HELPING OTHERS

“Today is 780+ days since Alexandra Richardson’s last chemotherapy treatment. Our daughter has spent the last 2+ years dealing with the side-effects from her cancer-treatments and learning to do things from “baby-steps” all over again. Lots of her post-chemo rehab was cancelled or delayed by COVID-19... but the folks at Hope Haven Therapeutic Riding Centre have been able to help her regain so much self-confidence via their recreational, occupational & physical therapy programs. After many months of “baby-steps” - TODAY is the first day she has been able to ride outside of the ring.” - Proud father, Mark Richardson

Located at the top of the Beaver Valley, Hope Haven Therapeutic Riding Centre empowers individuals of all ages with (dis)abilities or unique needs by building self-esteem, confidence and lifetime skills through equestrian sport, recreation, and therapeutic programs. Our Hope Haven team consists of specially trained human and equine professionals and a robust, dedicated community of volunteers. Together we harness the power of adaptive techniques, equipment, and teaching methods to enable individuals with (dis) abilities or unique needs to explore the world of equestrian, including Ontario’s first Special Olympics equestrian team.

We welcome your interest! For programs visit: www.hopehavencentre. org/programs

To volunteer visit: www.hopehavencentre. org/volunteer

To donate visit: www.hopehavencentre. org/donate

HOPE HAVEN THERAPUTIC RIDING CENTRE 545747 Sideroad 4A, Markdale 519-986-1247 partnerships@hopehavencentre.org www.hopehavencentre.org

With all the craziness going on in the world, I would hope the general population would just stop and smell the roses! Not only is it February, but we also have Chinese New Year, Groundhog Day, Paul’s Birthday, Family Day, and Valentine’s Day all packed in to this fantastic month. Of course, there are lockdowns, more restrictions, blah, blah, blah. But to me, that means share the love and do it through food! Since Paul and I are so busy on the farm from May to December it’s hard to cook amazing, mouth watering dinners that we crave to eat. Don’t get me wrong, I can whip up the best salads right from my garden, but these slower months give me the time to really get out and shop for delicacies from all things local.

As you all know, I’m a big fan of supporting your local restaurants, breweries, wineries and food producers while staying safe, and Grey & Bruce Counties have some of the best to offer! It has been fun to go into every bakery I can and have my eyes roll back into my head over the incredible smells, or pop into a store that only carries everything local, so that you can sample something from other amazing farms and food producers. Even Pure Music Garlic gets into February treats and delicacies with homemade black garlic fudge and my special red velvet cupcakes with black garlic hearts. It’s a great time to wine and dine your significant other with a creative expression for your love on Valentine’s Day. Or time to stubbornly ignore the holiday because you don’t need to take part in the blatant commercialism of V-Day and decide that every day with your partner is special, right? I’m personally not a sappy V-Day kind of girl, but the eat local, buy local theme feels really good for this month.

Paul knows the way to my heart is through food, I prefer to do most of the cooking, but he does make the best spaghetti sauce and homemade beef barley soup, all from scratch. But he always buys the best lamb chops from our favourite local farm, and then a freshly baked loaf of bread from Markdale, and an incredible bottle of wine from one of our great producers in Clarksburg. Then I stand over my stove preparing an incredible dinner for the two of us. In other words, perfect - but not always when the kids are home. Yes, sweetie, lambs are cute, but sometimes cute animals are delicious. Anyway, not to get off topic but I do get passionate about what I like.

So this month, order take out from your favourite Chinese restaurant, eat Pure Music Garlics white chocolate fudge with black garlic while watching the movie Groundhog Day, honk as you drive by Boars Rock Farm for Paul’s 63rd birthday, and take the kids on an adventure through Grey County for Family Day!

PAUL & LORRAINE IRWIN

LORRAINE IRWIN

Lorraine Irwin is a mother, a wife, a theatre buff and the owner of Pure Music Garlic Products. She makes all of her gourmet garlic products using Organic Garlic grown on their farm (Boars Rock Farm). Check out her ad on Page 7.

PURE MUSIC GARLIC PRODUCTS puremusicgarlic@gmail.com puremusicgarlic.com @puremusicgarlic (519) 942-5410

BOARS ROCK FARM 136407 Grey Road 12, Grey Highlands boarsrockfarm.ca @boarsrockfarm

As a pharmacist and Certified Diabetes Educator, I could share with you all sorts of stats, guidelines, studies, and other information that is generally meaningless on the individual level of eliciting change. In my practice, I’ve seen varied causes, attitudes, and mindsets towards diabetes and it’s management.

Today, I’m going to take a different approach and start at the beginning of it all: MINDSET.

There’s no argument that there are psychosocial factors that contribute to diabetes. These are factors that lump in your mood, mindset, approach, environment, and support that contribute to your health in diabetes. In my opinion, this is where it all begins. While there are foods that are low in sugar, and drugs that lower your blood sugar, the most effective way of managing the symptoms of diabetes is to change your mindset and habits.

At a high level, Type 2 Diabetes is caused by the body’s inability to process sugar due to being overloaded with sugar over a long period of time. Your body’s sugar processing system gets overloaded and becomes less effective over time. So to truly prevent, reduce the occurence of, and help to manage or control diabetes, it all comes down to the same thing: controlling your sugar intake.

Here is where the mindset comes in. Reading the above paragraph, many people may first jump to the thought of “I can’t live without X” or “It’s too hard to make those changes” or “I can’t do diets”. And yet, there are many people that do all those things that you’re thinking of. And because you said you can’t, you’ll be right.

So these are all limiting beliefs. They are limiting you from achieving the health that you want (assuming that we all want to be “healthy”). Our brains and bodies are complex systems that are often broken apart by science and sectioned off into components. This division is great for helping understand the different workings of the individual parts of the body. In the case of diabetes, the function of the pancreas and how it processes sugar has been well mapped out. Medications target different parts of this system and we can hack the body into lowering blood sugar levels. That would be amazing if we were just a floating pancreas.

In reality, as people, we come as one whole complex and intertwined system. Our mindset and moods affect our actions that then have effects on our health. There is definitely a place for all the advances of modern medical science, and it can only be made more effective if we begin to listen to our bodies and start considering real change.

The biggest shift here is to understand that things can either happen to you, or you can make things happen. A diagnosis of diabetes could be looked at as your body is failing to process the sugar that you are taking in. What about looking at this “failure” as feedback. If your body were telling you something about how it’s processing sugars, what would that message be? Maybe there are better food choices that you could make based on this feedback from your body. Coming to a conscious understanding of this could help you begin to bring awareness to what changes could benefit you. Building in this unconscious understanding, and using that unconscious power to drive your actions is building new habits.

Find Jon at jnthn.ca

JONATHAN NHAN

Jonathan Nhan Co-Founder, Curate and Upgrade

Here I sit, working from home, listening to our medical officer who asked us to do so if possible in an effort to slow the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19. I’m tired of having my life turned upside down, tired of the same ole, same ole, just plain tired. Are you?

When I think I’ve got it bad, I think about all the local businesses and service suppliers and how tired they must be, trying to get through this with the pivoting, the lockdowns, the additional requirements just to stay open at half-speed. Then I think about how I would feel if my livelihood depended on my community’s spending habits – if they do or don’t spend where they live.

If nothing else, COVID has suggested we’re better off staying in “our bubble,” avoiding bigger crowds. Translate that into shopping and you’re safer in our cozier local shops than going to the bigger areas and their bigger chain stores. Add to that the shortages we’re now starting to see on shelves in response to early manufacturing and current shipping/trucking woes, and those bigger areas and their bigger chain On the other hand, with limits to the number of customers in a location at a time, supporting local means it’s less likely you’ll run into a crowd. And, some of our local businesses are experiencing little to no shortage issues because they source their supplies and goods from local makers and growers – they’re shopping locally. Why go to a bigger chain store to not find what you’re looking for, when it might be right here waiting for you? You’ll have a more successful experience spending your money locally.

In my opinion, these are just a few good reasons to support local.

MICHELLE PATEY

GREY HIGHLANDS CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 13 Toronto St S, Markdale greyhighlandschamber@gmail.com www.greyhighlandschamber.com 519-986-4612

New look, same great service!

David Miles | Financial Advisor

Miles Insurance and Investments Inc.

43 Main Sreet West, Markdale, ON, N0C 1H0 T: (519)986-3353 F: (519) 986-3518 40 Main Stret East, Dundalk, ON, N0C 1B0 T: (519)923-2313 F: (519)923-3061