Friday, August 2, 2013

Leaving Home: The Farm and Shaunavon

Shauanavon, Saskatchewan
     It was over a year ago that my dad told us that he was selling the farm. We have all wanted him to retire--his body is showing its fifty years of taxing physical labour--but there was some trepidation and surprise. I had always joked that we would one day pull his corpse from a tractor cab, and was a little stunned at the prospect of my dad being a farmer no more. There has never been a time in known history that someone on his side of the family hasn't farmed.
     Five sections of land, two home farms (one for living and one for working) that have been in my family for 99 years. Depending on who I told over the years, there was anything from mild curiosity to indignant shock over the years in response to hearing that the line ended there: not one of my father's three sons or any of our cousins would take the farm over. Our Norwegian family was flabbergasted that we would let the family farm go. (Those pieces of precious land were the reason my great grandsires had left the Old Country, after all)
     Within a year it was all taken care of, the auction set for July 22, they purchased a gorgeous acreage outside of Medicine Hat ("Where Saskatchewan Farmers Go To Die"), halving the drive required for my family to see them.
     That weekend was the last days of hard labour in 30 degree heat, in dust and dirt and thirst, with your head down and your shoulders hunkered and your hat pulled down low. Those days were spent organizing tools, lining up machinery, fixing wiring. Getting it all just so. Whoring up the farm. The last days of hard farm work were there to end it.
     Serendipitously, that very same weekend was the Centennial of my hometown of Shaunavon. My mother's side has taken to having an informal family reunion (a "Hoo-Ha" in Audette-speak), and this weekend was aptly chosen. Celebrations and emotions.
     I can easily recall the 75th celebrations in 1988. I was just entering Grade 6. It felt like the biggest thing to happen to my life at the time. Back then, I told myself that I would still be here for the big party in 2013 (a number that felt like science fiction then; so did the age of 35, mind), and little did I realize just how significant that celebration would be for me. It was an ending.
     Shaunavon is a wonderful community. A lot of larger centres could benefit from a lesson in its civic pride, in its rare balance of culture with the pervasive religion of hockey (although, yes, the finest building in town is a rink). When Shaunavon has an event it is big, and its Centennial was huge. I was happy to bring my wife and kids to it. Seeing friends from high school, keeping pace with family. Working at the farm.
     Sunday night, when we got back to Alberta, it came to me that that was my last trip home, at least home as I knew it. The farm would be gone soon, and visits to Shaunavon would become quite rare without Mom and Dad living there. It turned out to be a fantastic weekend of celebration but also of farewell.
     In my ten years as an Albertan, I have never not been from Saskatchewan, and that's not ever going to change. It's also always been my goal to find a balance between where I'm from and where I'm at. When we got married, I told my wife that "home" would be wherever she was. But she has always known that whenever I have suggested going "home," I have meant a farm and a small lovely town in southwest Saskatchewan.
     Good-bye, Home.

2 comments:

  1. I felt the same way when my grandparents sold their farm. Thankfully, it's still in the family. The farm was more than my grandparents' house. It was where I had my fort in the corpse of an old combine, where we would lock turkeys under barrels and let them out to see which of us kids could run the fastest (turkeys are mean bastards), and where I first saw the Milky Way. The memories are scattered around the home quarter like so many grains of wheat, springing up in the oddest places.

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  2. Tear. Smile. I enjoy this one.

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