Besides generating a customer and vendor base there are also key administrative foundations that need to be established.

Although 2014 was the first year that Shoal Lake became involved in a market with two dates held, this year saw a total of nine at the fairgrounds.

“Vendors are drawn from Angus­ville, Hamiota, Shoal Lake and Strathclair,” said Dennis Green of the Shoal Lake Community Development Corporation, which assists the local ag society.

The Shoal Lake market is a member of the Manitoba Farmers Market’s Association of Manitoba Co-op Inc., with an average of five to 10 vendors so far, providing freshly grown produce, and a variety of crafts.

The mission of many farmers’ markets is to: benefit local producers by providing a market for their product; benefit consumers by providing a high-quality, unique product; and benefit the community by building a sense of community, local economic development, and preservation of local agriculture.

Many are now several generations removed from farming, and farmers’ markets remind us of where our food comes from and who tends it.

Farming is a part of our heritage, one that nourishes and supports communities and the natural environment. Let’s support our farmers’ markets!

Darrell Nesbitt writes from Shoal Lake, Manitoba

The post Starting a farmers’ market appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Barb Packwood, a registered nurse from Carberry, holds the position of regional palliative care co-ordinator for the east half of the area administered by the ARHA. She says there are 24 facilities in the entire ARHA, “a region the size of no other, with the exception of Winnipeg.”

The two palliative care co-ordinators in the ARHA help facilitate a multidisciplinary team approach to patient care, relying on input from doctors, pharmacists, nurses, social workers, spiritual advisers, home-care providers, and family and friends. They then formulate a “whole-person” flexible plan of care to help alleviate suffering in all areas of a patient’s life.

Packwood assists a monthly roster of 65 to 70 people on an annual basis; clients who are at home, in hospital or in a long-term facility. “Palliative care services are not about dying, but rather about living life to the fullest before we die,” she said.

Palliative care is not only about sadness or depression. A client who had initially been hesitant to use any of the services, ultimately was relieved to be offered supportive care to meet her life goals.

Sometimes, a person just needs someone to help access the drug program that pays for medications and home oxygen, or help with documentation such as advance-care planning and health-care directives, should that person become incapacitated.

There is a tremendous need for volunteers, and throughout the year training sessions are held covering such things as: introduction to palliative care, confidentiality, understanding the dying person, communication and cultural needs, physical and spiritual care of the dying and the role of the volunteer in loss, grief and bereavement. A potential volunteer needs to attend each of six two-hour training sessions and undergo a child abuse registry and criminal records check, as well as an intake interview.

A volunteer makes contact with a client on a regular basis to visit, listen and reminisce, offer a ride or respite care, or perhaps spend the night with someone who is restless and wakeful. They can have the ultimate satisfaction of knowing they have helped to make someone’s journey easier and their last moments peaceful.

For more information contact Barb Packwood at 204-841-4058.

The post ARHA Palliative Care Services appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Sometimes we don t realize how big the little things in life really are. Many of us have fond, childhood memories that brought us joy, but may have had a greater effect on our lives than we really know.

For Kendra Sitko, a wife, mother, employee and business owner, the little things in life go back to growing up on Clement s Bar C Ranch, west of Rossburn, with her parents Fred and Lois Clement. It was here where she began her dream of becoming a professional photographer.

Casual farm life shots with emphasis on the ranch-raised horses was the kick-start to Kitko Photography &Dezine.

While I was a shutterbug on the farm, I truly never fell in love with photography until about 11 years ago, said Sitko. Back in those days a 35-mm film Canon Sure Shot was the camera of choice and today, I m still a Canon girl.

Sitko now uses digital equipment, shooting with two Canon SLR cameras and an assortment of lenses. As well, to capture that perfect shot, many, many props along with backdrops, lighting equipment, etc. are used.

Over the past seven years, the mother of two has taken several courses and is presently taking her Certificate in Photography from the New York Institute of Photography. However, she feels her biggest learning tool is the hands-on experience gained over the years.

She s a super-talented, accommodating and affordable professional photographer, says Thomasina Charney of Rossman Yurts, a friend and fellow area business owner.

It s only been recently that Sitko has been able to call herself a professional photographer. Anyone can pick up a camera and take a picture but to capture a photograph is very different, said Sitko. I think in terms of calling myself a professional, it has a lot to do with self-confidence believing in yourself and your work.

Although time is presently shared with family, employment within the payroll department of the Assiniboine Regional Health Authority s office at Shoal Lake, and photography bookings, Sitko s goal is to become a full-time photographer.

Along with photography, other business services offered are custom thank-you, wedding, Christmas or baby cards, digital photo albums, and canvas photo work. Check out her website, www.kitkophotography.com for information.

Photography is important in personal lives because it captures a moment in time, said Sitko, who lives near Oakburn, with husband Ryan, six-year-old son Logan and two-year-old daughter Jada. Memories are keepsakes allowing us to relive something important. Photos give us a visual keepsake forever.

As the person behind the camera, Sitko feels there are many, many perks. It s a complete honour when someone asks me to capture their pictures for them. I get to see the happiness in the moment or the love on a wedding day or the pure excitement on grad day. To create such beautiful keepsakes and to watch how happy they are when they see the finished product is very gratifying.

Keeping busy

Usually doing two to three grad classes per year and anywhere from eight to 12 weddings, Sitko has so far done nine weddings and 50 photo sessions this year with another 10 sessions, one wedding and one event left for 2011.

Living on the Prairies, Sitko feels surrounded by beauty all the time, but loves shooting in the fall with all the added colours. It s not only on the Prairies that she has had the opportunity to share her magic and passion as a photographer, but also in Mexico over the years, and this year she and her gear will be heading to the Dominican.

Being involved in local promotions, she considers herself to be very lucky to be part of Oakburn, Rossburn and Shoal Lake, as it s not only a great way to promote her business but also a means of giving back to the community, as she feels communities need to support each other to be successful.

While the percentage of time given to photography varies with the time of year, her family is always first. From May to October hardly a day goes by where she doesn t work on her photography on some level, but she doesn t really consider it working as she loves it so much.

Seeing her work enlarged and hanging on a customer s wall is a personal reward for Sitko. This month she takes her business to the next level, as she will be opening a studio in mid-November on Main Street in Shoal Lake, which will be a personal dream fulfilled thanks to learning by doing and by working on the little things in life capturing moments of warmth and delight.

Darrell Nesbitt writes from Shoal Lake, Manitoba

The post Dream Being Fulfilled appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

This is a second year the health authority is hosting the spring workshops at health centres across Westman, bringing in speakers to talk about starting and tending a backyard garden. A series of garden workshops last spring plus canning and preserving workshops later last year attracted enough interest that they thought they’d try it again, said ARHA Hamiotabased community dietitian Chantal Morais.

The ARHA ran the workshops as part of a dietitians’ campaign to encourage eating more homegrown vegetables and developing a greater awareness of where food comes from.

“The workshops were really well received last year and there was a lot of enthusiasm,” said Morais, adding that about a dozen are signed up to participate in one scheduled for this week in Boissevain.

Local instructors are well-known gardeners who offer an overview on how to start and tend a vegetable garden.

“We had seasoned gardeners attend and people who’d never gardened before last year,” said Morais. They also had a few newcomers from other countries now living in southwestern Manitoba. “They were interested in learning about all the things that they could grow.”

The ARHA wants to inspire people to grow a little more of their own food and enjoy the multiple health benefits that can be derived from gardening, including more fresh air and exercise, she said.

Health surveys done in the ARHA show about one-third of youth to be either overweight or obese. A small percentage of households also indicate they experience food insecurity from time to time, lacking money to buy food.

David Neufeld, a greenhouse grower at Boissevain taught workshops last year and will lead a garden workshop there on April 21.

There is renewed interest in growing a larger percentage of one’s own food, Neufeld said, adding that among those attending workshops he ran last year included those who had never gardened in their life.

It’s striking that many of a younger generation lack basic gardening skills given that so many older adults retain them, he said.

A big attraction to gardening is the taste of all things homegrown.

“I think that’s one of the first things that gets us to consider growing our own food is when we taste food that others grow in their own gardens,” he said.

“We realize what we’re missing.” Upcoming ARHA workshops will

be held April 21 at Boissevain Health Centre and April 25 at the Virden Health Centre. Both free workshops run from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Please preregister by contacting 204-523-3227 or email tkempt@arha.ca. lorraine@fbcpublishing.com

The post How-To Workshops Were Popular Last Year appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

March is the month when the hundreds of small plots, found in gardens throughout the city are assigned on a first-come-firstserved basis.

Some may get turned away. There are now waiting lists of eager gardeners hoping to get one of the 400 plots in Brandon’s network of seven gardens.

“There is huge demand for community gardening in Brandon,” Ryan Graves community development co-ordinator with Brandon’s Neighbourhood Renewal Corporation told a session at the Food Matters Manitoba’s Growing Local Conference in late February.

Community gardening has sparked interest across all age groups and demographics and people are doing it “for every kind of reason,” she said. Some do it for exercise and recreation, or as a social outing. “And some just want to know where their food comes from,” she said.

Community gardening has been done in the city for over 15 years. Last year was the first year a network was formed made up of the City of Brandon and the school division, Samaritan House, the Agriculture and Agri- Food Canada Research Station and the Brandon Friendship Centre. The network is co-ordinated through the BNRC office.

As they co-ordinate who gets a plot each spring, some are set aside for Samaritan House to distribute among to those needing to grow food to stretch a household food budget, Graves noted.

Many of the gardens have raised beds to allow individuals with back problems to enjoy gardening. Rock Park Garden, at the corner of 15th St. and Louise Ave. is popular among older persons who live in a nearby seniors’ residence.

Other gardens are attended by

children such as the garden at the New Era Community School Garden. The East End Community Centre Garden at Victoria Ave. and Franklin St. was built by Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) partnership with the Brandon Community Garden Network.

The largest garden amongst the seven is located at 26th St. and Maryland Ave. and has 150 plots, to be expanded to 200 this spring. Others are at 3rd St. and Aberdeen and at 12th St. and Van Horne Ave. Another garden near Rock Park garden is known as the Park Community Centre Cen- garden.

They’ve had to set down some ground rules – including no sales of produce grown on these public plots– and co-ordination has had its challenges, notes Graves.

“But there has been a ton of benefits from this,” she said. “If I had to pick one I would say it is the way it’s brought the community together.”

People are also getting more exercise, learning new skills and eating more vegetables, she added.

The gardening bug also bit more southwestern Manitobans beyond the city of Brandon last year too, thanks to another initiative of the Assiniboine Regional Health Authority.

RHA community dietitians Sandra Smith and Chantal Morais also spoke at Growing Local describing last year’s garden and food preservation workshops offered to help more people grow and harvest a little more of their own food.

The RHA was motivated by last year’s national nutrition theme of Dietitians of Canada – to eat a healthier diet of homegrown foods – but also by stats that show vegetable intake is low among many southwesterners.

Funding to run the workshops came through the RHA and Healthy Together Now, a chronic disease prevention initiative.

The workshops spurred many to try gardening on their own properties as well as community gardens such as those inititiated in Killarney, Morais said.

The two dietitians said both the how-to-garden workshops and food preservation workshops attracted broad interest, including among many young people who’d never gardened before, residents of several of the First Nations communities in the ARHA and

new Canadians who’ve moved into the southwest.

Participants were extremely enthusiastic about what they were learning, both at the gardening and canning workshops, she said.

“I just remember the face of this one girl who said she couldn’t wait to go home and try to grow potatoes.”

But with their own workload now shifting to other priorities, it’s not clear right now if or how this initiative will continue on another year.

“Our vision is for it to carry on in our RHA,” said Morais. “There is definitely more interest in it.”

Other dietitians around Manitoba have been made aware of the ARHA’s workshops. The model is now out there for others to try, added Smith.

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“Therehasbeenaton ofbenefitsfromthis. IfIhadtopickone Iwouldsayitisthe wayit’sbroughtthe communitytogether.”

Ryan Graves

The post More Southwestern Manitobans Are Gardening appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

But the Notre Dame resident doesn’t want her home canning experience to stop there. “I’d love to learn to make pickles,” she says.

That’s why, on a rainy fall evening last week, she was among a half dozen women assembled in the Treherne Collegiate’s home economics room to spend an evening learning the basics of home food preservation.

For two hours they watched Basswood area farmer and professional home economist Susan Proven demonstrate how to dehydrate celery leaves, can a corn-and bean-based salsa in a pressure canner, blanch and package swiss chard, and put up nearly a dozen jars of ruby-red crabapple jelly.

At the end of the evening they left reassured that a pressure canner wouldn’t leave a crater where their kitchen once was, and confident about new information or skills obtained.

For some it was a refresher course too.

“I’ve been canning for 40 years and just came to see what’s changed,” said Treherne-area farmer Diane Cain. She doesn’t see dramatic changes to the methods.

HEALTHIER LIVING

The workshop is one of several the Assiniboine Regional Health Authority (ARHA) Health Promotion Team has facilitated across southwestern Manitoba this year to help more Manitobans enjoy eating healthy home-grown foods by honing their skills and getting up-to-date information on preservation methods.

They’d like to see more Manitobans boost their vegetable and fruit intake – the more locally raised the better – and enjoy the benefits of gardening for physical exercise, says ARHA community nutritionist Sandra Smith in Rivers.

These workshops are a way to rekindle skills for living healthier lifestyles.

“We do hear people saying this is something something that perhaps they’ve seen their parents doing, or their grandparents, but they haven’t been doing it and they weren’t really sure how to do it now,” she said. And they don’t necessarily have anyone to ask for help.

RESTORING SKILLS

Proven grew up in a city and didn’t learn how to preserve food until moving to the Minnedosa area to farm. In the 1970s she had help from neighbours.

“I was very fortunate in that there were older women in the community who were able to help me with this. But a lot of those women aren’t doing it anymore. ”

She saw a sharp decline in these activities during the 1980s, when something had to give as more women began to work off the farm and couldn’t manage the additional workload of a big garden. Women started earning wages and buying food instead.

“We’ve kind of gone through this store mentality that everything is available there, so why would we go to the work,” says Joan Clement, a Russellbased home economist whose also facilitated some of the workshops.

PRESSURE CANNER

Proven said most questions asked during workshops have related to pressure canners versus the boiling water bath and which foods are low-acid foods. People also want to learn correct methods and procedures. In some cases, they’ve made mistakes.

“I had one man tell me he’d put 100 bags of beans away that he hadn’t blanched,” she said.

The pressure canner is scary. “They hear stories that it’s going to blow up,” she continues. It’s not going to blow up, she assures them, and notes people seem more confident about using it after seeing it demonstrated at the workshops.

Clement said she thinks people need more venues like these to ask questions.

“People in my groups said they don’t really know where to go for information,” she said. Extension services aren’t available anymore. People do look to the Internet but they aren’t necessarily finding reliable or credible information.

And it’s no substitute for a hands-on workshop.

“They went home feeling this jar of three-pepper jelly looks good and I think they also had a real sense of accomplishment,” said Clement. “I think people found this very worthwhile and said they’d were going to put their information into practice.”

The groups’ size have been anywhere from about six to a dozen participants per workshop, Smith said.

“It’s been a mix of people,” she said. “About half are those who have canned for years and are wanting updates and about half are young people who have never canned before and want to start.”

Men have come out too, she added. “They’re gardeners who are looking to can.”

Courses have been offered in Rossburn, Carberry, Virden, Hamiota, Killarney, Minnedosa and Treherne.

One more food preservation workshop is scheduled for Oct. 21 at Melita’s Victoria United Church CE Hall from 7 to 9 p. m. To register or for more information contact the ARHA health promotion team at (204)328-5269. lorraine@fbcpublishng.com

The post Food Preservation Workshops Help Build Healthier Lifestyles, Hone Skills – for Sep. 23, 2010 appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.