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5.
These solemn experiences effect the lives of young people, and with us it
seemed to unite us closer in the family ties. We each felt our responsibility to
do all we could now to help father. I was now in my 15th year, and in the next
year, in May 1893, I went to work on the farm for Uncle Tom. Uncle had a milk
route that year and went away very early in the morning. While he was away,
Aunt Jennie and I milked the cows and had the milk in the cans so that he could
also pick up his own milk and take all to the factory. We had to be up at 4:30
in the morning and generally kept going until 8 or 9 at night. It made very long
hours.
The wage s for this were very small, only $5.00 per month, and experienced
farm workers at that time only received $12.00 to $14.00 a month and board.
They usually worked from morning until night, or all the daylight hours at least.
The following two years I still worked out for different farmers, doing
long hours of work for very small wages, as was the custom at that time. It was
a matter of plodding mile after mile after the old walking plow or the harrow, and
anyone who spoke of a cart to ride on was just considered lazy.
Early in 1896. father bought the farm adjoining ours and also rented
another farm, so we had plenty of work at home after that.
Ten years more were to roll past before I at last decided to strike out and
try a hand in Western Canada. During those ten years, there was still very little
evidence of the wonderful machine power that was coming to change the way of
living for men and women the world over. Early and late we worked away on the
old farm, only now, instead of the reaping hook and the scythe to cut and handle
the crops, we had the mower and the self binder.
The land was still plowed with the old walking plow and levelled down with
the harrow. To sow the seed, we used the first style seed drills with rubber hose
to carry the seed to the ground.
In looking back over those years, I cannot but remark how contented and
satisfied we were and all willing to work together and not to disagree. As Grey
in his Elegy has said:
"Far from the maddning crowds ignoble strife
Our sober wishes never learned to stray,
Along the cool sequestered vale of life.
We kept the noiseless tenor of our way."
The call to the West seemed to get more urgent. Men who had worked out West
often came home and visited with us in the winter and told of the speedy way
that work was done out on the level fertile land in the West and about the good
crops of wheat that brought cash to the farmer.
So in August of 1905, my younger brother George and I took the harvest excursion
and landed in Southern Saskatchewan, where we had our first experience of
harvesting and thrashing on the Prairie. It was the first time we had seen the
straw blown through the blower and right up onto the strawstack. No forking to do.
Then a little later, I got a job to go plowing. It was my first experience
sitting on a riding plow pulled by six horses -- four behind and two ahead -- rolling
over acre after acre of good black level soil. When the threshing was completed,
George went back home, but I went up to Dauphin, Manitoba to a logging camp.
It was a first experience in camp life for me.
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