I accidentally became the first client of Thistle House Care Farm.
As The Spectator’s health reporter, I was in Brant County on June 16 — a beautiful blue-sky sunny day — to tour the Mount Pleasant farm that will soon provide therapeutic programs, mostly for mental health and dementia.
Despite more than 25 years on the beat, I’d never been to a care farm. While they are common in the United Kingdom and the United States, there are only nine registered in Canada — four of them in Ontario. The nation’s first was Green Care Farms in Milton.
Requests started as soon as Keri McCallum and Ken Humphrey made it public that they intended to turn the farm owned by the Campbell family for 165 years into a place of healing and well-being for the public when they took over ownership in October.
The couple have other full-time jobs, so hiring health-care workers to run a variety of therapeutic programs and looking for sponsors to help bring the price from $120 a session to their goal of $40 is a labour of love for their rural community.
“This was a passion project for us,” said McCallum. “We wanted to see if we could give back in some way.”
I was standing among the purple thistles the farm is named for, gazing at a bird flitting in and out of the feeder, when I got the call from my mother. I was in the middle of the farm tour, so I let it go to voice mail, feeling uneasy because she never calls in the middle of a work day.Following the farm’s meandering path, McCallum pointed out the specked eggs of a killdeer that was doing its best to distract me from the nest by faking a wing injury in a spectacular display, when my phone screen lit up with a message from my brother.
“Call mom,” it read.
I had made it to the newly built chicken coop where Freckles — a spotted seven-week-old chick — was lightly pecking at my toes when my brother sent me another message to say the call couldn’t wait until I was done at the farm.
I watched a monarch butterfly flutter around raised garden beds planted during a recent community open house as I got the news that my grandfather had died.
He was 96 years old, lived a full and happy life, and died in his sleep.
But I still felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. My grandfather was one of the most influential people in my life. I named my oldest son after him. For as long as I can remember, he has been my safe harbour.
Grief recovery is one of the potential reasons for visiting the farm, and while I didn’t do the usual therapeutic activities of planting, weeding, crafting, harvesting or feeding the chickens, just being there helped calm the brewing storm.
The idea behind care farms is that spending time in nature and doing agricultural activities reduces stress, anxiety and depression while giving a sense of purpose and accomplishment. It provides social interaction and boosts self-esteem.
“You just feel better being outside and doing this sort of thing,” McCallum said. “I’ve already had so much interest.”
Thistle House is still a work in progress, with hopes of a frog pond, gazebo, more animals and different types of gardens and greenhouses as it opens in stages. Staff need to be hired and more sponsors found.The fine details of programs are being worked out and different offerings like team building are under consideration. Future clients are being consulted, other care farm operators are providing expertise, the farm has a survey on its website and more information is available at thistlehousefarm.ca.But the healing power of nature is already there in full force. Looking out over the seemingly endless fields that surround Thistle House at 4 Campbell Dr., I thought of how much my grandfather would have loved it there.
We would have taken the farm’s scenic route to the future pollinator garden and sat in the shade in comfortable silence, watching the bees go about their work. As I regretfully left Thistle House on that day I will never forget, I was grateful that when I first faced a world without my grandfather in it, I was met with the solace of the care farm.
