MOST people, when they’re four years away from retirement, start downsizing. Not Pauline and Bill-they upsized. In August 2008, they moved from a 1,600-squarefoot urban condo to a 3,000-square-foot split-level house on a five-acre hobby farm forty miles east. Pauline committed to a one-hour commute to work and the couple took on a mortgage. Their friends thought they were crazy. No wonder. What Pauline and Bill knew about farm life could have been written on the head of a pin. But they did it anyway. They had to.

Bill had dementia, and Pauline knew she would need help down the road. They moved to be close to their daughter and her young family, who also lived on a farm. And that’s when the fun began, as two aging city slickers learned how to bale hay, collect eggs from a chicken coop, and clean out horse stalls-skills they never dreamed they would develop in retirement.

With rollicking humour, a sense of adventure, and a degree of poignancy, Winging It describes Pauline Buck’s ten years as a newbie farmer as she navigates her challenging role as a dementia caregiver and seeks purpose in the third act of her life.

This book will help so many to nurture others through grief but also enable their self-esteem through their own bouts of humour and uncertainty, disappointment and resolve.

• Rick Antonson, author; former president and CEO, Tourism Vancouver

A portion of proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to the Alzheimer Society of B.C.