In the days before the combine and the swather, before powerful diesel tractors that could pull giant equipment across the fields to clear stones and roots, before the milking machine and cattle liners, there was the farmer and his family. The land in this hilly country is not rich (except in rocks) The weather is unpredictable, June frosts, August frosts, drought or flood, the only thing guaranteed is a short growing season, and even that's not sure.
My grandparents and great grandparents, none of them farm born, stll managed to eke a sort of living off their farms, and to raise families, some of whom are real farmers. They came to this raw land and carved out homesteads with axe and saw, horse drawn breaking plows, and dedication to owning their own property.
And make a living they did, by mixed farming, cutting the hay and oats to feed the milk cows, selling cream for cash or credit, feeding skim milk to the pigs. Growing a giant garden to feed themselves and feed the scraps to the pigs which were butchered or sold for another small cash income. Supporting the farm by "working out" (not in a gym) as lumberjacks or labourers, as miners, trappers and fishermen, as harvest hands in the south while their own crops were ripening. Their children hired out to neighbours as farm help or house help or milkers or herdsmen, or all of the above, to provide cash for the family. Everybody worked, it was the way things were.
Great grandpa Barnard Woollard was a footman in England who came to Ontario and became a fisherman on the Great Lakes before moving west with the dream of becoming a plutocrat by buying the fish of the three lakes and selling them to the hungry east, his dream died with him a year later.
My grandma's father David Harmon Lent was a teacher and Methodist minister who came west bringing the gospel. He made a living all his life as an itinerant teacher while my great grandma ran the farm and stopping house and restaurant. Their sons were a steam engineer, a real farmer (and tax inspector and weed inspector) and a prospector, trapper and fur trader in the north. Their daughters were teachers and nurses, storekeepers and farm wives and newspaper correspondents.
Grandpa Edwin John Woollard was a freighter who carried supplies for the new settlers in the Wabamun area, the mail for the country, and freight for the railway builders who would end this way of life. He then became a farmer, miner, lumberman, and whatever he could put his hand to.
My dad, Edwin Harry Woollard was born on the farm and worked there as a child. He knew the farm life and he also knew that in this country a farm was barely a living. After he was in the Army in WWII he became a miner, later a foreman, then a welder. His skills made him a living so he could raise his sons to be a lawyer and a labour union executive, and me, a sort of philosopher and naturalist and jack of all his grandfathers had been, but in a new era. I wouldn't know a hame from a surcingle but I can run a front-end loader, grader and chainsaw. The circle continues.
My mother's grandfather Alexander Campbell was a fisherman in the Hebrides of Scotland who came to the big woods of the Eastern Townships in Quebec in 1887 and worked at lumbering until the family followed my grandfather west to settle the prairies around Monitor (1916). The Thirties dusted them all out to Lake Isle in 1931.
Her other grandfather Alexander MacDonald came to the Eastern Townships in 1851 and worked his whole life in the woods.
Grandpa Donald Campbell worked in the lumber camps of Quebec, moved west and was a farmer and blacksmith, then a farmer and hunter and fisherman when he moved to Lake Isle. He was also a skilled carpenter and maintenance man for the UFA Co-op. later in life.
His seven daughters worked as farm helpers, as storekeepers, as housekeepers, as cooks at the mine and in oil and lumber camps, as wives of farmers, as wives and mothers. One was a nurse. Among them they raised thirty one children, professors, doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, teachers, restauranteurs, electricians, mechanics, merchants and managers, and people.
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