We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Shauntelle Harding a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Shauntelle, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

My heart has always been for people. After going through much struggle and heartache as a child/teenager it made me all the more determined to help others feel safe & empowered so this has been my drive.
I grew up with horses on a farm and horses/nature was my go to when I needed a place to go that was safe and easy. Horses made me feel alive. They were my best friends who always listened and seemed to have the most beautiful sense of calmness.
Starting Harding Heights Ranch Ltd in 2005 after we rescued a number of horses who were starving was the beginning to a beautiful bridge allowing me to share my world of horses with my community. I particularly noticed the healing power of horses for those who were special needs such as autistic children. My love for the work grew and I only wanted to immerse myself in this world where meaning was so powerful.
Fast forward 17 years and our life choices landed us a gorgeous piece of property off grid where nature was abundant. We moved our entire farm and family into a wall tent to build our dream property out on raw land.
During the winter months when time is more available a friend recommended to me a program which spoke to my heart about certifying to become a Horse Guided Empowerment Coach through Christina Marz’s MarzMethod Program. Using the horses heart energy and innate ability to read people from just their aura to be able to understand the core issues that they are dealing with and allowing the horses healing nature to give feedback and support (which is exactly what helped me get through all of my struggles). This was perfect for our rescue herd of horses on this beautiful land to be able to do.
The world is full of broken people and there doesn’t seem to be much for outside of the box learning and healing. Horses and nature are the perfect antidote for our broken world.

Shauntelle, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Well I covered some of this in the previous question about how we got here but we didn’t talk about what we offer.
We are creative with what we offer trying to use the land and what is available to us to bring joy to those around us but also to make a living so we can support ourselves.
We now offer many workshops and courses based around self sufficiency, getting back to the land and nature, unplugging from devices, using animals and the earth as therapy. We love to empower people to take control of their own health, use what nature has provided for us and learn how to live more in tune with Mother Earth and all she has to offer.
Some of the things we offer here on the land are; medicine making and foraging for and learning about herbalism, growing clean beyond organic food, animal husbandry and regenerative agriculture, healing with horses, mushroom logs and how to harvest and grow mushrooms on them, hide tanning and leather making, pine needle weaving, beekeeping, natural soap making, all about the milk cow. We also host kids camps based around nature and bushcraft skills and mentorship as well as host empowerment retreats and enhanced resilience training using martial arts and nature to reset the nervous system helping with PTSD & Trauma.
We are really just getting started as we just had a 2 year anniversary here on the land. We are open to suggestions and are interested in all things to do with nature and bringing back ways of the Old.
In today’s day and age people need more than ever to get back to nature and ground themselves. There is a mental health crisis going on and we want to do our part to help our community!
This summer we will be offering air b n b’s and HipCamp rentals so you can come and rent our wall tents and or micro cabins to stay on the land down by lake and rest, renew & reset. We are building a sauna to compliment lake swims atm, we also have a timber frame outdoor kitchen, outdoor cedar shower, covered area for eating and gatherings and 2 outhouses. We plan to build a large 30×30 covered area to host our guests and to provide a safe space out of the weather. My husband sustainably harvests our timber from the land and mills it with his sawmill which is what all of our outbuilding are made from. In the future we may run a timber framing or cabin building workshop.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Resilience hmmm such a great word!

Yes it’s all about your ability to bounce back isn’t it? Life keeps happening whether it’s to you or for you so let’s chance the projection to for us so we are now in control of our life.

I find having a plan is essential. Write it down. Have hopes and dreams and a vision and write them down! We all need a vision for our lives don’t we? The Bible says without purpose we parish. Pretty important I’d say. So many people are going through life with no purpose. Good mentors are hard to find to much needed!

My life has had a lot of pivotal moments that have molded me into the person I am today, good and bad.

When I was young my parents were addicts. I won’t get too much into this but as a child this can get scary. I was bullied al through elementary school and high school, mainly because the other girls were jealous of me I later found out. My grade 11 year going into grade 12 I was involved in an accident that put me at the scene as the only sober person (I didn’t drink or do drugs, learned that lesson from my parents struggles) of two boys in my grade who ran their motorbike into the back of the car I was driving as the dd of my drunken friends who wanted to leave the party and go look over the Seven Mile Dam. They both died on impact but I didn’t know. Having no cell service where we were it was over an hour of CPR on the boys before the ambulance arrived. Life changing moments…
Later in life I married to have my husband cheat with someone half his age at our local restaurant we worked at together (he parents owned it). Apparently my lack of interest in the family business and managing it was to blame so said my then father in law. Nope for me it was all about the horses and helping people so that was my day job and the restaurant my night job. I wasn’t willing to deter from my life’s path.
The most important person in my life, my Nono (grandfather in Italian) died suddenly of heart issues. He was my rock and the person who I’m most like. He taught me how to hunt and fish and how to farm. He was my best friend. I still can’t talk about him without crying. He made everything from scratch, grew a huge garden, hunted and fished and farmed for all of his food, made wine, and build his home with his own two hands. He was amazing.
My friend Robbie od’d. He calls me out of the blue at Search and Rescue one morning so I left my training and went to see him. He was struggling with alcoholism as he had for so many years. It had gotten to the point though of voices in his head telling him to kill himself. In and out of psychiatric care we spent a lot of time together until I got the call from his dad that day that he had found him unresponsive in his bed.

There are other stories such as my brother breaking his back and getting addicted to opioids and then struggling for 20 years to find sobriety. A siblings connection, particularly when you have been through so much in life together, is forever bonded. You hurt when they hurt.

Life is full of ups and downs but staying true to yourself is key and having the passion and drive going forward is key.

I never lost focus of what was important to me and that was to provide a safe place where people like my parents, my brother and Robbie could come and “free their minds and feed their soul” and that’s what our slogan is.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

Yes Adam.

A blessing I didn’t know I needed.

I was working 3 jobs at the time trying to get my mind off of my pending divorce and separation that had happened over a year previous.

He came in early one evening to the Legion where I worked on Thursday nights because it was open mic night and busy. He had heard about me through work where some mutual friends had told him that we had a lot in common. He invited me to go horseback guiding in the Yukon with him that summer. Hmmm funny thing this was on my bucket list!

Adam was from the East Coast of Canada, a small little town called Mabou on Cape Breton Island. He left right after high school with dreams of going out West. He finally landed a job up in the Yukon with a Guide Outfitter. Nature and horses were a must for him and this was the perfect thing for him.

Of course I responded with yes as it was a dream of mine to go guiding on horseback nevermind in the Yukon of all places! YES YES YES!! I was at the time just finishing up my EMR training and testing to become a paramedic but it was all done on time and off we went.

For me it was a great opportunity to get to know him and particularly to see how he treated the horses. You can tell a lot about a person by how they treat animals.

Fast forward 10 years later and 2 kids and 3 farms and here we are lol!

Adam is the perfect ying to my yang. He’s motivated and driven and goal & business oriented. He’s a risk taker, which I am not, and forces me outside of my box. All in all it’s been a great mix and we wouldn’t be here today without Adam and his drive for success.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.penddoreilleriverranch.ca
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/penddoreilleriverranch?igsh=dmVmaXV0dGwxaXdw&utm_source=qr
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/penddoreilleriverranch?mibextid=LQQJ4d

Image Credits

Celina Iachetta