09/07/2026
🍅🌾 Getting Back to My Roots… Literally.
Apparently, I have entered my Millennial canning, preserving, making-things-from-scratch era… and I am LOVING it.
There is something incredibly satisfying about looking at shelves filled with jars of food that I made myself - tomatoes, soups, beans, sauces, preserves, knowing exactly what went into them and knowing that little by little, I am building a well-stocked pantry of homemade food.
But I think this newfound love goes much deeper.
I'm only second-generation Canadian on my mother's side. My great-grandparents immigrated here from Scotland and eventually put down roots in the Stoney Creek region, where they built their little farm and worked the land.
My father was also a farmer. Raising beef cattle, cash crops and more.
The photos I've shared are of that farm today. It's abandoned now, but this is where my Canadian roots began. 🌾
Those fields were once worked with plough horses. My mom's favourite was Rosie, who helped pull the plough and work that land. When Rosie died, she was buried beneath the big oak tree standing in the middle of the fields.
That oak tree is still there.
There is something incredibly grounding about that for me.
Generations pass. Families move. Farms change hands. Buildings eventually fall quiet.
But that tree is still standing over Rosie, in the same fields my family once worked.
My mother was really the first generation in our family to move completely away from that way of life. Canning wasn't passed down to me. Farming wasn't part of my everyday childhood experience. The convenience of modern life replaced many of those old skills.
And yet, over the past few years, I have felt this beautiful pull back toward my farming roots and the "old ways."
Maybe some things really do live in us.
Living here in Kemptville has only deepened that connection and my respect for our local farmers. During planting and harvest season, I inevitably find myself behind a tractor or combine crawling down the road.
And while I know it drives some people absolutely crazy…
I love it. 🌾
There's something about seeing that huge piece of farm equipment in front of me that brings me comfort.
It reminds me where I live. It reminds me that someone is out there doing incredibly important work, growing food, tending land and working with the seasons.
And it reminds me to slow down.
I'll get where I'm going.
The farmer has work to do.
Maybe that's part of what I'm loving about canning, too. You can't really rush it. There's washing, chopping, simmering, preparing jars, filling them, processing them and then waiting for that glorious little PING! of a sealing lid.
It's seasonal. It's intentional. It's slower.
And in a world that constantly encourages us to make everything faster, easier and more convenient, I'm discovering just how much I enjoy doing some things the old-fashioned way.
In my work, I talk a lot about generational trauma, the wounds, patterns, fears and survival responses that can be carried through families until someone finally decides to look at them differently.
But lately I've been thinking…
Why don't we talk more about generational strengths?
Because those get passed down too.
I come from people who left their homeland and crossed an ocean to begin again.
I come from farmers who had to understand the land, weather the unpredictable, work with what they had and prepare today for what their family might need months from now.
That takes courage. Resilience. Resourcefulness. Patience. Adaptability. Determination.
It takes the ability to endure hard seasons without believing the hard season will last forever.
It takes faith that what you plant today will eventually grow.
And maybe those things are inherited too. Not necessarily through our DNA in some literal, predetermined way, but through our stories, our families, the environments they created and the values that somehow continue echoing through the generations.
So yes, we can acknowledge and heal what our ancestors passed down that hurt us.
But I think we should also stop once in a while and ask: What did they give us that made us strong?
What survived?
What wisdom, grit, creativity, humour, resourcefulness or determination made its way through the generations and landed in us?
So I'm slowly building my pantry. Learning recipes. Growing more of our own food. Making things from scratch. Preserving what I can.
And perhaps, in my own little way, reconnecting with the great-grandparents who came across an ocean, built a little farm in Stoney Creek and worked those fields behind their horses.
I may never have learned these things directly from them, but generations later, I'm finding my own way back to them.
- Back to the land.
- Back to preparing for the seasons.
- Back to making something with my own hands.
- Back to appreciating what we have instead of assuming it will always be readily available.
- Back to some of the strengths that helped create the family I came from.
And let's be completely transparent…
My introverted ass is also VERY excited about having shelves full of homemade food and needing to venture into crowded grocery stores and Costco less often. 😂
Maybe returning to our roots doesn't always mean going backward.
Sometimes it means healing what shouldn't have been carried forward… and reclaiming what should have been. 🌾🍅🫙🌳
