BEECHY, Sask. – For most people, butterflies are a flash of colour in the garden on a hot summer day.
If you’re lucky, one will alight on a flower and you might get close enough to study its bright, intricately patterned wings as it feeds on the flower’s nectar.
For June Baxter, they’re much more than that.
The Butterfly Lady, as she’s known around her hometown of Beechy, Sask., has made it her avocation to spread the word about butterflies to anyone who will listen, but particularly schoolchildren in numerous towns across the province.
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Every spring for the past six years, Baxter has donned her butterfly-decorated overalls, packed up her butterfly materials and container of larvae and driven off to schools to provide the kids with some true-life experience with the colourful creatures.
“It’s a unique program,” Baxter said in a recent interview at her kitchen table on the grain farm she and husband, Don, operate two hours southwest of Saskatoon.
“Most adults have never seen a butterfly hatch or drink nectar from a flower. The kids have a chance to see all that and watch them develop from a larva to a fully grown butterfly.”
On the school outings, she does an hour-long presentation, reading stories about butterflies, tailored to the age of the class, displaying a variety of homemade props to demonstrate the life cycle of the butterfly and providing reading material, colouring sheets and butterfly stickers.
The highlight is the butterfly hotel, generally an aquarium provided by the school, in which the children can watch the life cycle from larva (caterpillar) to pupa (chrysalis) to mature adult butterfly, after which the butterflies are released.
“I really enjoy it and I try to make it fun, but it’s also very educational for the kids,” she said.
“When I walk out of that classroom the kids know what a chrysalis is, and know the meaning of proboscis and moulting.”
Another of her projects is a butterfly bowl for Mother’s Day, consisting of a mesh-covered rose bowl with a ribbon around the edge, containing a flower, some greenery and a live Painted Lady butterfly, which she sells for $25.
It also includes a letter describing an ancient legend that says if you catch a butterfly, you should make a wish before setting it free, and in return for freedom it will carry the wish to the heavens where it will be granted.
Baxter also provides Monarch butterflies in the summer for events like anniversaries, birthdays or weddings, although sometimes the butterflies don’t co-operate.
Last year, she recalled ruefully, she organized some butterflies for a July 9 wedding, but they decided not to hatch until July 11.
Baxter is paid $60 for a school visit, but given the cost of gas these days it’s not a highly profitable business.
In fact, ask her how much money she makes from her venture and after a lengthy pause she ventures a guess of “maybe $500” in a year.
“I’m not making a fortune doing this,” she said, adding with a laugh, “I’m paying my own way. I don’t know if the farm is.”
She’d like to expand the business, called Butterfly Wishes, a little now that she has the equipment and the logistics figured out, but schools have often spent their budget by spring.
“I need to make sure the right people at the schools find out about it well ahead of time.”
Baxter, who works as an x-ray technician at the health centre in Beechy, became the Butterfly Lady when she heard a radio program about a woman in Winnipeg selling butterflies for Mother’s Day.
Something clicked and she got in touch with the woman to order 200 butterfly eggs, a number that was scaled back to 100 at the supplier’s suggestion. She bought an incubator from the hospital in nearby Lucky Lake and spent the next while watching in fascination as the eggs hatched and eventually turned into butterflies.
While she may not be making a lot of money with her butterfly business, Baxter said she is rewarded in other ways, including receiving letters and drawings from the school kids thanking her for the visit.
