HEARTLAND Star’s Farm Life Isn’t Glamorous, But …
By Movieguide® Contributor
HEARTLAND star Amber Marshall is opening up about what a real day in her life is like, and it’s not “glamorous” at all.
“Today is actually kind of a typical day…A lot of people are always like, ‘Oh, you’re an actor, that’s so glamorous. I’m like, ‘Is it?’” Marshall told Trailblazher Co. in June. “So today, I woke up at just before six because I have a Jersey cow right now that just had a calf, and she has far too much milk for her calf. So I have to milk her just so she doesn’t get mastitis and get too engorged and all that kind of stuff.”
“So I woke up right around six, let’s say, and the first thing I always do when I wake up is I wash my face because I find just like you said the fresh air like that kind of gets me going,” she said. “…I don’t like showering in the morning because I’m usually so dirty by the end of the day that I have to shower before I get in bed because, like, I’m usually covered in some kind of feces of some kind, and I’m like, I don’t really want to go to bed like this.”
So when she wakes up, she splashes some cold water on her face and gets dressed from one of her two clothes “piles.”
“I have two piles of clothes in my room. So in our 600-foot house, we have a king-size, bed but we have no space on either side of the bed, so I have a little pile where I keep my barn clothes, and then I have a hanging pile over my fan that I keep my going to town clothes,” she explained. “Very important. Don’t mix those up.”
“So I pull on my jeans that are covered in cow poop…and…sit down to milk my cow, and she’s usually pretty good… I raised her and…I just had her tied, and I don’t have a milking setup or anything…Brought her in, had her in a stall and I just throw a bucket down on the ground to sit on, and then I’m milking her into a bucket, and I’m not a morning person, let me just start by saying that. I’m most brain functionally active at night, so I’m sitting there I’m kind of out of it, and it’s therapeutic, like hand milking is just kind of like, you know, you’re just sitting there…”
Marshall, not thinking properly, turned her cow a certain way, but her cow is particular and only likes to be milked a certain way.
“So I sit down and again I’m kind of out of it, and I start milking her, and she just like for some reason turns, and the way she kicked the milk bucket… it was so comical,” she laughed. “Like this is an episode of HEARTLAND. It really is. It came up and hit the ground and all of the milk…went on my face and my hair.”
“And it was one of those moments where I wasn’t quite awake yet. I’m also thinking I don’t have time to shower now because I had to get into the city for a meeting. I had come see you guys,” she told the Trailblazher Co. hosts, “and so I’m like oh great, this is great, and so then I quickly finish milking that quarter and put her outside, and I walk in the house and…I haven’t showered yet, guys. I have like milk dripping on this side, and I walk in, and my husband’s just getting up. He’s like ‘Oh, what happened to you?’”
Marshall’s husband asked her if she wanted to shower, but she replied that she didn’t have time.
“I just quickly like wash my face again and sort of semi-washed my hair in the sink,” she said.
“I think moments like that help to keep me grounded because it’s not glamorous…,” the actress said. “You have to separate yourself from the hard work and all of the physicality of being on a ranch to then go to a totally different life right? Then even just having a clothing store, it’s like I can’t show up with milk and cow poop on my jeans, so I think that’s when you find that balance of living those two different lives, but it also brings in a sense of rawness and realism to everything that you’re doing because you’re humbled by those other experiences too, you know, it’s all work.”
With Marshall’s extremely busy schedule, especially when filming 14-hour days on HEARTLAND, she and her husband always try to carve out time for each other.
“We’re both working the same hours, so when we come home we’re tired, and so it’s like, and yeah like you’re working 14 hours but we’re still in Alberta. It’s light until 11 or so. I’m usually home at 7:30ish, and so we take that time. We love going for evening walks.”
“We’ll walk up our driveway or we’ll go through the pasture or something and that’s kind of because Shawn’s not an evening person and I am, and so I love to talk about everything in the evening and he’s like, so he’s a good listener. I just chat and he goes, ‘Okay’ and it’s the opposite in the morning…So we’ve decided that lunch is our time to shine,” Marshall explained.
They’ve decided to meet in the middle, and often meet for lunch and talk together.
“That’s when we discuss any pressing matters and we do find time quite often to have lunch and I think sometimes in the summer when I’m really busy on set I know when my lunch time’s going to be. So a lot of times, he’ll come and have lunch with me.”
Movieguide® reported on Marshall’s other interview with Trailblazher Co. last month:
Marshall said, “I love where I’m living, I love the people that I work with, and fortunately, people love the show. There’s just this neighborly sense of community and family and friendship that’s out there…After being here, I’m like, I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”
She talked further about her life in Alberta in a post on her blog.
“Feeling completely at home in the west I fully relocated myself in 2009, and purchased a small farm outside of Calgary, Alberta and a year later I met my husband, Shawn,” she wrote. “We were married at our quaint farm property in 2013, surrounded by friends, family and the many animals who we opened our home to. I give thanks to my busy youth and finding the balance of working, having animals and keeping up with my responsibilities.”
Marshall recently opened a store in Alberta, called Marshall’s Country Store, which she manages along with her mini-farm at home.
She recently posted on her website, “I am starting to find that balance again with work, home, my animals and family. It is always evolving, and I feel I am the most inspired when I’m presented with a new challenge.”
On Saturday, Marshall posted video clips of a horse ride, her farm, animals and handfuls of hail. She said, “The skies never disappoint here in Alberta. Loved this split sky from our ride, and then the clouds rolled in fast and the hail came down faster than we could run for cover.”
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