The women in Tomina Jackson’s family have farmed for generations, but for years they’ve had to work in clothes that didn’t fit.
“It came up that we were all just kind of wearing men’s and boy’s clothing,” Jackson told the Co-operator.
“Men’s clothes aren’t made for women’s bodies,” she added. “Depending on the person, that might mean that the clothes that they wear are maybe a size or two too big… wearing clothes that are oversized can really add to that strain and actually make work more difficult.”
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Jackson decided she had the tools — and a good enough reason — to do something about the issue.
“These amazing, powerful women in my life, they just deserve so much more than oversized men’s clothing,” she said.
She teamed up with her aunt, Cheryl Digby, to co-found Rolling D Workwear.
Fifth-generation farmer
Jackson is among the fifth generation of farmers in her family. She works on the farm she grew up on — High Bluff Stock Farm, a mixed grain and purebred cattle operation near Inglis.
Back in 2018, the Co-operator took notice of Jackson, her sisters Fawn Jackson and Erin Jackson, and some of their friends after their all-female team walked away with the championship in the “Little Lady Classic” at Ag Ex’s cattle show.
High Bluff Stock Farm raises purebred Charolais and Simmental cattle. Jackson grew up showing them. She said the livestock and grain sides of the farm were both interesting to her as a kid, and certainly are now as a farm hand.
“I find a lot of enjoyment in, you know, driving equipment and caring for livestock and just doing general farm labour,” she said. “It’s just nice to be outdoors.”
She even likes Manitoba winters, she added.
“It’s just kind of one of those things in life that’s maybe just meant to be,” Jackson said. “My family was kind of meant to be filled with amazing women, and I think that I was meant to have the opportunity to work on my family’s farm, and I think that those two things were meant to come together to create the idea for Rolling D Workwear.”
Jackson works alongside her mom and one of her five sisters on the farm, but other women in the extended family are also farmers.
Sometimes they get to work together, and one of those days during a coffee break, the women discussed the lack of good workwear.
“As luck would have it,” Jackson said, her aunt owns Deasil Custom Sewing, a clothing manufacturing facility with experience in workwear.
Together, they got the ball rolling — drawing initial designs, getting patterns made, and testing their first product, the Home Farm Vest.
Because they farm, Jackson said, they could add the little details that might otherwise get missed — a pocket for a cellphone on the inside of the jacket, for instance, so the phone could stay warm in winter and not switch off. The side pockets aren’t tacked down inside, so they can be pulled inside out and emptied of any dirt they’ve collected.
In what’s likely an unlikely detail in menswear, hoods on their vests and jackets are cut to accommodate long hair tied up in a ‘bun.’
A community of women
Since Rolling D’s online store launched in February 2021, the response has been “so amazing,” Jackson said.
Social media and word of mouth have been their primary means of marketing Rolling D’s expanding collection of workwear across Canada.
“It’s allowed us to build a community of women who work outdoors,” Jackson said.
Juggling the farm and business can be tough but those women she’s connected with on social media keep her going, Jackson said.
Maybe every small business feels this way, Jackson said, but “we probably have the best customers in the whole world.”
“It was just my idea over a cup of coffee once, and to go from that spark of an idea to reading someone’s social media post about receiving their new workwear or having someone come up to you and say, ‘Oh, I love my new workwear. I wear it every day.’ It’s just beyond words.”
