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HEALTH AND LIFESTYLE
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Kirby McDonald
by KRISTA TURCASSO
My daughters are enamoured with horses and have been since they were wee. Last summer, they had weekly classes at Love it or Leave it Ranch and the love only grew. Not only did these lessons teach them how to ride horses, they also learned how to properly take care of them, move around them, and feel at ease with them. I was amazed at the progression.
While there, we noticed many individuals who have taken horse riding to the next level, and I was intrigued by this connection and growth as personally was not exposed to it growing up in Fernie. Interestingly, Jen Kennedy, who runs Love it or Leave it Ranch grew up here as well and luckily for many had a different experience and passion. She connected me with Kirby, who shared with us her experience.
Kirby McDonald, Age 24 Q. What drew you to riding horses?
A. My mom rode horses and got me into doing jumping lessons when I was young. I quit riding after a couple years but picked it back up when I was 18. I love it because every day is a new challenge. It is different from other sports because you connect with an animal that wants to work as hard as you do.
Q. When did you get into competing and what do you enjoy about it?
A. I started competing when I was about six. I like competing more for my horse’s benefit. It is great to get them to different places, and you can show all the hard work you have put in.
Q. What events / competitions have you competed in and what goals / events do you have coming up?
A. Every summer, I go to Paramount Equestrian Center. It was my horse’s first year showing this year which was a great success. For next year, I am hoping to jump in the grass arena.
Q. What is it like being a part of the Love it or Leave it Ranch team?
A. I love going out to the barn. The atmosphere itself is peaceful where you can get sidetracked for hours. It is a great escape from the world. Submitted Photo
Get in touch to share your journey with sport! We are looking for all ages, levels and types of sports. Email krista@clarismedia.com.
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The Harvest
by ASHLEY LORTSCHER
It’s hard to think that Summer is drawing to an end, but that doesn’t mean that you need to stop gardening.
Fall Gardening
Did you know that there are lots of tasty greens that you can plant now and still harvest in the late Fall? Quick growing and cold hardy plants such as kale, arugula, and cold hardy lettuce varieties can survive mild to moderate frosts without protection. Cabbages, kohlrabi, broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots are all frost resistant but may need a little extra protection to reach full maturity. A layer of greenhouse plastic, row cover, or some extra fluffy straw can help protect plants. Raised beds or gardens on a slight slope can also help protect from frost pockets.
Cold Frames
Cold frames are a great way to extend the garden season. They are often south facing and made from layered greenhouse plastic or glass. Straw bales can be placed around them to help insulate the already established veggies. Cold frames can also be below ground level; the garden beds are dug down into the ground, covered with glass or plastic, and covered at night with a sheet or blanket to trap the heat from the ground. I know of a few folks in Fernie harvesting their carrots in January by using cold frames! While the carrots are no longer growing, they can still stay fresh and crisp well into the winter.
Passive Solar Garden Heaters
Passive solar garden heaters are great for spring and fall as help trap the heat of the day to be released at night. They can help warm the soil for seed germination or help protect plants from hard frosts. They can be as simple as half buried large rocks or small boulders to a more elaborate system using deep wells dug into the ground with air or water circulated through piping.
Putting Gardens to Bed
Are you just done with gardening for the season? Well now is a great time to prep your beds to get a jump start on next season! Adding “slow” nutrients to your soil such as compost, straw, leaves, and grass clippings can allow for slow decomposition over the fall and winter so you’re ready to go in the spring! Please consider leaving dead or dying plants in the garden instead of throwing them in the compost pile. While it might be a nice visual to have fully cleared bed, the roots of the dead plant provide important habitat for soil organisms over the winter and the stalks a place for beneficial insects to overwinter.
Submitted Photo
“Are you just done with gardening for the season? Well now is a great time to prep your beds to get a jump start on next season! “
Knowledge Through Travel
by PATRICK ROBERTSON
Summer is coming to a close. School doors open once again as students stream through them to get their formal education. One of the things that we learn is the meaning of, “the more you know, the less you know.”
We live in a complicated world. Whether it be economics or culture, there are a lot of steps and a lot of things to learn. Education as a process of learning to develop and improve our knowledge and skills is an essential part of our lives, professionally, socially, personally and emotionally.
The ability to be able to travel easily throughout the world is a recent phenomena that allows for a vast amount of knowledge to be transferred through personal interaction. It is easy to plan your own education through travel. Pick a topic, any topic. You could visit the great museums of the world or perhaps visit the major spiritual places in the world. There are an infinite number of educational trips that can be planned.
Travel is an important part of education. I see young vintners travel from BC to New Zealand to work their harvest followed by a year in France working at various vineyard wineries and then bring young vintners home to BC to complete the circle. The education they receive allows them to become masters of their trade in a variety of settings. The same thing happens with chefs, designers, and many other professions.
A girl I know spent a month this summer doing her grade 12 English and Socials courses in Europe. Every day they visited historic and cultural places that tied to their curriculum and learned about them firsthand. She visited, reflected, embraced and wrote about these magnificent places and how they fit into our history. The places did not mean a thing to her before. They were just words on a page. She said it was the best learning experience she has ever had. When my wife and I travel, we travel to learn about other cultures in the world. We learn about their history, food, music, theatre, language and their way of life. We make connections to our own culture which allows us to understand and appreciate other cultures.
When we travel to other lands, we find ourselves focusing on the present and find that it is important to be humble while on our journey. Being humble allows us to more easily build positive relationships, gives us better self-control and the ability to cope with the anxiety of travel uncertainty. Most importantly, it allows us
Pat (right) at Cordon Bleu, Submitted Photo
“Learning about other cultures gives us the ability to embrace all ways of life and not to take things we have for granted. ”
to appreciate that our Western way of life is not the best way to live and to have a good life. Travel lets us experience people’s happiness all over the world and recognize that people are living a good life in the various cultures and socio-economic levels.
Learning about other cultures gives us the ability to embrace all ways of life and not to take things we have for granted. This leads us to enjoy the small things around us; the warm wind in the evening, the sound of birds in the trees, the smell of the earth after an afternoon shower.
Travel also teaches us to go with the flow and not sweat the little things. There are always external things beyond our control. Things go wrong with bookings, plans are changed, flights are cancelled; it is necessary to be patient and go with the flow.
Travel is my self-education and I have found that it is the best education one can receive.
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Grief
by TYLA CHARBONNEAU
Have you ever had a feeling of such intense pain that you long for the day that it will end? Those moments where you lay in bed unable to move and the thought of getting up, or even breathing, seems equivalent to climbing Everest without oxygen. It can feel like everything you are experiencing or thinking about has become an accumulative weight that is sinking into your chest rendering you unable to move. Tears in such quantity you wonder if you have any water left in your body and your eyes are so red and sore you need to place an ice mask on them to heal but that process gets interrupted by more tears. While it comes in many shapes and forms this is grief, and when we grieve it is often more for what we hoped our life or relationship could have been than for what we lost itself.
Often, we reserve the term grief for when people or animals die. This is perhaps the most intense form of grief and it can at times turn into anguish. People are often surprised to learn that they might be experiencing grief in relations to job loss, the end of a relationship (romantic or friendship), selling a home, retirement, or any major life change. It is also the emotion that people try to avoid or look for a way out of more than any other, perhaps because the intensity at times can feel unbearable. The following are suggestions on how to move through grief:
Take one day at time. One foot in front of the other. Be kind to yourself if you are unable to do what you used to for a while. There is no way around grief except through it. We will always search for the exit ramp or the by-pass but it does not exist. Unfortunately, we have to feel it. If we try to avoid these emotions they still influence our behaviours and often will show up in less than pleasant ways, such as snapping at a friend or crying uncontrollably in the grocery store. We have to feel it, name it, sit with it. It will, for lack of a better word, suck, a lot.
Ask for help. Grief is not the time to be independent and strong. It is the time to call your friends and have them sit with you while you cry. To bring you tea or dinner. It is okay to allow others to show up for you when you need it most. The bonus of this is as you sort through your loss you will see how loved and cared for you are. A second bonus is that once we allow ourselves to be vulnerable with others, we often send an invitation for them to do the same with us, thus creating common humanity and safe spaces for real talk about our emotions.
Write. Grief is irrational. It will convince you to believe many things that are not true or to act in ways that are inconsistent with your character. Write these thoughts out, it helps, and remember to not censor your thoughts, what you write can always be burnt or destroyed later.
Talk about it and use whatever
language you need to. We isolate ourselves from death, we call it “passing away” to try and lessen the weight of the loss but this can sometimes demean our experiences. Death, divorce, getting fired - use the language that fits best with your experience and avoid trying to make your loss easier for someone to sit with.
Perhaps most importantly please know there is no timeline, and no rules for grief. This can be a tough one to embrace but it is so true. Grief looks different for each person and we all grieve for different reasons. There is no wrong way to grieve.
Submitted Photo
“...there is no timeline, and no rules for grief. This can be a tough one to embrace but it is so true. Grief looks different for each person and we all grieve for different reasons. There is no wrong way to grieve.”
The content provided in this article is for information purposes only. It is not meant as a substitute for professional medical or psychological advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you find yourself in distress, please reach out to your local physician who can provide mental health resources in your community.
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