Residents of Salem Home in Winkler have spent the past month reminiscing about their own days bringing in the harvest or canning fruits and veggies for their families to enjoy through the winter months.
They’ve been aided in those reminisces by the community at large, who responded to the personal care home’s call for content in a big way this fall.
“We posted it on our Instagram page at the end of August, beginning of September,” says director of community engagement Alana Thiessen, explaining they asked all “farmers, gardeners, and harvesters” to share videos of themselves at work.
The response was overwhelming, with dozens of videos sent in to give Salem residents the chance to vicariously ride along with farmers out in the fields or stand alongside canners in the kitchen.
“It was so many different aspects, so many different things,” Thiessen says. “And we got a lot of pictures as well.”
The bulk of the submitted pieces were of farmwork of every stripe—combining, unloading grain, etc.—but they also got a handful of fun canning demos.
“One was of somebody making salsa, and they did it both in the fast way and the slow way so you could watch both versions,” Thiessen says. “And then we also had somebody go and show us all of their canning downstairs in their cellar area, all the different things they’d canned.”
While Salem regularly takes its residents out on field trips to see what’s going on in the community (fields being planted in spring and harvested in fall, holidays decorations in December, and so on), not every resident is comfortable coming along for the ride. So staff try to bring the outside world to them whenever possible.
“Usually we have some staff go and they’ll take videos for us to show, but we thought we would involve the community this time just because they have a different viewpoint,” Thiessen says.
The videos and pictures have been showing on televisions and tablets throughout Salem for the past few weeks.
Thiessen says it’s amazing how these types of memory aids can really bring a spark to a resident’s eye.
“We had some videos of nighttime harvesting and one gentleman who doesn’t really talk very often just lit up and said, ‘Oh, harvesting at night was my favourite. It was calm. I put my music on …’
“One thing that we know is if we have visuals it just makes everything much easier for people to bring up those memories.”
Salem is also putting some of the videos on their interactive ABBY boards, which gives residents the chance to, for example, pretend to be driving a tractor while watching the video on screen.
While the harvest is now winding down, Thiessen notes they’d love to get more slice of life videos from the community to share with residents.
“In wintertime, kids playing shinny hockey on a homemade ice rink—that’s something the residents would have done—or building a snowman or snowblowing your large driveway,” she says. “Any pictures or videos around the community, they can contact me and we can see how we can incorporate them into life here at Salem.”
You can reach Thiessen via email to althiessen@salemhome.ca, phone at 204-325-4316 ext. 246, or message Salem Home on social media with your videos.
