Chip Polston: Coming up on Kentucky Life: Visit two organizations that utilize horses to help individuals with mental health, cognitive development and physical therapy.

The gift economy is growing in Kentucky as well as a renewed sense of community.

I'll head to Wolfe County for an adventure by kayak and meet world champion carver, Abby Peterson.

All that's next on Kentucky Life.

Hey, everybody and welcome to Kentucky Life.

I'm your host, Chip Polston.

Now, today I'm here with the Kentucky Life team at the Adsmore House & Gardens Living History Museum here in downtown Princeton.

Adsmore is a circa 1857 Greek Revival home and garden restored to late Victorian grandeur and we can't wait to tour the grounds here.

But first in the Bluegrass State, we think of horses as companions, racers, workers and a means of transportation.

But increasingly medical personnel are looking to our equine friends as a resource for mental health, cognitive development and physical therapy.

Today, we visit two organizations who offer hopes and dreams to those struggling with a variety of ailments with the horse, as usual, happily shouldering the burden.

Sandy Webster: What do you think?

Do you think all our friends should put their parts of the horse on the horses?

-Yeah.

-You think so?

Okay.

Well, we're going to switch to that, and I'll go see how everybody else is doing first.

My favorite thing is changing lives, and we have a tag line that I live and love and that is "We change lives one stride at a time," which is that one stride of a horse's stride.

[music playing] So, if you're ready, come on up here and we're going to get the different parts of the horse.

This is called equine assisted learning, and it has a teaching component, but working on behaviors.

So, we use core values such as empathy, respect all the things that make someone a good character in everyday life.

-Are you ready Dexter?

-Dexter: Yeah.

Are you ready Henry?

Henry: I don't remember where it went.

I got it right.

-Good.

-Yeah, I got it right.

That's excellent.

The adults with cognitive challenges are learning from the horses by working as a team.

So, they were all learning the parts of the horse, where those parts went, how to remember where they went.

Retaining that information and coming back and being able to share it but also what goes with that is the pride in being successful.

So, the horses are helping them because they earn incentive, they want to work with the horses, then they learn how to manage their temper with breathing exercises, but also being able to communicate and be effective.

My favorite thing is to say that miracles happen at the barn.

Laura Friday: Equine assisted services is the using or partnering with a horse to reach a person in a way that other therapies, modalities, activities cannot.

A lot of the youth we work with have been labeled for one reason or another as troubled or they need some sort of intervention.

Now, do you guys want to elevate that black tarp over some barrels, so it looks a little different or do you want it to look similar to that one?

We ask at the journaling portion, we ask the students to list three obstacles that they have in their life and to start reflecting on how they respond to those obstacles.

Then we bring them into the arena, and we give them a ton of different items, bones, barrels, cones, tarts, things like that, that they can set up as an obstacle course for their horse.

They take their horse through the course and during that time, they get to watch how their horse interacts with something they've never seen before, and so then at the end of the group time, I always ask them, does your horse's reaction... how does it compare to your reaction?

Is it mirroring?

Did your horse act how you act when you face a new obstacle or is it a differentiation there?

Is there some contrast?

Dela Ward: You can get a lot of help here in a kind of a non-conventional way.

I'm not good on a couch in a therapist office but with horses they know you can't lie, you can't fake it.

They push you to grow the way you're supposed to grow.

Kathy Fresard: We teach our riders how to approach a horse respectfully in the way that a horse likes to be approached and they learn to groom the horse.

So, they learn how to care for it, and they learn how to tack the horse all before they actually get on the horse, and then the relationship sort of builds from there.

We're learning that there's a whole lot of stuff that happens neuro-psychologically and neuro-physiologically in relationship to the movement of a horse.

Vestibular system, proprioception, enteroception all that gets activated when the horse starts to move.

For the riders to learn how to manage how strong they have to be with a horse or how gentle, how much pressure they need to apply to get the horse to do what they want.

There's something about that energy that is pretty profound.

[music playing] I'm Richard Mason.

I have Parkinson's disease.

I spent 756 days in a nursing home at first unable to sit up or feed myself.

While I was in the nursing home, I had a bucket list and on that bucket list I put learn to ride a horse and I came out and started.

It's been wonderful.

Helps me with my balance, self-confidence.

When I'm on that horse I'm equal to anybody.

Jennifer Millay: I see growth.

I see a spirit of I can do things that I didn't think I could do.

Laura Friday: It's a whole lot less intimidating to sit outside grooming a horse than it is to be in an office with a therapist.

I think the greatest thing I see is hope.

Jennifer Millay: It's just such a wonderful feeling to let people come here and feel accomplished, accepted and loved.

Everybody needs that.

The Adsmore House & Gardens Living History Museum is open for tours led by Victorian costumed guides where you'll learn a wide variety of things about the region, ranging from the Black Patch Tobacco War, all the way to an early 1901 Victorian Christmas.

Now, I'm going to go see what else I can check out.

Here's our next story.

Gretchen Hunt: Human beings have always shared things.

If I need butter, I can go to my neighbor and just say do you have a stick of butter?

So, we've always shared things without costs.

So, I think the gift economy feels like that.

It's very much like relying on this idea of giving something to someone without expecting anything in return, and you then create your own currency through that, you know.

What would it look like to value, like, things like reciprocity and mutual relationships and, like, understanding and skills as currency, time as currency.

You know, things that we often sometimes, like, take for granted.

It's sort of an old way to look at it where it's not a barter society it's something else.

It's completely just giving freely and receiving openly.

I think I joined Buy Nothing probably about six or so years ago.

Whenever it kind of started.

For me, it was a combination of wanting to declutter and get rid of things and get new things without having to spend money on them.

At its core the mission of Buy Nothing is to offer and give and receive freely.

It's to reduce waste.

It's to basically embrace your trash as someone else's treasure in the most like basic way and also to help connect communities and bridge neighborhoods.

Basically, you have a group on Facebook for a neighborhood, and the idea is that your neighbors have something that they want to get rid of and they'll post it, and they'll give it freely and you can pick it up.

I love that it helps me to build community in my neighborhood.

It's an easy, nice way to meet your neighbors without, like, you have like a social interaction to start from.

So, it's not just sort of from scratch which can be hard sometimes.

I like knowing this person in this house, they have something of mine, or I have something of theirs.

Maybe I've seen their kids, maybe they've seen my kid or my dog.

It is a nice way to feel really connected to your neighborhood.

Gretchen Hunt: I strongly believe in reducing our impact.

So, I try to shop almost 100% second hand at thrift stores.

I try not to buy new fashion when I can.

I think I've always given away things and exchanged things and had communal closets in college with my roommates.

So, a cloth swap is just the same idea, but it's a gathering at one point.

People come together and can bring clothes or bags and shoes, jewelry, and then share it and basically shop for free.

I do think it opens up a sense of creativity and a sense of generosity, both stylistically being creative and creating your own sense of style, but the second is really about sustainability and not fast fashion, and the third is that it's a really great way to mix a lot of groups of women.

I did have, at a recent cloth swap, I co-hosted it with a colleague of mine, and at one point before the swap formally began, I said a few words and it was a circle of women in this room, and for a minute, it just felt like a very authentic diverse group.

So, that was a moment where it felt like this is way more than tangible material items.

This is more about just human connection, and so, that's probably something that I think about is at the core of this.

What is this about?

It's just human relationships.

I'm a fan of like breaking words down, and so, whenever you give a gift like there's usually a lot of intention behind it.

You think about the person you're giving it to, that can be like a love language for some people.

Whenever you're giving gifts, it's like out of a place in your heart and...

It's not so transactional.

-Exactly.

Thank you.

-Yeah.

Rise and Shine is a mutual aid organization that comes together to meet the needs of Bowling Green residents.

It's really a space for us to practice community, be in community, and look out for one another.

Needs can be multiple things, you know, material needs, spiritual needs, emotional needs.

We have organized community events like community clothing swaps, free yoga sessions, and free shows, you know, food distributions, and disaster recovery and response, and distributing supplies to our homeless community.

Jarod Hines: I typically tell people we're trying to build solidarity and I think we say that a lot, -"Solidarity.

Not charity," -Yeah.

because we want to be able to uplift people, but we want them to uplift themselves as well.

It's everyday people coming together like you don't have to have a degree to do this.

You don't have to go to college to do this, like, you just have to care about your neighbor and care about one another and try to help people.

How can we get people to come together and literally form those bonds of community.

You know, if we talk about especially like gift economics and like value and currency.

It's having your relationships be like your power and having that be like your ultimate value.

The Red River Gorge area is famous for being one of Kentucky's premier adventure destinations.

Thanks to its unique sandstone arches and limestone cliffs it's home to world class hiking trails and rock-climbing routes, but you might not know that adventure seekers can now see another side of the gorge, what lies beneath.

Let's take a look.

Heather Warman: So, this room that we're paddling in now if you look beneath your kayak, you can see footprints on the floor.

So, we have shot a couple of movies in here.

Chip Polston: The room we're paddling in isn't a cave.

It's an abandoned limestone mine in Rogers, Kentucky just up the road from Natural Bridge State Park.

Heather Warman: This is so much more unique - and special than a cave.

- Right.

That water in there is all from an underground aquifer.

So, it's not rain-fed, or river-fed or anything like that, and a lot of limestone mines in Kentucky are fed by a river or a stream or something like that or near one.

So, a lot of times you can't use them because they flood out or that happens when they're mining too, they get flooded out.

So, the original uses for these were what?

-How were these created?

-Limestone, -all this rock we see around us -Right.

and most of that's used for road construction.

But you know limestone is also used in many products because it's a natural filtration element.

So, they use it in soaps, in the stacks of coal fired power plants to take out bad things.

So, all of this rock is what they were after.

The Mountain Parkway was the primary use for a lot of this rock in here.

Most of you probably drove on that to get here.

So, and they process the rock here too.

So, that was unique because it was so close to the job site.

So, and this mine started in the late 1800s.

It was originally surface mine.

In around 1950s, '60s, when they started blasting out the tunnel mines that we have now.

There are over five miles of tunnels in here.

There are 82 columns in there.

It's really large.

Almost all the dimensions are what you see here, 30 ft. high 62 ft. wide, and pretty much repeated throughout the whole mine.

If you look above it, it looks kind of like a waffle fry.

So, they started blasting back in here in the '50s.

How long did they do that before they decided they couldn't do it anymore?

-1985 -Okay.

was when it officially closed.

In 1980, they hit the water, they drilled into the underground aquifer.

The water began to come into the mine.

William Andrews: As they were mining the limestone, they intersected fractures and features that fed extra water into the mine, and it became more expensive to maintain the mine than to produce the stone.

Most of the rocks that you see in Kentucky -- and we have a wide variety of sedimentary rocks exposed in the state -- almost all of those were deposited by water, and so, every place you see a rock in Kentucky, it was deposited underwater or by water.

Heather Warman: Limestone is part of what used to be known as the Ordovician sea.

So, it used to be part of an ocean.

So, we have a lot of fossils in there.

There's lots of unique minerals in there, we have some Stalactite.

So, we have a lot of things that are happening naturally in a man-made environment, right?

Because even though these caverns were man made, nature takes over like it typically does, and we can see a lot of this has grown in.

We've left it as natural as we could, and inside the same thing is happening.

Nature is beginning to take a course like it would in a cave.

Chip Polston: Eventually the land was sold, and the new owners had a vision inviting locals and tourists alike to explore this unique environment aboard clear bottom kayaks or stand-up paddle boards.

There's plenty to see in the water too.

Wow!

Look at that.

They just swim right alongside the boat.

Heather Warman: They love it.

They're looking for food.

- He's like... - Oh, yeah.

He's like, do you have anything for me?

We also have rainbow trout, which is something people don't expect to see underground.

- We stock those.

- Okay.

But because it's a pretty pristine environment for them and we take good care of them.

Some of them are 32 lbs.

So, they're big fish.

We have completely clear kayaks and then we have an aqua underwater LED lights that are attached to each boat and then the wires run back to a battery station at the rear that we flip on for you.

So, it illuminates the water about 3 ft. around your personal kayak, and when you're in a group with eight people, it illuminates the entire room, and then we also have some accent lighting that we've put in there to highlight some of the fossils and things that I'll show you guys when we're on tour.

And then we also have underwater fish lights for the fish.

Those are feeding stations.

So, when we feed the fish, they need to be able to see the food floating.

So, it's not as completely dark as people would think, and then all of the guests have a headlamp on their helmet if they want a little extra light, so they can see what they're doing.

But honestly, the magic of the glowing lights is usually really a very unique experience.

It's very calm and peaceful in there.

So, people really relax, even if they're having a little anxiety about what they're going to experience.

Generally, it's a very relaxing thing once we start floating and like I said, it's very safe because it's so calm.

William Andrews: The system they hid in this particular quarry is one of these localized hydrologic systems that's moving along fractures associated with a fault system that actually goes right next to, actually three part of the quarry property, and so, as they intersected those fractures, the fractures make it very easy for the water to move through the limestone through the adjacent rock.

It tilts a little bit and then they hit these fractures, and as you, actually kayak back, you can see the tilt in the beds because the water is in the quarry's level, and so, when you start the roof is way above your head and as you get farther back, it's getting closer and closer and closer to the water, and so, you can actually, in that sense, see this very gradual tilt of the rock layers inside the quarry, and then as you're kayaking through, there's places where there's still actively water pouring into the quarry, you know, little waterfalls inside.

Folks who go in, who maybe haven't done anything like this before, what do they tell you about the experience when they come out?

I mean, most people think it's pretty amazing.

I still think it's pretty amazing.

I've been here since the beginning.

You know, it's just, it's a pretty magical place.

I don't know of anywhere else you can go that has this deep of water this consistently all year, and because it's not on hill, you're not affected by weather, you're underground, it's calm.

Even for people that have never kayaked before, it's a great place to come because there's no wind, there's no waves, it's a very controlled environment, and we also have guides.

It's a 1 to 4 guide ratio.

So, everyone's very safe.

Even if they're uncomfortable, we can assist them.

So, most people totally love it.

[music playing] Abby Peterson found a love for art at a young age.

Through years of working with his hands, Peterson developed a passion for chainsaw art.

He's competed across America and Canada against some of the best in the world to become a world champion carver with subjects ranging from wildlife to indigenous people.

Peterson has relished the journey to create and teach what he so loves.

Abby Peterson: To be a wood carver, you got to have a lot of dog in you.

You got to know how to work.

I told my son the other day they don't give away these calluses.

You can't buy them, you got to work hard for them.

I went to vocational school to become a carpenter and I was somewhat obsessed with building stuff.

Built hundreds of houses, buildings, I worked on commercial and industrial jobs.

I've done it all when it comes to carpentry.

Since 2012, I was at a really rough spot in my life.

I just happened to be in the woods with a timber saw.

Sun had just come up, there's a stump there.

Something said, carve a bear head.

I carved this crude looking bear head.

It literally lit me on fire.

I was so inspired, and I was so excited.

So, for several years, I continued to work a job and come home and carve at nighttime.

You got one trip through this life.

There's no reason you shouldn't be doing exactly what you want to do.

I come home and quit my job, started carving and that's when I really started growing.

I got one friend that says you got to have one of two things.

You either got to have money or you got to have wood carvings, you know.

If you ever find yourself without either, you better get to work.

So, when I first started, I would just go out and say I'm going to carve a bear, you know, and I didn't have any references.

But then you take some drawing classes online and you start studying anatomy.

I found myself one night at 3 o'clock in the morning.

You know, I'm studying the dental mold of a bear and I'm like, wow, you're really into this.

Just those little things, you know, to know a grizzly bear has six teeth in between the canine.

That's just odd information that I did not have in the beginning.

People come from all over the country here to learn, not just from Abby, but from our friends who come here to teach.

Josh Hays: So, I started carving in 2018.

Abby has helped me come a long way since I've been coming here.

I've learned a lot about saw control with him and then the drawing process and I thought he was crazy whenever he first said you need to start drawing.

Honestly, before I came here, I couldn't sharpen a chain to save my life.

I think that's one of the financially best things I've learned here.

Nikki Peterson: He is a really good instructor.

He doesn't take the saw and do it for you.

He tells you what to do or shows you what to do with his own saw and he may just leave you alone and see what you can figure out on your own.

Josh Hays: He's just blunt enough.

He'll tell you what he thinks but then you think about it later and it always makes sense, you know.

So, it gets you a better work ethic too because whenever you're here and you see everything, he's doing that motivates you to, I need to hit it harder, so I can get to that.

Abby Peterson: We are at Lanesville, Indiana.

The Lanesville Heritage Festival, carving all weekend here.

I used to do 35 shows a year.

Lanesville is the only show that we continue to do, other than maybe one or two other competitions.

I absolutely love the people here.

I love the history.

Abby fits in here because he just feels like he belongs here.

He feels like he's one of us.

When they first brought him, everybody was like chainsaw carver, you know, what's a chainsaw carver?

They come by and they see it and they're like he did that with a chainsaw.

That's amazing.

Abby Peterson: We carve so hard to produce all these pieces over four days.

When we work Lanesville, we're working a good 18 to 20 hours a day, the whole crew.

It's the hardest week we do all year as far as physically and mentally, emotionally.

[indistinct chatter] We just had a fantastic auction.

It really kind of chokes me up when they show up.

Ryan Bundy: There's people looking at it and they're like, I've got to have that bear, I've got to have that fox for my front porch, and the other guy sitting over said, no, she ain't getting it.

That's going home with me, and it just becomes an all-out bidding war.

$100 now, $110?

$100 now, $110?

Sold it to No.

54.

Abby Peterson: I kind of miss that weekly competition life.

Competed, you know, everywhere from New York to Montana, Florida, Georgia, Arkansas, Alaska.

For one, you got to work hard to compete so you can make some money, so you can continue to do what you love.

When the whistle blows and it's time to compete, you're giving it all you got, you want to win, and nothing will make you a better carver than getting a good old thumping.

You know, you get thumped, and you got a 20-hour ride, you're going to think about everything you did wrong.

Chetwynd is what I consider the most prestigious chainsaw carving competition in the world.

The world's best has been there, and it had always been a dream to carve at Chetwynd.

Chetwynd was amazing.

From the time we arrived, the hospitality that we got.

The event itself was crazy.

Abby Peterson: And you've got 35 hours to make something unseen before, something beautiful, something the town's going to be proud of something you're going to be proud of.

I just had this feeling he was going to get people's choice for sure.

Everybody was talking about that piece.

I wasn't surprised at all that he won.

Abby Peterson: I don't want to just say, hey, I made this much money.

I won this big competition.

When it's all said and done and over, I want to leave a ripple in the big pond.

You know, to where I help change some other guys' lives.

The more I learn, the more I realize I kind of don't know.

I want to keep pushing, keep learning, keep growing.

I truly believe I'll keep growing until it's all over.

We have loved spending time out here in Western Kentucky at the Adsmore House & Gardens Living History Museum here in Princeton.

Many thanks to the wonderful folks who have opened the doors to this beautiful home for us today and let ting us share these stories with you.

We cannot wait to get back, but for now, I'll leave you with this moment.

I'm Chip Polston cherishing this, Kentucky Life.