Reading Time: 5 minutes Moving homes can be a very emotional experience for anyone, but for farm families, it’s doubly so. “When the family home is also the place of business, there is an interconnectedness in the heart of the family and the heart of the business,” says Boissevain, Man. farm family coach Elaine Froese. Whether the next generation […] Read more
Move out, move on
When it’s time to move to town or to sell off the old farm home, the whole family can feel they’ve got a stake in the decision. So how can anything get done?
Selling food donations
Lots of smart thinking is getting put into projects that deliver more donations to Canada’s food banks. Along with food processors and community donors, farmers are playing a proud role, but there’s room for more
Reading Time: 4 minutes Tania Little has deep gratitude for the support that farmers and farm groups give to Food Banks Canada. As chief development and partnership officer at FBC, it is Little’s job to connect sources of quality surplus food with the 4,700 agencies in the Canadian food bank network. “Farmers are very generous at heart … they […] Read more
Talking to kids about race
You may struggle to answer your kids’ questions, but resources are here, and the struggle sends a message
Reading Time: 6 minutes When her daughter, just four years old, came home from school at Kitchener, Ont., Marswa Blossom Yarmeto’s spirits sank. The more she learned, the more disheartened and sad she grew. Which of us wouldn’t? Her daughter was upset by how the other children were treating her. They told her they didn’t like her hair and […] Read more
I get by with a little help from my friends
We can get better at connecting with other people and developing friendships, and it will add immeasurably to our lives
Reading Time: 5 minutes Do you find yourself craving connection? Wishing you had more friends? Or that you could spend more time with the friends you do have? Do you long to be able to share more of your worries and concerns with your friends? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are in the majority. […] Read more
Find your flow
The path to feeling happier and healthier, from the science of positive psychology
Reading Time: 5 minutes If you’ve ever looked up at the clock and been surprised at how much time has passed, you were likely experiencing what positive psychologists call a state of flow. It’s in these flow experiences that you lose your sense of self. Your worries disappear and time slows down, says Sarah Gregg, a life and business […] Read more
Hungry in Canada
Shocking numbers of Canadians are getting left hungry and malnourished
Reading Time: 5 minutes Even before the pandemic, the number of people in Canada who didn’t have enough to eat was at alarming levels. Statistics Canada’s Community Health Survey reported in 2017-18 that 4.4 million people in Canada, including 1.2 million children under the age of 18, were unable to access enough food to eat. The pandemic has exacerbated […] Read more
Me? I’m not biased!
We all have unconscious biases. Acknowledging this isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s smart too
Reading Time: 6 minutes The truth is, it has probably happened to all of us. We meet someone for the first time and we walk away saying, “Wow, they’re a lot different that I thought they’d be.” Maybe we don’t think there’s a reason, but if we probed just a little, we’d often find it’s a sign our unconscious […] Read more
Breaking the silence of racism
When we give sexist and racist comments and stereotypes a free pass on our farms and in our daily lives, we’re guilty of perpetuating them
Reading Time: 6 minutes Too often we let racist, sexist or homophobic comments slide because it’s awkward or uncomfortable to call them out. But as human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Here’s how Bronwynne Wilton, a Fergus, Ont. […] Read more
Creating a better place to work
Use new findings in psychology to create spaces where you and your family will thrive
Reading Time: 5 minutes It’s a basic human need to have a space where you feel comfortable, safe and secure. Having a place to rest, refresh and revitalize can help us cope with the extraordinary challenges of farming and the pandemic. While we can’t control everything in our environments, if we pay attention to what we can control we […] Read more
One-pot cooking makes meal prep a snap
Award-winning cookbook author offers tips on cooking from scratch
Reading Time: 5 minutes Getting a healthy home-cooked dinner on the table night after night can be a challenge for busy farm families. Thanks to an award-winning cookbook from Stratford, Ontario’s Jan Scott, this task just got a little easier. Scott’s Oven to Table cookbook features more than a hundred “mess-free, stress-free” delicious one-pot recipes that can be made […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
