Growing up poor as a preacher’s kid was good preparation for becoming a farmer, a central Alberta producer told a farm women’s conference
“I believe God prepares us for what we are going to be in the future. He was preparing me for being a farmer,” said Dorothy Marshall of Rosalind, Alta.
“I spent my whole life making do with what I had.”
The need to make do has brought out Marshall’s creative talents as she showed the women at Fall Focus in Camrose, Alta., how to make gifts from inexpensive items around the farm.
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Marshall turned an old cream can into a decorative piece with a little paint and stencils. She used the same tools to give new life to an old stool, a coffee pot and an old chamber pot.
Marshall encouraged the women not to be afraid of painting fancy flowers. She described her trailing flower technique as blip, blip, blip. Daisies are simply white dots in a circle. Delphiniums are lots of blue dots in a long line.
The mother of five children, ranging from age five through to college, said she knows it is a sign of aging that she now scans the ditches and roads for rocks. She has made rock gardens, a rock wall, rock planters and stepping stones from rocks she’s brought home.
The rocks can be decorated with paint or leftover fabric and glued on the rocks, then coloured with white glue.
“This is using what you have,” said Marshall.
Old picture frames found at rummage sales can easily be repainted and renewed. Bows and old Christmas decorations can be added to old wicker baskets and used as Christmas gift baskets.
Instead of buying expensive willow wreaths, Marshall makes them from caragana branches or barbed wire. The wreaths are decorated with spray-painted Canada thistle or old pieces of artificial Christmas trees and ribbon.
Marshall makes welcome signs from pieces of old slab fence, a little sisal twine and barbed wire.
“Have fun creating with what you have around the farm,” she told the women.
