LANGHAM, Sask. — There’s one farm in Saskatchewan where sewing season never stops.
Every morning at around 8 o’clock, Floreen Smith heads into her bright and airy work room and spends the next 41Ú2 hours making everything from coats and bags to wallets and tool pouches.
While her husband Paul takes care of the grain and cattle on their farm about half an hour west of Saskatoon, Floreen pursues her own personal version of economic diversification.
Twice a week she can be found selling her wares at the Saskatoon farmer’s market. And while she doesn’t expect her sewing to make her rich, it does provide what she laughingly describes as “a little pocket money.
Read Also
Powdery mildew can be combine fire risk
Dust from powdery mildew can cause fires in combines.
“Every little bit helps,” she said. “I sew reasonably well and it’s something I don’t mind doing.”
Smith can always count on one item to draw people to her booth — long, Australian-style drover’s coats, the kind of coat that real cowboys wear to keep warm and dry out on the range, and not-so-real cowboys wear to look like cowboys.
Made-to-order
At $125 for the basic style, they cost a lot less than the imported versions sold in pricey outdoor-wear stores. There is one other notable difference besides the price. While the Aussie coats are made of heavy oilskin, Smith makes most of hers out of waterproofed, tight weave cotton, with a cape lined with rubberized cotton. She’ll also make coats to order, with special features like canvas construction or zip-in lining; that can bump the cost to as much as $200 for one with full-length lining.
Smith figures most of the people who will buy her coats are mainly interested in the style and don’t really want a heavy, cumbersome oilskin coat. Besides that, she couldn’t imagine working with oilskin, even if she knew where to get it.
Since April, she’s made 25 coats and sold 15, with orders for four more on the books. That’s about as much as she can handle, given that it takes eight to 10 hours to make each coat.
“My inventory is limited by the time it takes me to make them,” she said, adding she can’t afford to hire anyone to help her out.
While the coats are the eye-catchers, it’s not all she makes. There are bags galore in various stages of finish in her cluttered sewing room — duffel bags with drawstring tops, “berry bags” that go over the shoulder and hold ice cream pails, tool bags of various shapes and sizes, grocery bags and a roomy bag divided into a number of separate compartments, ideal for gardening or horse grooming equipment.
F. Smith Canvas Works, as it’s called on her business cards, was conceived when Floreen decided to make tote bags for gifts last Christmas. While doing that, she kept seeing country music singers on television wearing drover’s coats, and the idea “just popped into my head.” Since then, “it’s really mushroomed. It’s kind of out of control.”
Take to the road
While there are no plans to try to sell her coats through retail stores, she would like to take them on the road to horse shows and rodeos. “If I had a few hundred, I’d go to Craven,” she said, for the annual country music jamboree.
Floreen and her Ontario-born husband Paul met while both were in the air force 40 years ago. After living all over the country and in Europe, they were ready to settle down on the West Coast in the early 1970s.
But the prospects for work weren’t good and Floreen’s parents were ready to retire from their farm near Langham. Farming was prosperous in Saskatchewan, so back they came to the farm where Floreen had grown up. Paul had no farming experience, but with her parents’ help, they eventually took over the operation.
Today, the sign at the end of the driveway says P. & F. Smith. If Floreen’s new business keeps booming as it has this year, another sign might be needed to direct shoppers to F. Smith Canvas Works.
