Wayne Lenfesty enjoys keeping busy at age 67 refurbishing old wagons and buggies at his workshop eight kilometres north of Sundre.
“I always had a passion even when I was growing up. We had a buggy and there was buggies around – and of course the buggy era was gone and it was getting into the cars – but I always had an interest in the wheels and how they looked,” Lenfesty told the Gazette at his workshop last week, which is located on his property.
“You've got to do something when you retire or else you wither away, so I said, ‘I've got to do this when I retire', so I did.”
He took a wheelwright-associated course in Saskatoon in 2001 and retired from his job in 2005.
He moved to Sundre from Manitoba in 2012 to be closer to his daughters and extended family after his wife Joan passed away. He also had a workshop on his property in Manitoba.
He enjoys living in the Sundre area with his rescue dog Cavva and his cat Farley.
Aside from refurbishing old wagons and buggies, he creates wagon wheel clocks, coffee tables and lawn ornaments. He also makes cellphone cases and wallets out of leather.
He purchases his materials from Alberta Carriage Supply – a company located east of Calgary that imports its product from the Amish in Pennsylvania, Ohio and other eastern parts of the United States, he said.
He makes his products out of hickory and oak, which is not grown in Canada. Sometimes he finds old parts at auctions or even in the dump.
He doesn't do it for a business, but for a hobby that he is passionate about.
“It's a labour of love,” he said.
He is also a part of the Western Canadian Wheelwright's Association and attended a meeting last week in the United States.
“Sometimes I'll find an old hub that there's no buggy anymore just the one hub and I make it into a wheel,” he said.
When he was growing up his father farmed with horses. He also enjoys working with horses and riding them in the mountains.
“The first thing that I can ever remember doing as a kid is riding on top of a black horse named Beauty and a team that my dad was raking hay,” he said.
“I was riding the horse hanging onto the reins on the front of the harness, sitting on the horse bareback, and that's what I remember.”
