The history that bonds Canadian farmers.
The Banmans lived about four kilometres f r om t own. Their house was made out of sod. They did not have a vehicle. There was a row of trees to the south. And to the east, west and north, the flat, unrelenting, unforgiving prairies.
It’s the late 1800s. For the Banmans, the family who settled this farm, winter was something to survive. The Indigenous peoples who previously hunted and camped on this land helped many navigate these new and often hostile conditions. But adversity was part of life. And failure must have always been close. All of this was magnified during the winter months.
This adversity and the shared goal of survival bound most prairie farmsteaders to their neighbours. Doors were kept unlocked, and lanterns were kept burning as guides for those travelling at night. These bonds built communities.
This history of toil and struggle and community remains the unspoken foundation for what it means to live and farm in rural Canada. And it is a history to which farmers remain loyal — an appreciation for the mettle that went into breaking the land and the tacit understanding that every farmer today has it in him or her to again summon such resolve, if required.
When it’s – 30 C with a wind chill of – 45 C and I can’t see the neighbour’s lights or the end of the driveway and the wind is a strong constant force against which something will eventually give, I get tense. I get nervous. And I get nostalgic.
Many farms in Canada started with very little and the freezing prairie winds do not discriminate. The i nexpensive l and offered t hrough t he Dominion Lands Act was the golden ticket for some and a death sentence for others. Winter and poor wheat prices were significant hurdles.
When my wife and I moved back to the farm from Toronto in 2012, we did not know that the ensuing winter and the one after that would require us to clear the snow off of our half- mile- long driveway twice a day, use tractors to extract numerous vehicles ( including ours) from snow banks, and on more than one occasion snowblow a neighbour’s yard.
Some of these scenarios were harrowing. Machines don’t run well when it’s so cold. And the cabs on our tractors are meant for summer conditions. To pull someone out of the ditch a mile from our house may as well be the true middle of nowhere during an intense winter storm.
Most of rural Canada is no longer the wild west. But in winter, it often feels like an individual farm’s survival still depends on the co-operation of the farms around it.
Adverse conditions on this farm look different for me than they did for previous generations. But today, like in the 1800s, the specific challenges of winter were offset by the beauty, peace and richness of the whole.
The Banmans had the right stuff, starting a farm that now spans 1,200 acres and is still in the family. It’s only a dimple now, but it’s clear where that first sod house was. There are apple trees nearby, and the site is only a hundred or so metres from the farm’s current main house.
The farm no longer requires horses. Its machinery would be unrecognizable to the Banmans. The mechanized harvester waiting in the machine shed for fall is roughly twice as big as that first sod house. And surviving winter is no longer a challenge reserved for the intrepid few. The farm now has motors, snowblowers and HBO.
But farms never forget. The very existence of each one tells a story of toil and struggle and community. And, if they are around today, they have survived more than a few Canadian winters.
Farming is a long, complicated game. But it shouldn’t dismiss the steps along the way. We survived 2017. It’s 2018 now.