Rural Women Cultivating a Life They Love: An Interview with Lara d'Entremont
"We can pursue a hobby even if it’s just for the pure enjoyment of it."
This summer is flying by,1 and harvest is knocking on our door. (A little loudly, if I might add!) I had plans to publish this interview in early July, but clearly, that didn’t happen.
But I’m back, and today, I’m taking my Rural Woman interview series north again—back to Canada!2 But this time to Nova Scotia.
Lara and I met through an online writing community. And while she doesn’t live on a farm or a ranch, she grew up in rural Nova Scotia, and her family raised horses. She was passionate about riding as a child and believes her time spent taking care of their horses was integral in shaping her into the person she is today.
I’m excited to share some of her beautiful insights and honest truths about her rural life. Here’s my interview with Lara.
Lara, you grew up in a rural area and live rurally with your husband and kids now. For people who live in cities and suburbs, it can be hard for them to imagine what it’s like to live rurally. What are some things you love and appreciate about rural life? In what ways does your life differ from someone in a city?
Whenever we’ve looked for a house, on my list of “non-negotiables” is a big yard for my children. Both my husband and I grew up with not only large yards but access to the forest without any houses in sight the moment we stepped out of the back door. This gave both of us a life of exploring nature and learning about the creatures and plants that lived around us. We learned how to walk through the woods without getting lost, what berries and plants are safe to eat, and how to respect the wildlife that hid in the shadows or crossed our paths.
During my pregnancy with my twins, I had to spend six weeks of that pregnancy in the city to be monitored. As I talked to one of the nurses caring for me and told her about where I lived, she gasped and scoffed at the amount of time it took us to get to a grocery store and exclaimed that she could never live that way. Rural living gave me patience; I learned how to sit through long drives to the hospital, grocery store, doctor’s office, and school. I learned that mail can take several weeks to show up or that the Internet can take hours to load a video. At times the spring rain made the road too muddy to drive on for days, or the river covered the bridge.
Life is a lot like what Wendell Berry describes in Hannah Coulter; you know everyone within your village, and you all come together to help one another out. When the roads flooded, the family down the road with the big truck drove all the kids to school through the water. When forest fires raged close to our home, neighbors came with horse trailers to get our horses somewhere safe. We learned to come alongside one another despite our differences when the community was in need.
On the flip side, what are the biggest challenges you’ve faced (either in your childhood or as an adult) living rurally?
Being an only child, I struggled with loneliness. I had only one friend within walking distance, but it was still quite far away, and my mother didn’t want me to walk alone because the houses between us were sparse. While it was a good lesson to learn how to play by myself, there were many days I desperately wanted to spend time with my friends. It was hard missing out on things they did in the town together, thirty minutes away. As an adult, that struggle has remained and is still difficult; we can’t always drive thirty or forty minutes to go to events, sledding, or drop into a coffee shop with friends. I currently meet over video each week with two ladies who live in the next town because it was a lot for all of us to make the weekly drives.
Another challenge living rurally presented was medical issues. As of right now, our province is in the midst of a shortage of medical workers; family doctors, nurses, specialists, psychiatrists, and the like. Medical professionals come for a while, but if they have no family nearby and are used to city life, they don’t stay long.
We also have fewer medical resources. In my thirtieth week of pregnancy with my twins, I went into preterm labor and had to be flown by helicopter and airplane to a hospital that was a three-hour drive away from our home. Thankfully they stopped the labor, but because my hospital wasn’t equipped with the technology to care for preterm babies, I had to remain in that city for six weeks. All the while, my two-year-old son stayed with his grandparents back home. That was a big challenge for us.
How are you cultivating a life you love? And how are you passing that along to your children?
I think a lot about the novel, The Secret Garden. A young, spoiled little girl named Mary grew up with little access to nature and learning to play on her own. She had maids who took care of her and allowed her to scream at them. When her parents died, her uncle in the marshes of Yorkshire took her in. He didn’t have much time to give to her, and neither did his staff in the large manor, so she had to learn to play outdoors. That time changed Mary; it made her more joyful, imaginative, thoughtful, selfless, and physically healthy. Being out of doors taught her to look outside of herself and her troubles and to the beauty of the world around her. She learned how to play without toys and maids entertaining her.
That’s the kind of life I want to give my children. I want to teach them to respect the critters creeping along the ground or swimming in the water, to look up at the big trees and wonder at the majesty of their Creator. I want them to experience what the Bible meant when it said, “Look to the ant, you sluggard,” or, “Just as your Heavenly Father cares for the birds, so he cares for you.”
I want their imagination to flourish as they gaze upon the deer paths snaking through the forest or the varied colors of the wildflowers. In our technology-driven age, I want my children to value waiting, quietness, and wonder. I want them to learn how to entertain themselves with sticks and rocks rather than a screen.
You grew up with horses and spent a lot of time training them. Do you still work with horses now, or do much horseback riding? How do you think your relationship with horses and the hours you spent training them shaped you into the woman you are today?
For financial reasons, I don’t have my own horses, though I’m hoping as the children get older, I can find someone locally who can give them the experience of learning how to ride because I believe that working with horses does have a lot to offer a child, as it did for me. I quickly learned horses were an animal that needed my respect but who also needed to learn how to respect me; they are powerful and strong, and without that respect, I could easily become gravely injured.
People always commented on the gentle, kind, and docile nature of my parents’ horses. When they had a stallion, many of the locals wanted their horses bred with him because of his well-known good nature. My parents simultaneously gave our horses the boundaries they needed while also not allowing those horses to walk all over them (theoretically or physically). I learned the concept of respectful fear very young.
It also taught me responsibility and the worth of hard work. The stalls had to be cleaned, the horses had to be fed, the tack needed care, and the horses needed tending (through regular training, brushing, and watchfulness for their health).
An unexpected lesson that came, however, was the ability to have a hobby without gaining from it. I went to a few horse shows and competitions, but I soon stopped when I realized they were draining all the enjoyment out of horseback riding for me. I learned that even though I had no awards or medals to show for my hard work, it didn’t mean it was useless. We can pursue a hobby even if it’s just for the pure enjoyment of it.
What would you tell a rural woman just starting out?
Remember why you’re here. I have fought with discontentment, longing for a big city at times and to be closer to all the conveniences. When those feelings rumble inside, I’ve learned to step outside and remember why I stayed here: Because I want to give my children the gifts of the rural life that I had. They may decide to grow up and live in a big city, which is completely fine with me. But I want them to learn the lessons I did and have those same experiences. They shaped and formed me into the person I am, and I hope it will do the same for them.
Whatever your reasons are, remember those. Give yourself a physical reminder of them to look to whenever those doubts arise or when people scoff at your choices.
Such a cliché, I know. But it’s true!
My first interview was with Katelyn Duban, who is a podcaster and farmer in Alberta.
 | A guest post by
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So grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this series, Stacy! Thank you for including me!
Thank you both for this! I’m in a small-town setting, so sometimes I feel like I can’t properly identify as living either urban or rural - but I am resonating with a lot of the underlying values that Lara brought out, and look forward to finding ways to lean into those.