba wool isn’t wool pro- duced elsewhere, but synthetic fi- bres. Wool is important because it has less environmental impact than synthetic products and its a renew- able resource, Hunter said. One of the farmers, also in Ste Geneviève, who’s taken advantage of the wool mill is Christel Lanthi- er. She has 100 sheep, each with their own name her children gave them. Lanthier graduated with fine arts degrees from the University of Manitoba and the University of Al- berta. When she moved from Winni- peg with her husband to the farm, she experimented with raising five sheep because “wool is a cool tex- tile” for art. “They’re small, they’re interest- ing, they won’t kill us, and we can have their fiber,” she said. Lanthier began processing the wool into yarn, but soon began making felts. She now sells felt- ed vests, earrings and mitts, along with her yarn. She took full advan- tage of Hunter’s mill to get the wool cleaned and processed for whatever art she had in mind. Now, Lanthier has five different breeds and a dye garden so she can combine organic and natural colours for her felts. While demand is slowly growing for Manitoba wool products, she said if people keep asking for it, the markets will notice and adjust to meet the need. “We think a lot about food, like this is farm to table food, but we don’t often think about farm to tex- tile, like farm to shirt, Lanthier said. “And it can be done. It’s done in our backyard, and we just have to do it more.”

So in 2015, she decided to sell the shop and move with her husband and kids to southeastern Manitoba to start their own wool farm. Three years later, she opened up the prov- ince’s first wool processing mill. She said Canada is lagging behind on the infrastructure needed to pro- cess wool domestically. “We have a lot of sheep. We have variety of wool quality, but we don’t have anywhere to process it,” Hunt- er said. She said nearly 90 percent of Ca- nadian-grown wool is processed out of country, with China being the top importer. Canadian Co-operative Wool Growers is the main buyer of Cana- dian-grown wool, but Hunter said the price-per-pound is low, about 25 cents. Manitoba farmers don’t bother bundling and selling their wool be- cause the prices aren’t worth it after accounting for transportation and other costs, she said. “As a knitter, that’s such a trage- dy. Knitters hear that and they’re so discouraged,” Hunter said. “But we can’t process enough wool to make it worth anything.” She said for Manitoba’s wool in- dustry to thrive, wool has to be val- ued. One solution is shifting atten- tion away from creating yarn with wool to making fertilizer, Hunter said. Her processing mill is the only plant in the province that converts wool into fertilizer pellets, along with regular yarn production. Hunt- er pays $1 per pound, which is more appealing for farmers than shipping across the ocean. She said there’s

MATTHEW FRANK THE CARILLON

Christel Lanthier raises 100 sheep on her farm and makes felted wool products.

we can develop other products be- cause we have wool that’s valued,” Hunter said. She believes the true competitor

with farmers about how they can change management to keep their wool cleaner, so that maybe they can make $6-a-pound. Then maybe

more uses for the pellets and it takes less resources than producing yarn. “If wool pellets can be the first step that opens up a conversation

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