The Farm

Growing up on the farm wasn’t all that bad. I was the youngest by five years of four kids. My oldest brother Don was 18 years old when I was born. Sister Jean was 10 and brother Dick was five. There was a fifth child Jessie who died at age four of meningitis. My mother was despondent and later talked to her doctor and said I don’t know what ever I can do. He said go home and have another baby to which she replied but doctor I’m forty years old.  He said go home and have another baby anyway. So she did and got me not a dainty replacement daughter but a big hulking monster almost 13 pounds. Sister Jean always said it was she that raised me.

Brothers Don, Dick, sister Jean and farm hand

Playing on the farm as kids

Sisters Jean and Jessie

Elevators in Vauxhall, Alberta

I grew up rather isolated with no play dates or opportunities for interactions with other kids except at school. No cub scouts, skating rinks, community Centers.  My folks were frantically busy running a big farm. My best friends were probably the animals. I started reading early on and one school year around grade 6 or 7 I won a prize for reading 69 books . The first adult one published in 1939 was the biography of the physicist Madame Currie. I decided then that I wanted to be a scientist. A neighbour had a great library and I consumed almost all of it. I loved the complete works of Sherlock Holmes by Conan Doyle .

My favorite spot in the Iiving room where I spent a lot of time reading

We kids all had farm duties. My first job at age four was gathering eggs. It took a fair amount of courage to retrieve a warm egg out from under a cranky hen. As soon as she saw your hand approaching she would peck it and it hurt. So I developed the technique of advancing my right hand toward her head and when she was distracted quietly and quickly slipping my left hand under her rump in a deft sweep to retrieve the egg like a pick pocket . Worked every time. Later in harvest season I had to shovel grain. Hard work and I hated it. Even worse was hand pumping water into big cattle watering tanks. In the hot weather a herd of cattle could suck the tank almost faster than you could pump it full. We had a huge truck garden which we cultivated with a pronged device called a harrow drawn by a scrawny old horse called Maggie. We just sat on a blanket as we didn’t have a saddle so it was my job to sit up on this saw tooth of a backbone and steer her between the rows with brother Dick behind directing the harrow. Some days my butt was so sore that I could hardly walk.

Spot with her puppies and me

My constant companion and best friend was Spot an English setter with a big black spot over right eye. The folks brought her home in the car as a puppy with me as a new born so we were the same age. We were together until we left the farm when I was age 13. She stayed behind. The farm pony was a beautiful roan called Peaches. I used to blanket ride her to school occasionally No sharp backbone on that gal. She was a bit skittery and would shy at a piece of paper etc on the road and suddenly jump sideways so you had to be sure to hold on all the time. Once she dumped sister Jean off. She got up, walked around nose to nose and slapped her face. She claimed that Peaches never did it again! We had over one hundred head of Hereford cattle, pigs, sheep, and two huge Clysdale draft horses called Mac and Queen. They pulled farm machines etc around the fields especially during the war when gas was rationed.

Me with the farm house in the background

Also we had chickens, turkeys ,and at one time raised pheasants and Chukkar partridge for release.

Jean and Dick

Family outing: Jessie, the little girl, died of meningitis before I was born