Real hands-on tourism at Green Pastures

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This article was published 08/10/2023 (615 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Real.

That is the word Green Pastures owner Leah Bouchard kept coming back to when describing the new experience being offered on her farm.

Everyone now has the chance to sign up for a hands-on experience working with wool on the banks of the Roseau River, just over the landmark century-old timber truss bridge, east of Gardenton. The small groups of six or so also get to enjoy the bounty of the fall harvest afterward.

Every wool quilt or pair of felted wool slippers visitors hand-create with the Bouchard family’s help come home with them.

And it does not get more real than meeting the sheep who are kind enough to offer up their wool to their guests.

Gloria’s wool was used on the day this reporter got to test Bouchard’s ability to work with an amateur who can’t knit to save his life (we found the needle I got stuck in the blanket).

Lily’s wool was recently used to make a cardigan. Janna and Judith are the other two of the four sheep who are so generous they also give milk daily. Leah’s husband Guy was able to wrangle them up to say hello and get a pet from their visitors. One can tell each sheep had its own unique wool when getting up close and personal with its source. Different shades, thickness and curliness become apparent.

This is the first year the Bouchards are inviting people to visit their farm to learn the traditional craft. The whole Farm, Fibre, Food & Friends experience lasts about four-and-a-half hours, 1:30-6 p.m. There are six Saturday dates available in October to December, and registration is online at farmgreenpastures.com

Bouchard said she and Guy are not trying to change their mixed farm of sheep, turkeys, a few loose chickens, handful of cattle, and bountiful garden to become an amusement park or petting zoo. They saw a small window of opportunity in the late fall to share a way of life with others.

“We just think it’s a great experience. So many people are not connected to the farm now. And we love to share what we have here with others; and we’re able to share the kind of lessons and perspectives that we think the farm has a lot to offer,” said Bouchard.

“Being on the land and understanding where things come from,” she added.

“We want to keep it very real and authentic, and do this very small scale and kind of exclusive. We’re only six experiences this year, if it goes well maybe we’ll do eight next year,” said Bouchard, so registering early is important.

Those six groups are small for a reason.

“Very intimate, and we’ll be able to answer all their questions and be able to share really well because it’s a small group.

The traditional way of working with wool goes back generations for Bouchard’s family. She said the hand carders guests use to work the material are the same her grandmother would use, and proceeded to show off one of several wool blankets she had from her grandmother she believed could be about 100 years old.

After the guests on the test-run piled up the picked wool and took a break to visit with the sheep, they came back to a set-up ready to hand-stitch the quilts together with naturally-dyed strings of goldenrod, violet, and grey. Black beans, onion skin, coffee grounds and goldenrod were used in the dyeing process.

Every detail was as hand-crafted and farm-sourced as possible.

That level of fresh-farm detail also goes for the delicious faspa meal served up at the end of the day. Cuts of lamb and beef sausage, sourdough rye bread, cheese curds, fresh vegetables, mustard, jellies, and squash soup all washed down with chokecherry juice turned the communitive traditional light lunch into a feast. There were also homemade raspberry muffins to satiate the palate through the afternoon, courtesy of Leah’s picked raspberries and Sarto-area Jems Acres’ baking.

The Bouchard family has been on Leah’s family farm property on the Roseau for the last five years, having moved there from down the road where they had lived for 15 years. She listed 150 ewes and “a lot” of turkeys residing on the farm. The turkeys were passed down from her parents, and Leah and Guy brought the sheep.

More information on the Green Pastures Farm experience is available on the Sunrise Corner Tourism website sunrisecornermb.ca. Sunrise Corner is a part of Eastman Tourism, which Sunrise says pioneered the Experiential Tourism Program in 2021. Sunrise Corner’s Monique Chenier is a facilitator in the program and worked as part of a team with Leah Bouchard to develop the vision into reality.

Group rates are available for those who book three or more at a time. For those who are unable to get down this fall to make their own, hand-stitched wool duvets are also available for purchase online.