Red River Ex venue adds animals to Fibre Festival

Attendance for the annual Manitoba Fibre Festival at Red River Exhibition Place has swelled to over 2,000 visitors and 80 vendors in the dozen years the event has been showcasing all-things-wool, from farm to fibre, with workshops, craft sales and a wool auction.

For two days in September, Fibre Festival visitors had the opportunity to wander through the spacious Red River Exhibition Place, where hundreds of woollen craft items were on sale, take in a workshop, watch a spinning wheel demonstration or visit the animals in the adjacent barn.

This year, Eastern Manitoba was again well represented at the Fibre Festival, both in the barn and the exhibition hall.

Andre Laframboise and his wife Katheryn, who own Raspberry Roost at Cooks Creek, brought angora rabbits and alpacas for their display in the Red River Ex barn.

Both Kathryn and Andre work full-time, while managing their farm. Kathryn is a high-school teacher in Winnipeg and Andre works as a general manager of a sewer and water construction group. After working all day, they say they find joy on the farm, caring for these amazing creatures.

The farm has seven alpacas, six sheep, one llama, as well as four angora rabbits.

Fiber Farming came naturally to the Raspberry Roost, as the Laframboises were looking for animals that were delicate on the pastures which needed some serious rejuvenation, when they moved there seven years ago.

“Our alpacas provide a beautiful manure that is ready to be spread over the required areas. No need to compost!”

The couple is also interested in sustainable fibre and fashion, so raising animals that contribute to that venture made it an easy choice.

The alpacas, sheep and llama are shorn every year, typically mid-spring depending on seasonal temperatures. Alpacas can generate 5-7 pounds of fleece per animal. The angora rabbits are shorn every 3 to 4 months, creating around 4-8 oz. of high-quality, warm fibre.

Raspberry Roost has their sheep and Alpaca fibre processed at the Long Way Homestead mill at Ste Genevieve and the Austin Woolen Mill.

They typically sell the angora fibre to yarn spinners, who are looking to add some luxury to their home-spun yarn. Angora is typically blended with alpaca fibre and/or sheep fibre. It creates “a lovely feel” to any yarn it is spun into.

Saturday, Kathryn made a presentation about angora rabbits and small-scale fibre animals at the Red River Ex barn.

She explained the many amazing qualities of the angora rabbits, special aspects of their fleece and how to manage and maintain it, the care and housing specifics for angoras, some “dos and don’ts” for new angora owners, as well as tools for maintaining their coats.

She demonstrated how to hold and how to shear the animals, discussed their food, water and exercise requirements, giving the audience a thorough understanding of what it takes to be an angora fibre farmer.

In the exhibition hall, first-time vendors were elbow-to-elbow with veterans, who had been coming to the Fibre Festival for years.

Fibre Festival visitors had plenty of opportunities to pick up the finished product, everything from socks to sweaters, enjoying the fruits of the labours of crafters from all over Manitoba, as well as Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia.

A couple of the vendors this year are neighbors of Anna Hunter at Long Way Homestead and have their wool processed there.

Victoria Radauskas is a “hobby-knitter”. and a first year vendor at the Fibre Festival. She calls her place at St Genevieve “Between Two Farms”, for she is located directly south of Long Way Homestead and north of Ferme Fiola Farms, where she works as a shepherdess in a collaboration effort with Christel Lanthier.

Radauskas says they raise sheep together. She has six ewes and Christel Lanthier has 59.

They breed for specific yarns, she said.

The collaborative farmers shared space in the exhibition hall where a wide array of items included wool felted items, placemats, coasters, cast iron skillet holders and oven mitts. Lanthier says she designs and makes everything on her display, with the assistance of some seasonal part time staff.

For her it’s “hands on” for every piece that goes out.

Perhaps feeling just a little out of place among all things wool was Chuck Allen from Niverville, who creates one-of-a-kind bags from cowhide and bison leather.

The leather worker says he was encouraged to sell his wares at the annual wool festival by a friend who is a knitter. She sent a picture to Allen’s phone showing five of his bags hanging on hooks during a session of Wolseley Wool knitters.

It appeared to Allen, he may have a market for his craft, among the fans of all things wool.

And he was right, for his very first customer at the Fibre Festival was a woman from Winnipeg Beach, who said she used to have a booth at the fibre festival for a number of years, selling hand-dyed fabrics and quilts at the St Norbert Market, when the festival was there.

Heidi Hunter tried on a pair of bison mitts and chuckled at the leather fly-swatters Earth and Hide had on offer. When she moved on to chat with another vendor, she took the mitts, not the fly swatter, with her.

Fibre Festival co-ordinator Ruth Brook says that’s pretty well how it is in the fibre community.

“Everybody knows everybody.”

But Allen wasn’t the only exception to the nearly all-wool crowd of vendors at this year’s Fibre Festival.

During Friday evening’s Fibre Farmer Chat session, Randy Dyck of Pembina Fibreshed made a presentation on the process of turning flax into linen.