This week Felicia is joined by Anna Hunter: knitter, business owner, entrepreneur, community leader, and now shepherdess and homesteader. For some of our listeners in the audience who are from our local Vancouver, BC area, you’ll recall that Anna was the founder of the Baaad Anna’s yarn store in East Vancouver. About two and a half years ago, she sold the store to a longtime friend and customer Paula who has continued to build the store. Since that time Anna, her husband, and her two young sons have had some big adventures on their new farm Long Way Homestead.
Please join us as Felicia and Anna discuss the challenges one faces when starting your own farm!
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On her escapee llama: “…we’d owned her for about 6 hours and she jumped the fence and neither of us had any idea on how to bring her back…” — Anna Hunter
In this episode, we talk about:
- 1:43 Anna talks about how she was first introduced to knitting and how she was inspired to open Baaad Anna’s
- 7:00 Felicia asks Anna how her strong beliefs in community building has affected her decisions in creating Baaad Anna’s and her current business ventures
- 9:34 Anna talks about why she decided to sell her yarn store and move to Manitoba to start a farm
- 13:01 Talking about starting up the homestead and the Kickstarter that made Anna’s SponsorSHEEP program possible
- 18:54 Anna and Felicia discuss the SponsorSHEEP program in more detail and how it changes the way fibre artists view the materials they work with
- 24:00 Garlic VS sheep, escaping llamas, and how Anna documents all that she’s learning living on a homestead
- 27:09 Anna discusses why local wool production is so important and the lack of wool mills in Canada and how it affects our carbon footprint
- 36:32 With all the responsibility of keeping a homestead going, does Anna have time to knit?
- 40:13 What kind of sheep Anna raises on her farm and some nerding out over sheep facts
- 44:25 How Anna’s family has adjusted from living in the big city to now living on a rural farm
- 46:07 Where to find Anna online to follow her family’s adventures and information on upcoming SponsorSHEEP opportunities
- 47:15 Felicia’s final notes
Links and Things
Here’s where to find Anna online:
- Website: www.longwayhomestead.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/longwayhomestead
Podcast Giveaway!
Win an adorable 2018 Sheep Calendar and 50g bag of white roving merino from Long Way Homestead! Simply enter your info here and we’ll enter you in the giveaway and also subscribe you to our SweetGeorgia updates, so you won’t miss out on any of our updates!
Class is Now in Session at The School of SweetGeorgia!
Want to learn a new skill this year? Check out our new site: the School of SweetGeorgia. We are currently offering 2 courses: Colour Play and Dyeing Intentional Colour. Many more courses are coming your way, so please stay tuned!
Thanks for Listening!
Thank you so much for joining me this episode! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your fellow knitting friends. And if you like what I’m doing here, please leave a rating and review on iTunes for the show. I read each and every email and bit of feedback, whether it’s on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, so I welcome your comments.
Thanks Anna for joining us on the show this week!
Music Credits:
The Young and Beautiful – by Ivory Hours
Fallin’ – by Jetty Rae (on Noise Trade)