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the homestead.

rustred

rustred

Well-known Member
i found a picture of my grandparents homestead. they moved here in 1929 from the ukraine and started the home stead. it was $10.00 and you had to clear the land and farm it. this picture is right around 1960. i can see my uncles old 1951 ihc 1/2 ton by the barn. i still remember it. the original house is across from the big barn when u drive in. he used to have a 1948 john deere d but it must be hiding someplace. the new house was built in 1956. my parents and i lived in that small house across from the big house. i call it my little house and lived there till i was 3 years till dad bought his farm in 1960. i live on it now. my brother lives on the homestead now and all buildings are gone except the house and my little house and a few grainary's. there was pigs, cows and horses here. dad did lots of farming with the horses.then he got a 15-30 mccormick and did the breaking with it.
cvphoto71322.jpg
 
I can't imagine coming across the big pond back then and clearing big trees with no more then they had to work with no health care and all the hard work they did man are we spoiled
 
Health care ? That was in the day when the world didn’t shut down because of the flue thank God the people who homesteaded and started this country aren’t like the pussys today
 
Big trees? I wouldn’t think you would get trees much more than a foot across north of Edmonton Alberta. Mostly soft wood, Balsam, Popular trees. No trees like the Oaks, Beach, Maple and Pine trees in the North east, trees that could be 3-4 foot across and 80 feet high.
Still to start out with little to nothing to work with, what a daunting task.
 
Thank you for posting the picture. It's always interesting to see different parts of the country way back then.
 
I know the Canadian government advertised extensively for homesteaders through the Ukraine and Scandinavian countries. People that were accustomed to harsh cold winters. The chance to get to own land was a tremendous draw, and thousands took the offer. I have known many folks whose grand parents or great grandparents came from the Ukraine, and settled in Saskatchewan and Northern Manitoba. One of my nephews is married to a Ukrainian girl, they live in Winnipeg. Sadly most of the old home stead’s are now empty and falling down, as the land is farmed by a few larger operations. How far are you from the Peace River Valley area ?
 
I looked up your neck of the woods on Google earth. Nearly every field is a well defined quarter section. Every field border is straight as a string and the borders are straight for miles. It amazes me at how good of a job the surveyors did back when they were on foot and horseback and had no phone or radio communication.
 
Thank you for posting the picture and sharing the story of your homestead. Glad it is still in the family.
 
The real Pioneers. I once worked for a lady who was born in North Dakota in 1890 in a sod house. It makes me cold just thinking about it. Them folks were tough alright.
 

They had quite a large operation there. So how deep does the snow get up there north of Edmonton?

Had a friend that lived at Tomahawk. He called it Hatchet City.
 
they had two quarters of land they cleared. dad and his brother. they used dynamite to blow the stumps out of the ground. dad's brother had
an accident as he thought the dynamite went out and ran over to check it and it blew up . he lost one eye. they worked farming during the
summer and worked in lumber camps during the winters. dad was a tree faller for over 30 years. yes they worked hard all there life. out of
the 5 kids the grand parents had only 2 left. my aunt is 80 and uncle be 90 soon. he says he is like a cat cause he has had 8 strokes so far.
but he is doing good and very spry and still gets around. also these guys had to walk to school about 2 1/2 miles each way morning and
night. the crops were cut with a john deere binder and the used the thrashing machine , plus did thrashing and stooking for the neighbors.mother used to cook for the thrashing crew start early in morning and they had coffee and lunch at 10 am , dinner at noon, another lunch at 3:30 then a late supper . us kids used to have races with our pedal bikes on the tractor trails from the machine to the field where the stooks where. us kids used to tobagan off the top of the straw piles in the winter. also it was used as cattle and pig shelter. the cows would make tunnels right through the pile. i also remember in the fall the old straw pile would get burned if a frost was coming.i
can even remember the snow drifts over the truck on sides of the road. them old caterpillar graders id the job. nowadays hardly see them on
the road and the county is always trading them in for new every couple years. i said what the heck you need new graders, when those dont get
hardly used. we dont have much snow now, maybe 4-5 inches. usually a couple feet. yes i know tomahawk, couple hrs away.
 
dad was 3 years old and his brother was 6 months old the rest were born here. they came over on an old ship, i think like a month it took. i am the oldest of 6 kids, first one born here.
 
Just wondering did Poplar trees indicate good ground or poor? In NE Washington where I grew up it was not so much as an indication of good soil but meant that there was good moisture. Thanks, Mike
 
Dad used to say look where the poplars are growing that’s good grain land. Where spruce are poor land, they grow in lower land swampy or muskeg . we have grey wooded soil here.
 
There was a TV documentary a few years ago where they took several groups of people, some families, some couples, some individuals, dropped them in the northwest US with what the pioneering settlers would have had for survival.

Their goal was to build a temporary shelter, keep their farm animals alive or eat them if necessary, grow enough crops, procure enough fire wood, to survive for a year.

They were dropped off in early spring, all were taken out by early winter as none were able to prepare for winter survival.

This was repeated with several groups. Some even cheated by finding discarded modern items on the land. One of their downfalls was bickering and arguing with those they should have been teamworking with. Oh, and there were no Indian raids to contend with!
 
Right, and how many children did they bury from the flu.
I used to do cemetery maintenance and I still remember one family buried three kids from 2 to 10 years of age in 1918 over a period of 6 months.
 
(quoted from post at 15:08:56 01/15/21) i found a picture of my grandparents homestead. they moved here in 1929 from the ukraine and started the home stead. it was $10.00 and you had to clear the land and farm it. this picture is right around 1960. i can see my uncles old 1951 ihc 1/2 ton by the barn. i still remember it. the original house is across from the big barn when u drive in. he used to have a 1948 john deere d but it must be hiding someplace. the new house was built in 1956. my parents and i lived in that small house across from the big house. i call it my little house and lived there till i was 3 years till dad bought his farm in 1960. i live on it now. my brother lives on the homestead now and all buildings are gone except the house and my little house and a few grainary's. there was pigs, cows and horses here. dad did lots of farming with the horses.then he got a 15-30 mccormick and did the breaking with it.
Click to expand...

Great picture and a great story. Thanks for posting it.
 
(quoted from post at 11:29:00 01/16/21) Right, and how many children did they bury from the flu.
I used to do cemetery maintenance and I still remember one family buried three kids from 2 to 10 years of age in 1918 over a period of 6 months.
Click to expand...

You would have better luck talking to a stump.
 
My grandfather naively bought a cheap quarter section in the late thirties that was cut-over pine land.
He didn't realize that 10,000 years of pine needles sort of poisons the ground so no grains will grow.
He defaulted on his taxes and let it go. [He wasn't a farmer, but thought he could speculate a little.]
All that ground is now overgrown with maple trees and other new growth.
 
it is history that is gone. the young people have no idea on the amount of work it took to keep the farm running. i had to do the chores cause dad was away in lumber camps working. ooh,.. on time we had relatives come from vancouver to visit in the summer. i was doing chores and put the cows in the barn for milking. got everything ready and the city slicker said can i do that. meaning to milk the cow. it was a milking machine. so he puts the bucket under the cow then he says "ok bessy let her go" . boy i laughed at him. never did forget that!i was like 16 years old. used to go to the straw pile with the w6 mccormick and had to bring loads of straw to bed the cows on the cold days in the barn. plus clean the barn on cold days cause milk cows had to stay in not to freeze their teats. now a days i think those kids would report a person for abuse before even trying to do chores. but yes i had to work hard but now i am on the same farm and often think of the old times! lol. dont realy regret it though.
 
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