14. DISPATCHES - The Archive Opens

When I think about fragrances like my Manitoba Pine, Prairie, Campfire, Patchouli Tobacco, Cedar Sage and all the others that have become favourites over the years, I don't just think about candles. I think about companions. I think about the way these fragrances have been with us, season after season, in homes across Canada. They've burned quietly in your kitchens and living rooms, marking birthdays, weddings, holidays, quiet mornings and long nights. They have been there for the good times and the not so good ones. They've been lit when you wanted to make your home feel alive, and they've been lit when you needed silence and a little comfort. What started as my stories told through fragrance became part of your stories too. And that, even now, nearly ten years later, is still the thing that stops me in my tracks.

Because the truth is, when I started Farmer’s Son Co I didn't really know what the heck I was doing. I didn't have a grand plan. There definitely weren't investors. I didn't even have a proper studio. I'd invested a few hundred dollars into fragrance, wicks and a cases of wax, and used my stubborn determination to see what would happen if I gave it a try.

My husband Rory has been a part of everything from the beginning, quietly helping behind the scenes, designing labels, hauling boxes, keeping me moving when I wasn't sure what the heck I was getting myself into. I've generally been the fella that you've front and centre, but he's been part of this story since day one. This year, he joined the business full time, and it's really felt like a full circle moment for the two of us.

This little studio and business have had to be scrappy as hell. I was steaming up the windows of my apartment kitchen, before setting up in a little shared second floor studio, making candles one pot at a time. There's never really been a roadmap. Just a lot of trial and error, a lot of "let’s see if this works." I'd post photos on Instagram, try to engage and share with folks, and just keep going. And somehow, it started to take off. Faster than I ever expected. People connected with what I was doing. Maybe because I was oversharing, maybe because I was too vulnerable at a time when I probably shouldn't have been, maybe because it was just right place, right time. But it struck a chord.

I didn’t really help myself in the early years. I come from a farming family where you just threw your blinders on and kept working (and working), and stopping wasn’t a choice. Once Farmer’s Son Co. started to grow, I never gave myself a chance to pause - I just poured candles late into the night, night after night, working myself raw. I tried to keep every favourite in stock, to be everything to everyone, to make sure no one was ever disappointed, and in the process I burnt myself out more times than I can count. I carried it personally when someone asked for a candle that wasn’t available because I thought that was what being a good business owner meant. Looking back, I can see it wasn’t sustainable, but at the time I didn’t know another way. I thought hard work alone would be enough to keep me afloat.

I've long since stopped trying to count how many candles I have poured with my own hands, or how many more my team and I have made together. I have a good idea, and it's more than I think any of us good imagine, but that's not what's important here. The number isn't what matters. What matters is what those candles have gone on to become once they left my hands. They weren't just candles anymore. They were folded into people’s lives. They were part of your story. And that's what has kept me going through all the late nights, chaos and instabilities. 

But here's the thing. Behind every collection you've come to know, there's always been another side. My lab & studio have always held more than production. It's where I taught myself to work with fragrance. It's where I spent years learning, experimenting, failing, trying again. It's where I studied fragrance notes and accords, how they move, how they shift, how they interact. It's where I scribbled ideas and formulas into notebooks, crossed them out, tried again, left them half finished and came back months later.

During the pandemic, when the world slowed down, I went deeper. I trained, I studied, dove into the world of fine fragrance. I came to understand the formal side of perfumery in a way I hadn't before. It gave me another language, the structure and the confidence to say I wasn't just making candles. I was designing fragrance.

But even before and after that training, what has always kept me going is the work most people never saw. The hidden archive. Rows of tiny bottles of individual fragrance notes and blended accords with half worn labels. Years of notes, ideas, samples that lived only in my head. Fragrances I loved but couldn't release. Some were too costly. Some too unusual. Some just didn't feel possible at the time. But I couldn't throw them out. They became my private collection. A reminder that fragrance is art, not just business.

And I guess, that's what's brings us here. Ten years in, it feels like the right time to open my archive. To stop holding back. To take those ideas off the shelf and let them live and be enjoyed.

My upcoming Labworks Discovery collection is me giving myself permission to play again. These are not polished bestsellers or permanent staples. They're fleeting, one-of-a-kind pieces. Sometimes a handful of candles. Sometimes a single pour pot. When they're gone, they're gone. And honestly, that's the beauty of it.

To give them some shape, I've grouped these pieces into six families. They're not neat categories or a marketing gimmick. They're pulled straight from Manitoba, from the Prairies, from the places and memories that've made me who I am.

Lake is those long Prairie summers. Early mornings when the water's so still it feels like glass. Evenings when those storm roll in, waves crashing against the dock, the air charged and electric. It's my family's cabin up at Amisk Lake. It's our friend's cottages on and near Lake of the Woods. It's those childhood adventures out at Made Lake and Child's Lake. It's the way time slows down the moment you step onto the shore.

Meadow is the openness of the Prairies. My family's pastures, rolling hills and the hayfields that stretched on forever. Grasses swaying in the wind. The sound of frogs at dusk. It's the kind of wide sky that makes you feel both small and grounded at the same time.

Forest is the bush at the edge of our family’s farmyard, the back trails I wandered as a kid and the long-abandoned logging paths my dogs and I explored. It’s the smell of pine needles underfoot, damp soil after rain, and jack pines rising along a northern trail. It’s also the back trails Rory and I have hiked together, the exploring we’ve done over the years, the kayaking and paddleboarding that’s carried us out to hidden islands on the lakes we love.

Wild is the unpredictability that comes with living out here. It’s wandering off the trail into tall grass where you’re not sure what you’ll find, the prairie storms that roll in before you have time to prepare, the sense of being at the mercy of the land. Wild is unruly thickets and untamed landscapes, cliff diving on a hot summer day, exploring caves and crevices, wandering down backroads that twist into the unknown. It’s sharp and alive, carrying both risk and reward. Wild is the edge of comfort, the reminder that not everything can be controlled, and the thrill that comes when you let go and step into the unexpected.

Lodge is the cabin after the storm. Firewood stacked by the door, the woodstove door creaking open as more logs are thrown on, the scent of smoke catching in the air. It’s curling up under a heavy duvet on a cold night, wool blankets pulled close, boots drying by the fire. Sometimes the air is damp and thick, but the warmth holds steady. Lodge is the echo of laughter against wood walls, the comfort of a table surrounded by friends, and the smell of my grandpa’s wood shop carried into memory. It’s how we find home in the middle of the wild.

North is winter on my family’s Manitoba farm. The stillness of snow falling for the first time each season. Snow forts built high in the yard, skates cutting across frozen sloughs, the rush of a toboggan hill with our dog chasing close behind. Cheeks rosy, laughter carrying through the crisp air, the warmth of coming inside to boots drying by the door. North is the clarity of a true Manitoba winter, the kind of memory that lingers long after the snow melts.

These six families aren't just ideas. They're landscapes, memories, moments. They're the stories I have carried with me and finally get to share.

I've been told more than once that my candles aren't art. That they don't belong in art gallery shops or the venues that my peers present their creative work in. That they're just consumables, not creations. And for a long time, I let that get to me. But I don't really anymore. Because I know what fragrance is. It's memory. It's a narrative. It's composition and atmosphere. It's fleeting. Here one moment, gone the next. And that's exactly what gives it its power.

Ten years in, I can say this business has been a mix of grit and grace, of labour and artistry, of mistakes and discoveries. I've worked myself raw. I've pushed myself past breaking points. And I feel it in my body.

I’m not an old guy, but I’ve poured more candles by hand than most people can imagine. Day after day, year after year - hunched over production tables, lugging cases of wax and tumblers, hours spent on my feet. My shoulders ache more than they used to, my wrists are starting to feel it, and most mornings my back reminds me that I'm not 21 anymore. That’s the reality of building something by hand at scale. There’s a physical toll that doesn’t show when you’re looking at a finished candle sitting neatly on a shelf.

I can't keep doing what I was doing. I can't keep running myself into the ground for the sake of volume. And I don't want to. Because the truth is, when something you once loved becomes only about keeping up, when you're working through the night just to get another case of candles out the door, you forget why you started in the first place. You can lose the joy. You can lose the artistry. You can lose yourself.

And that brings me to something I've wrestled with for a long time. The contrast between being an artist and being a business owner.

I didn't set out thinking about that divide. At the beginning, it was all one thing. I made something, I shared it, people bought it. That was enough. But as the business grew, the expectations grew with it. Suddenly it wasn't just about designing fragrance and making candles. It was about margins and shipping schedules and wholesale orders and keeping shelves stocked at all times. It was about being efficient, being consistent, being predictable.

There's a part of me that's proud of being able to do that. To build something from two hundred dollars into a brand that's lasted nearly a decade. To prove that I could run a business, not just make candles in my kitchen. But there's also a part of me that's always resisted. Because the artist in me doesn't always care about predictability. The artist in me wants to play, to take risks, to create pieces that might not make sense on a spreadsheet but are full of soul.

For years, I felt pulled between those two roles. If I leaned too much into the artist side, the business would suffer. If I leaned too much into the business side, the artistry would struggle. I tried to be everything to everyone, and in the process I nearly lost myself.

What I've come to understand is that both sides are part of who I am. I'm an artist. I'm a business owner. And the balance between the two is messy and imperfect, but it is also what makes Farmer’s Son Co what it is.

Labworks Discovery is part of me finding that balance again. It's the artist in me finally saying yes to the archive, yes to the experiments, yes to the ideas that were never safe or practical but always compelling. And it's also the business owner in me being honest about the fact that I can't keep doing things the way I did for the first decade. I can't keep pouring endless stock just to please everyone. I can't keep running at that pace. I want to run a business that is sustainable for Rory and I, for the people who come alongside us.

This collection is a bridge. A bridge toward our tenth year. A bridge toward a version of this brand where the artistry and the business are not at war with each other, but working together. I know who I am now. I know what I want to create. I know that Farmer’s Son Co. has never just been about candles. It's always been about story, about memory, about place. And my Labworks Discovery collection is a reminder of that.

And none of this would exist without you.

Whether you've been with me since the very beginning when I was pouring in my kitchen and posting photos from a tiny studio, or whether you've only just discovered us in our shoppe in Winnipeg’s West End, you're part of this story. You're the reason I've been able to keep creating. You're the reason these candles and fragrances have been able to live beyond my notebooks and my shelves. Your stories and your memories have carried mine further than I ever thought possible.

I can't wait for you to discover this collection. To take one home. To light it and see where it carries you.

Because in the end, there really is just something about scent.