Growth opportunity

When Annebruce Falconer entered her 40s, she realized she was ready to leave modern dance for a whole new career— in organic farming.

Age or injury wasn’t top of mind for Annebruce Falconer when she decided to end her career as a professional dancer and pursue a new life path. After 25 years of performances and touring—complete with airports, hotel rooms and demanding hours—she realized there was more she wanted to explore beyond the stage.

Annebruce had always loved the country, while her husband, cellist Erich Kory, had a passion for vegetable gardening. After the couple purchased Liberterre Farm in Stanstead, Que., in 2005, an idea started to take form: What if she stopped dancing…to become a full-time farmer? Within a couple of years of buying the property, Annebruce decided to plunge full tilt into farming and approached the Dancer Transition Resource Centre for help turning her idea into a reality.

Annebruce applied for the largest grant available: $18,000 that could be stretched over up to three years. Most transitioning dancers use the money for education at university or college, but Annebruce created a plan to train in biodynamic organic farming by apprenticing at several Quebec farms. Once her application was approved, she audited a correspondence course on organic horticulture from Halifax University and took part in several intense weekend workshops—a method of training that she continues to this day. All the while, she was working on her own farm, using the knowledge she had learned.

Starting over in her 40s wasn’t easy. “I was absolutely petrified,” she says. “I knew dance so well and had been doing it for so long. It was my home.” When it came to farming, there was zero travel, early hours (she has to wake at 4:30 a.m. every day) and a tough learning curve. The process sometimes felt impossible. “It was like learning another language,” she says. “When I was learning French, I thought I would never be able to speak it.” But one day, just as with French, she realized she knew so much more than she thought she did from “plugging away.”

Six years after finishing her apprenticeships, Annebruce is content. Dance will always be a part of her (“If you talk to anybody who was a dancer, they’ll say it never leaves you,” she says), but she’s settled into her new lifestyle. She helps out at Ferme au bonheur des prés, a sheep farm that’s five minutes away from Liberterre, in addition to caring for her own vegetables and herbs. She and Erich have also developed a new line of skin care, Liberterre Apothecary (liberterreapothecary.com), using homegrown medicinal herbs such as chamomile, calendula and arnica.

Looking back, Annebruce wishes that she could have told herself to relax and trust the process. Though she made mistakes, like trying to raise both animals and other crops on her small farm, she knows that the missteps were necessary. “Everything I went through became a learning experience for where I am now.” And where she is now is exactly where she wants to be.

“EVERYTHING I WENT THROUGH BECAME A LEARNING EXPERIENCE FOR WHERE I AM NOW.”