Sugar Bushes in Ottawa 2021

It’s that time of year when the sap starts to run and fresh maple syrup is available for all to enjoy! Maple syrup season is the sweetest part of winter for many reasons and visiting local sugar bushes has become a family tradition for many. Due to ongoing COVID-19 restrictions, many Ottawa sugar bushes are celebrating a little differently this year, so make sure you visit their websites before visiting.

Fulton’s Pancake House and Sugar Bush

Maple Season is open
399 Sugar Bush Road
Pakenham, ON
https://www.fultons.ca/

The Maple Farm Store is open daily from 10-3 pm for takeout and pickup of orders and the grounds and their 8 km of trails are also open 10-5 pm daily.

Parc Omega

399 Route 323 Nord,
Montebello, Québec
https://www.parcomega.ca/en/

Omega Park is located in Montebello and you can also enjoy Maple taffy tasting at the Sugar Shack (open Saturday sand Sundays only). Sold in individual cups to go! Learn about the traditional ways of making maple syrup and enjoy maple taffy on a stick. There are also trails you can explore. Admission to the sugar shack is included in the admission fee to the park. For more information on Omega Park, check out this blog post on everything there is to do while there.

Proulx Maple and Berry Farm

Proulx Maple and Berry Farm

Pancake house opens on Sunday, March 7th
1865 O'Toole Rd.
Cumberland (Ottawa), ON
https://proulxfarm.com/

Tickets need to be booked in advance for a 2-hour time slot; 75 tickets are available every hour to ensure social distancing. Enjoy a pancake breakfast in a rustic cabin in the heart of their sugar bush and explore their trails. There’s also a maple tour including a visit to the production shack.

Stanley’s Olde Maple Lane Farm

Maple seasons now open!
2452 York's Corners Rd.
Edwards, ON
https://stanleysfarm.com/family-fun/sugarbush/

This year, Stanley’s is offering a “walkabout menu,” designed to be enjoyed as you explore the farm! The farm shop is also open on Saturdays from 10 am to 1 pm.

Temple’s Sugar Bush

Temple’s Sugar Bush

Opens March 6th; Friday to Sunday 9 am to 2 pm
1700 Ferguson Falls Rd.
Lanark, ON
http://www.templessugarbush.ca/

Their dine-in option is closed this season, but Temple’s will be offering a delicious take-out menu as well as items from their store, available for pick up.

Wheeler’s Pancake House, Sugar Camp and Museum

Now open; Thursday to Sunday by Reservation only
1001 Highland Line, McDonalds Corners
(Lanark Highlands)
http://wheelersmaple.com/

Open daily all year from 9am-3pm, including Saturdays and Sundays. Maple products will continue to be available 7 days a week for curbside pick up by appointment, by calling 613-278-2090.

What you wished you’d been told about gardening with children

Today we welcome guest blogger Rochelle Johnston, the founder of Family Earth, a social enterprise that helps families heal their relationships with the natural world through mitigating and adapting to the climate crisis.

Last year we were one of the hundreds of thousands of families across Canada who planted a garden for the first time. COVID left me desperate for ways to engage my kids and not go insane while doing so. From working with children surviving trauma, I also knew that spending time with your feet in dirt and the breeze on your face, picking aphids off of spinach leaves, was medicine. And healing was what our COVID weary family needed.

While we experienced some of the expected benefits, I quickly learned that gardening with kids is not always a bed of roses. But let’s start with the roses.

Boosting veggie intake

Have you seen the new Canada Food Guide? Our family still has a long way to go to fill half of our dinner plates with fruits and veggies. But while in the garden my kids will put anything in their mouths (they are no longer toddlers, so “everything” is considerably less gross and dangerous).

Mindfulness

Watering lettuce as the sun goes down may be my idea of bliss. So, did my kids lose themselves in the greenery? Not so much. They did, however, see their mom doing just a little bit better.

Love for our planet

Between gardening and being outside every day playing in the forest, last year was the first time my kids… no, it was the first time I actually experienced the seasons. Mind. Blown. All of this deepened our relationship with mother earth and provided fodder for important conversations about why we need to take better care of her. And the eating more veggies (and less meat) thing? This is one of the most important individual actions we can take to reduce global heating.

Your kids become smarter than you

You want to know the difference between a radish, a carrot, a basil and a broccoli seedling? Ask my 5-year-old. Or how to troubleshoot a stalled rototiller? That would be my 8-year-old.

Now for the dark underbelly.

It’s not always fun

And guess who gets stuck with the not fun stuff?

It’s scary

At least for me. I’m used to being in control. It was stressful being a complete amateur and not knowing where to start. Gardening is just complex. Like going back to grad school in your 30s complex.

My kids were not always as motivated as I wanted them to be

Gardening requires discipline and physical labour. Did my kids excel at this? Not so much. Did they sometimes refuse to even come out to the garden with me? You bet. But I remember: they saw me and their dad spend all day pulling sod out of overgrown beds, shovelling manure in the sun, and struggling and sometimes failing to keep a regular watering schedule. Fingers crossed that “It’s not what you say as a parent that counts, it’s what you do.”

You sometimes fail (a lot)

And about that regular watering schedule thing… turns out it’s important. Some seedlings shriveled and I grew more moths than cabbages. But my own failures helped to put the kid’s “failures” in perspective. The seeds that were planted too deep, or watered too much. The seedlings that fell out of their trays, or were stepped on or mistaken for weeds and pulled up. We all fail. We’re human.

Now here’s the thing…

Gardening with children is not a bed of roses (who grows roses with children anyways?). But it is a bed of growth of all sorts and plants that bear fruit, if not this season, maybe next.

If I haven’t scared you off gardening with your children, and you want to learn from my mistakes and (probably more importantly) from master gardening parents who really know what they are doing, then checked out my online workshop series Growing Families. In addition to the workshops you will receive a package with all the equipment, soil and seeds you need to start your first garden!

Choose your own adventure: a virtual magic trick!

Owen McNally is a student at Westboro Academy. He’s guest blogging today to introduce us to a special project he created - a virtual magic trick - that is fun for the whole family!

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Are you missing in-person magic?

The pandemic has changed much about the world, including the way we are entertained, magic included. With many meetings going virtual, I wondered whether there might be a way to perform magic virtually and maintain the interactive personal feel?

Combining two of the things I enjoy - math and card magic - I created an online choose your own adventure magic trick that anyone can do safely from their home! This was made possible using innovative software called H5P, allowing the creation of interactive games, videos and slideshows.

This trick is based on the number 27. First, you pick a random number between 1 and 27. Use any method you want - a favorite, roll three dice, or use a random number generator online. After this I will use an automatic card shuffler to pick 27 cards from the deck of 52. You will then be asked to pick a card, but only tell me the row. Through a sequence of only three videos, I will attempt to match your card with the number. This isn’t easy as there are over 700 card and number combinations.

Do you want to try?

If so, get started by clicking below! Alternatively you can visit this link: https://pediatrics.knack.com/cyoamagictrick

At the end of the adventure, there is a survey where you can tell me what you think, if you noticed any mistakes (please help me make it perfect) and whether I should make another adventure.

Thanking our teachers

Thank you to the teachers, who have done so much for us this year! We wanted to highlight these monumental tasks that teachers have taken on:

• They’ve worn incredible amounts of PPE to keep our kids and themselves safe. PPE that makes it hard for them to be heard, for them to breathe, for them to stay at comfortable temperatures. PPE that leaves them sweaty and with headaches and marks in their faces.

• They’ve adapted to the new rules of the pandemic even if that means completely changing their teaching style:
  - imagine classes in primary with no singing? No sitting on the carpet in circles and sharing toys and playing games together?
  - imagine having to teach what you usually teach at 2 or 3 times the pace without being able to encourage group work?
  - Imagine how much time is spent in managing COVID protocols and bathroom breaks and keeping cohorts apart?

• They adapted and went online, where regular schoolwork just doesn’t work the same way. Where the little ones don’t know how to use the tech and teachers have to spend half the time trying to get them to push the right buttons and stay off mute; to the older kids who won’t ever turn on their cameras and might actually be sleeping while “in class.”

• They have had to come up with unique ways to make online schooling “fun,” including activities for gym class and science class.

• They have taught online, while knowing that their own kids are in another room, dealing with their own challenges with virtual learning.

• They’re spending so much money out of pocket, for extra teaching tools that work online, tools that work when they can’t do group work, and some have even bought portable speakers so that the kids can hear them more clearly without them shouting through all the PPE.

• They have done ALL of this, only to go home at night and tend to their own children and families, who are also coping with the significant changes that have come with this pandemic.

We see you and all your hard work and appreciate how much you’re putting into teaching our kids in such difficult times.

Coping with Pandemic Depletion

Parents are exhausted; or, according to this article, we’re “depleted.”

What’s the difference, you ask? “Exhaustion” is when your body is physically tired - you did an intense workout and you could happily sleep for 10 hours. Or you stayed up all night with the baby and you would give anything for a cat nap. “Depletion” is when your reserves are empty - your emotional, spiritual and intellectual well has run dry. The result is that you could be sleeping 8-10 hours per night but you still feel totally exhausted.

Lately, this has been me. At the start of January, I thought I’ve totally got this. Compared to the first lockdown, I’m in a much better place. In March 2020 I was grappling with job loss on top of the new pandemic world in which we were all learning to navigate. To say I was stressed would be an understatement. Fast forward to the present and I’ve got a wonderful part-time job with a flexible employer; I’ve learned that I CAN survive my kids being home 24/7 for months on end; and I’ve adjusted to all the new pandemic habits we’ve needed to learn to stay safe and healthy.

Alas, when virtual school was extended and one week dragged into three, I suddenly found myself totally exhausted. Cleaning one bathroom was a monumental task. Completing my work while trying to be my childrens’ teaching assistant and personal secretary felt overwhelming. I wanted to crawl into bed and never emerge.

Ahhh, so THIS is the “COVID fatigue” everyone is talking about, I thought. But there’s more to it than just feeling tired.

Carole Blackburn, a Certified Life and Wellness Coach here in Ottawa, is hearing much of the same from many of her clients. “It’s affecting all people across the board, whether they have children or not,” she says. “People are tired of not having something to look forward to - an end result to all of this.”

Carole points to the difficulties in managing the multitude of roles at home: work, at-home learning, parenting, your partner, and basic day-to-day stuff. “Everything has blended together and it’s difficult to separate all of those major components that we’re living in,” she says.

Carole also hears from parents about the lack of consistency and structure at home, and of course, the lack of socialization. We can’t drop the kids off at the grandparents anymore, so there goes our alone time. “It’s like groundhog day - you’re living the same day over and over,” she says.

The perfect ImRelivingTheSameDayOverAndOver BillMurray Phil Animated GIF for your conversation. Discover and Share the best GIFs on Tenor.

We know all of this, because we’ve been living it. So I was really curious - beyond basic platitudes (“you got this”; “we will get through it”) what else can parents be doing to slog through (what we hope is) the final stretch in this pandemic?

“Sometimes when we’re caught in our own headspace, it’s hard to think that there’s an alternative, or inspiration or motivation to do other things,” says Carole. We chatted about some of the following tips for dealing with depletion:

Do nothing

Doing nothing about your problems is harder than you think. I’m totally depleted and depressed, and you want me to just….deal with it?

Not exactly…it’s recognizing you’re in rough shape and choosing to sit with those hard feelings. We’re so programmed to think that action is what will pull us out of our funk. But research shows that naming and accepting our feelings as they are can help us move forward. So if you’re feeling depleted, crawl into your bed, pull the covers over your face, and do nothing! Tomorrow is a new day.

Approach things with a fresh set of eyes

We have an opportunity to approach how we’ve been living our lives, and to find a new structure that’s going to work for us going forward. Start by working on one or two things that you KNOW you can accomplish, and structure your day around those tasks. This will boost your motivation and help to alleviate some of the exhaustion you feel that “nothing is getting done.”

For me, a messy house was causing me anxiety. So I committed to one cleaning task I could do each day (one bathroom, folding and putting away one basket of laundry etc.) By the end of the week, I’d worked through many cleaning chores that I’d previously been too exhausted to accomplish. (Also, getting my partner and kids involved on weekends took some of the burden off my shoulders!)

Avoid changing too many habits all at once

We’re now in the second wave. We’ve had to learn a ton of new habits (masking up, social distancing, sanitizing, assessing risk in every situation), so it’s a good time to focus on how to restructure our lives to get through this last hump.

However, human brains are naturally lazy - we try to find the easiest way from point A to point B, and that means our brains enjoy the “autopilot” function to get through each day. Trying to implement too many new habits at once sets us up for failure because our brains have to work too hard to make the change. This is why New Year’s resolutions generally fail; people try to change too many things all at once. A better strategy is to choose ONE thing you’d like to implement, strategize the best way to move forward, and then reward yourself for each day/week/month you continue. Once you’ve mastered that new habit, you can introduce another one.

In January I started a 30 day yoga program (Yoga with Adriene on YouTube!) I refused to try to change my diet, or make any fitness/weight goals. I just got on my mat every day, even if it was for 15 minutes. Lo and behold, I’m now at day 40 and still going strong. Making time for yoga, even on days I don’t want to, has had ripple affects in other areas of my life, like stress and sleep.

What’s RIGHT in your life?

“What we’re missing is the things that we’re doing right already,” says Carole. “I think it’s really important to introspect a little bit and ask: what is working for me? What is working for my family right now?” Then you can see the good things are you living in.”

It’s more than just a gratitude list; it’s taking stock of your day-to-day life and doing an inventory of what you’d like to keep and what you’d like to change. This goes back to point about habits - sometimes you’d be surprised how well certain things are going in your life until you take stock.

One thing I’ve noticed is that we’re a much more cohesive family than we were before the pandemic. We spend a LOT more time together and that’s forced us to work as a team. Of course we still have our squabbles, but we’ve gotten better at communicating with each other when we need time alone - I’ve especially noticed this in my children, who will take time away in their rooms when they need to decompress.

Take a vacation

OK, bear with me…I realize you’re not going to be taking beach vacations any time soon. But what’s stopping you from taking a full week off work? TRULY off work? Many of us haven’t even bothered with vacation for the past year because….well, what’s the point? However, by leaving those email and deadlines behind, you can completely switch gears and give your mind and body some rest. Plan to read all day, or pick a special project you can do around the house.

Have some compassion for yourself

We get really hard on ourselves when we don’t check things off our to-do list. We need to structure in the time to do something small for ourselves every day. Some days this may be as simple as showering. Other days you may have more bandwidth to read, meditate or do any activity that gives you a little bit of a boost. In order to “refuel” and fill that cup up, in order to move past the depletion, this piece of the compassion puzzle is important. Self-care is not always fun, but it IS essential.

I’d love to hear from other parents - what are you doing to cope with pandemic depletion?

Carole Blackburn is a Life and Wellness Coach based in Ottawa. Visit her website, or find her on Instagram and Facebook.