Susanna Freymark
What Heidi Beynon wants is simple – to sell her ethical fur products at a medieval festival in Newcastle.
Heidi has been making hides and other fur products at her 90-acre property at Myrtle Creek, near Rappville for the past five years.
She said she is a tanner and furrier – this is someone who makes items out of animal fur, such as coats, hats, and stoles – Heidi does all of this and more.
“I’m a farmer, we harvest goats to eat and then I tan the hides,” Heidi said.
She’s been a tanner and furrier for 12 years. She has a visual arts degree and she also teaches tanning.
At the farm there are 70 goats, 20 kids and many rabbits.
On her kitchen table her experiments in taxidermy are evident – a life size grey and white rabbit stands poised as if alert to a danger. She has hats and fox tails spread out on the table.
Tanning is physical work, Heidi said.
Sometimes a farmer will bring a cowskin to Heidi to be tanned and she stretches the hide across a frame out the back of the house.
The studio she is building in the backyard overlooking the goats, turkeys and dogs isn’t finished yet.
The work is messy, requires a lot of effort, time and patience to turn an animal skin into something soft and useable.
Heidi believes in using every part of the animal. She opposes foreign hides because there is no guarantee the skins are ethically farmed.
She gets foxtails and furs sent to her by a person who has a licence for pest management and is authorised to kill foxes. The fox tails can be clipped onto a bag or hat are one of her most popular items.
She’s been doing markets for more than 10 years.
And for the first time, she was told by Newcastle Council that she couldn’t sell her animal products at the festival.
“There had been a complaint about fur products being sold at the festival,” she said.
This is part of the letter Newcastle Council sent to Heidi.
“Based on the information you have provided, products comprising animal skins with hair or fur attached, including rabbit, fox, deer, goat, kangaroo, sheep, reindeer or cowhide products, would likely fall within the scope of the current condition, regardless of whether the animal was farmed, harvested, commercially sourced, recycled, or processed primarily for another purpose.”
The festivals are important to Heidi, she goes to about five medieval festivals a year and it is where she makes her money.
Two weeks ago, Heidi wrote a social media post about the ban.
The post went viral with 98,000 views and 345 reactions.
Heidi wrote to the council.
“ I couldn’t let this go,” she said.
“This is my livelihood.”
The Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party (no affiliation to Heidi) took hold of the issue and presented it in parliament supporting the sale of fur products at the festival.
Newcastle Council reversed their decision and in a few weeks, Heidi and her furs will be headed to the festival on September 5–6.
“It’s going to be intense,” Heidi said about being at the festival after the controversy.
She has a lot of work to do before then.
The goats come bleating into the yard as Heidi calls them. After a quick feed and pat of the goats, Heidi is back to work stretching goatskin, cleaning foxtails and making fur hats.
IndyNR.com checked Richmond Valley and Kyogle council websites to see if they had a fur selling policy but we were unable to find one.
Find out more about what Heidi does here.