BACK IN SHEARMAN’S living room as she sits on her couch, with her husband quietly cooking dinner in the background and her dog barking outside, she tells me she’s happy. She loves her affectionate sheep, her animals, and her business. She has been in the industry since her beginning days in England, first helping her father, and then when moving to Canada, to work on a strawberry, cattle, and horse farms through her high school and university years. She loves farming and likes business. As the only certified organic fruit grower in the area, she combines her passion with the care for the environment. Shearman is not interested in mechanization, and “won’t spray her apples.” As a women representative striving for success in the male-dominated world, never losing hope and fighting her way into the future, Shearman has done very well compared to how she started. “My family tree goes back to five, six, generations [of farmers],” she says. Although her children are not planning to succeed her on the farm, she looks forward to the bright future.
