“Twenty years ago, it wasn’t the law of the land, so to speak, in farming, but it was used in a big, bigway,” Rice said. “Farmers still scan it, but they don’t completely sink their teeth into that information. There are so many other sources of pretty doggone good factual information that’s on target.” Now, the National Weather Service has become the go-to place for weather forecasts. Because of this, the almanac’s audience has begun to change. Duncan said they are getting more urban people who are just curious about the publication.
It’s the bread and butter of the friendly rivalry between the Farmers’ Almanac and the Old Fanner’s Almanac, which for almost 200 years have been making long-term weather forecasts. And they’re pretty good at it, both claiming about 80 percent accuracy. This spring, for example, both publications predict warmer temperature with around normal rainfall through June.
Thanks to Stuart McIntosh–Although this pic is from the 1939 grain harvest in Saskatchewan, it includes the 2 gentlemen on the left from the Almonte area: Bill McIntosh and Fred Dunlop.
Bill was working for the Steele family of Ramsay twsp. when he left with Fred on the excursion. One of Bill’s sayings to those he drove for was: “If I’m driving ‘em, I’m feeding ‘em. Apparently he felt some farmers didn’t feed enough oats to a working horse.
A number of our Middleville community left, or are going West to the 1956 harvest fields in the prairie provinces, Manitoba and Alberta, namely: Lyall Mather, Harry and Frank Mitchell, Ian Drew, Charles McKay, David Lawson, Lome Somerville and Alden Affleck. Sept 1958
Howard Stoner of Cayuga, Ont., worked for about $2.50 per day in Manitoba in 1908; Bob Yates was happy at $4, while others claimed it was possible to earn as much as $6 or $7 for a day’s work in the mid-1920s.
A large contingent from this section left on the harvest excursion. While one of the trains was at the station here several of the young men on the train indulged in filthy remarks to the people on the platform and Chief Lowry spoke to one of them about his language. The young man went into the train and just as it was starting secured a dish of water and dashed it in the chief’s face through the car window. The chief boarded the train and securing his man, had the train stopped and took him off. He was brought before the magistrate and soaked $7 for his fun and departed on a late train, a sadder, but wiser man.
Harvest Home women.. Black and white postcard of women in field in Elgin, Ontario around 1905.
. Photos from Aggie Yuill’s photo album..
For almost 40 years, harvest excursions were organized in Eastern Canada to assist prairie farmers with the grain harvest. Thousands of men and women were recruited, no experience necessary, and transported out west to work in the fields, to ensure that Canada maintained its reputation as the breadbasket of the world. The excursions were a huge undertaking and were absolutely critical for a successful harvest.First conceived by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1890, the annual harvest excursion quickly became a popular tradition, a tradition that contributed in no small way to the significance of the wheat economy to the western prairies and to the country at large. Harvest of the wheat crop was essential to Canada’s food supply, to consumers at home and abroad, and especially to individual farmers and their families.
The harvest excursions were immensely popular, and by any measure, the numbers were impressive. During the 1890s, excursionists rarely exceeded more than a few thousand each year, but after 1900 and through the middle years of World War I, harvesters headed west in the thousands, over 30,000 in 1911 alone. In 1917, with most able-bodied men in uniform or in the munitions industry, the CPR doubled its efforts with an urgent appeal to the patriotic spirit and succeeded in attracting more than 40,000 men and women harvesters.
Postwar excursions were no less popular. From 1920 through 1928, it is estimated that the number of harvesters averaged close to 39,000 per year with peak numbers of 50,450 in 1923 and 52,225 in 1928. In 1929, the wheat market collapsed and with the onset of the economic depression, the harvest excursion had reached the end of the line.
The annual harvest excursion was important to the CPR for two major reasons: One, it was critical for the prairies, the country at large and the company that the grain harvest be completed in a timely fashion. Two, the company held vast tracts of land on the Prairies and the excursions were an excellent means to advertise the West since every excursionist was a potential settler. In addition, since the CPR was the only transcontinental railway in the country until after the turn of the century, it was the only means of transportation for people and products to move from west to east to west.
Jul 28, 1891: the first annual Harvest Excursion train departs Toronto, carrying temporary workers to help western grain farmers. These trains ran for three decades and were a lucrative source of income for farm labourers and students looking for summer employment.
And history hasn’t taken too much notice of them. No records have been kept by either of the big railways and newspaper files yield a prosaic and fragmentary story. When the excursions were running they were too commonplace to be news.
But tens of thousands of men who went on them still have nostalgic memories—jampacked colonist cars filled with farmers, schoolboys, lumberjacks, factory hands, roustabouts, adventurers; the smell of “Catholic hay,” as French-Canadian home-cured tobacco was called and the smell of sweat and socks; the subdued strains of Seeing Nellie Home on a mouth organ from the other end of the car at night; the talk—cheerful, mendacious, foul, enlightening, but seldom boring; the friendships quickly formed and later bonded with the common experience of aching muscles, alkali sickness, violent bunkhouse East vs. West debates, hard work, sound sleep and (generally) good plentiful food.
Beaver Hay is the rank grass that grows in beaver meadows.
Speaker: Yeah, some places they made them. Interviewer: Yeah. Speaker: Just all round. Interviewer: Quite different. Um- Speaker: Brought them to a peak. Generally went and got a- a load of wild hay from the beaver meadow or somewhere. Interviewer: Yeah. Speaker: To put on the top because beaver hay turned the water much better than the other. Interviewer: Oh that’s interesting. I wonder why that was. Speaker: I don’t know. At that time, you-know, they, ah- they used to have these big beaver meadows that they had to cut with, ah, the scythe. You’ve seen them?
Speaker: Arnold Milford, Gender: Male, Age at interview: 93, Interview: 1977,Lanark County
Speaker: The loft was above and you put up a hand, you-know? Interviewer: Mm-hm. Speaker: You’d fork it up to the loft and somebody would stack it back and spread it back in the mow. Interviewer: Yes. This was wild hay. Speaker: Wild hay, yeah. Interviewer: Yes. Speaker: Beaver w– what they call beaver hay. Interviewer: Yes
Speaker: Alfred Starz, Gender: Male, Age at interview: 72, Interview: 1978,Lanark County
Broiler Chicken A meat chicken raised to the weight of 2.65 kg or under.
Buck Male goat.
Buck Mature, male deer.
Buckling A young, male goat (teenager).
Chevon Meat that comes from adult goats.
Chick The term for a baby chicken (male or female) until it is about three weeks of age
Cockerel A young male chicken.
Colostrum The first milk that any animal (including humans) produce after they give birth. This milk helps to pass along the mother’s immunity to disease to her offspring.
Roaster Chicken A larger meat chicken raised to the weight of over 2.65 kg.
Sow An adult female pig that has given birth.
Wattle The reddish-pink flesh-like covering on the throat and neck of a turkey. It helps to release extra body heat.
Weaned This term is used to describe the stage when animals are taken off their mother’s milk and fed solid foods, like grasses.
If you let your cattle trespass within a quarter mile of mills, stores, taverns or churches on preaching days in 1841 it would cost you a shilling– same with a cow without a bell.
Did you know each cow wore a different bell and that is how they knew whose was who..
A friend invited me to spend a weekend at his cottage and drew a map showing me how to get there. I left right after work last Friday. I found the map hard to follow and wound up lost on a country road. I stopped to ask a farmer for directions. He hadn’t heard of my friend but he said there were about a dozen cottages some five or six miles away. He told me how to get to them. I thought it was worth a try so I started off.
After I made several turns the road began to get bad. Then it got worse. I slithered through a couple of mud holes. I scraped the bottom of my car on a rock. Once I even had to stop to remove an old tree limb that had fallen and blocked the way. Suddenly I found myself driving right into a swamp. My car bogged down to the hubcaps in black mud. Getting out on my own was hopeless. I knew I would need help.
By now it was dusk and I didn’t want to set out walking through unfamiliar country. I spent an uncomfortable night in my automobile. Next morning I climbed a big pine tree to see if I could spot any cottages ahead. There was nothing but more trees and rocks.
I did discover one thing pine trees are covered with gooey pitch and if you climb one you can junk your clothes. I decided the only thing to do was walk out the way I came in. It took all morning to get back to the farmer’s house. No one was home. I was sticky and hungry and hot and there was no choice but to hoof it another mile to the next farm. Luckily the people were in and they had a telephone. The farmer was very helpful. He said I’d been on a road to an old, abandoned mica mine.
He said snowmobilers and hunters kept it fairly free of fallen timber but it hadn’t been used by automobiles for years. The farmer called a local garage and it sent a tow truck. We all rode back to the swamp. The tow truck couldn’t budge my car. The car was stuck too deeply. The driver said he would have to call another garage that had a big truck with a winch and four-wheel drive. The big truck had to come 30 miles and it didn’t arrive until after 5 p.m. The driver was sure he could pull me out easily and he was right.
But my total bill for both trucks was close to $50. I thought the first farmer, the one who misdirected me the day before, should pay part of my expense. After all, his bad advice had ruined my weekend and cost me a lot of money. I went to see him. He flatly refused to pay. He said I had made a turn he never told me to take. I’m sure I followed his directions exactly.
The farmer was probably right, that I misunderstood his directions. After all, he lived in the area and ought to know the difference between a mica mine and a lake. Anyway, there was plenty of warning that something had gone wrong. The fallen tree limb should have been an unmistakable clue. That wasn’t likely in midsummer on a road that leads to a dozen cottages 🙂 I guess I should have turned down the radio when I first realized I was lost LOL!
So why, then, are we wonky about the radio volume when it comes time to look for an upcoming exit sign or when we’re approaching an unfamiliar destination? It has to do with the demands on our ability to concentrate, and the limitations of the human brain.
Back In the early 1860s Mr. Oliver Robert learned the gentle art of cattle buying. His father, Stanislaus Robert, was then a cattle drover, and operated chiefly in the country between Ottawa and Perth, via Richmond. Prospect, Franktown and Perth.
Later, in the 1870s, Mr. Robert operated in this same country on his own behalf. Those were the days when country roads, even the main roads, were things of ruts, corduroy, mud and clay. It was, however, also the day when meat was cheap and farmers took the word of drovers as to current values of beef and lambs. Very few farmers took newspapers, and then certainly did not have telephones, or radios to tell them about ruling prices. But, as Mr. Robert says, most drovers were pretty honest fellows and they and the farmers got on well together. As a matter of fact the drovers had to be honest, as if they were caught In a misrepresentation of prices they might as well leave the country. Their connection would be gone.
Mr. Robert tells that when a drover went to sleep in a village hotel he never thought of locking the door or even putting a chair against it, even though he had hundreds of dollars in his pockets. Mr. Robert admits, however some drovers may have taken their trousers and put them under his pillow. Some did not even do that.
In the early 1870s when Mr. Oliver Robert started “droving” for himself, drovers paid the farmers from 3c to 4c per pound for stall fed cattle and $2.50 per lamb. Cattle were all “walked” to Ottawa. The usual practice In the case of the cattle stall was to walk them about 6 miles increasing the walk to 15 miles the next day. On the third day if they came from Perth they increased it even more on the third day.
Great postcard of a busy ByWard Market, circa 1909, looking toward Clarence St. Lost Ottawa
The stall fed cattle was to walk them about six miles the first day, increasing the walk to 15 miles the second day. On the third day (if they came from Perth) the walk was still further increased. On the other hand the cattle called ‘grassers” could be walked from Perth in two days. They were hardy, The stall fed cattle were bought from about the 15th of May to the 1st of July and the “grassers” from July. The herds brought In on each trip generally numbered from 25 to 30 head.
In the 1870s the cattle yard where the drovers sold their cattle to butchers was in the Byward market. But the cattle were comingiIn such numbers that they took up too much room on the market and the farmers and others began to kick. About 1880 the cattle market was moved to Cathcart Square. It didn’t stay there many years, however, as the residents put up a kick about the noise and selling got back to Byward market.
While the cattle yard was at Cathcart Square a man named De Rise kept a hotel there and also had charge of the yard. As years went on the railways began to gridiron the country and they changed the whole system of cattle buying and handling and the old-time drover became a thing of the past.
Mr. Robert recalls that bringing a herd of 25 or 30 cattle to town was very often a troublesome Job. They often “dragged” on the road, and often broke away into unfenced bush land or jumped low fences Into passing farms. A drover had to have a great stock of patience, and often had a large vocabulary of swear words.
Mayor Coleman said Carleton Place was an important market town with Bridge Street sees a parade of farm vehicles and animals on their way to market. Cattle had a hard enough time moving down to the CPR station in those days–I can’t even imagine if that happened now.
Aug 8 1913
Fifteen head of cattle were killed on the C.P.R. Track about a mile south of Carleton Place after being struck by a train at an early hour this morning. A herd of 175 cattle had been driven into town by the Willow brothers yesterday and placed in the stock pen for shipment. Some time after midnight cattle broke through the fence ad proceeded to travel down different track routes.
A freight train traveling near the 10th and 11 th concessions of Beckwith struck the largest herd and before the locomotive could slow down fifteen cattle were killed or so maimed they had to be destroyed. Two head were also killed on the line west and three east of the station making for a total of 20.
I spend a good deal of the day researching newspaper archives and today I found this. In 19745, 42 years ago, they predicted the death of farms. Here is is 8 years away– what are your comments?
This old farm became a very large solar farm by next spring and these buildings no longer existed in 2013. 😦
Got a message this morning from Mary Hurdis.
The solar windowed item is next door now and this farm was almost directly across from the Thompsons, which was called Lloyd. The post office was operated by the Thompsons and their son Lloyd died and that’s where the name came from. The Lloyd Post Office. The last family to live at this house were the Giles family of six children..Elmer lives on Wolfgrove rd., Jerald C. P.,Marion, Edna,Leslie, also of CP, Doris.
Donna Sweeney Lowry
Hi Linda, I am questioning the pictures of an old farm house which have been identified as a Giles home situated across from Thompsons on the 12th line of Lanark. The pictures are with an article called Death of Farms seen by 2025, dated April 15, 1975. My mom, Lillian Giles (married Earl Sweeney from Marble Bluff) grew up on the 12th line across from Thompson’s. Her brother Milton, lived there until he and Aunt Jean(Lalonde) moved to Carleton Place with their daughter Marion. I do not believe the old house in the pictures is the house where Enoch and Annie (Moulton) Giles lived and raised their family. Before Enoch and Annie’s house was torn down, Gerald Tennant, who also lives on the 121th line and is an avid historian, snapped a picture of it and dropped it in our mailbox with a note telling me that my Mom’s childhood house was being demolished. Right now of course I can not put my hands on that darn pic. However from visiting Uncle Milton, I remember the old house being further out of the ground. You had to go up several steps to enter the house. And the laneway came right up past the southeast side of the house not the north west side. I will keep trying find pictures of the Giles house.
It didn’t matter where you lived threshing was threshing. This story will be done in two parts and thank you to Beverly Salkeld from Winnpeg Manitoba whose family Grandmother Effie Edna Park Salkeld was born to Duncan and Mary Mcintosh Park in Lanark County in October of 1892 and died at Langenburg Hospitial in Saskatchewan April 19th Easter Sunday in 1965. She is buried in Gerald United Cemetery Saskatchewan
Dobbie Road in Lanark County
Photo- Linda Seccaspina Plowing Match on Mr. Dobson’s farm outside Smiths Falls
Photo- Linda Seccaspina Plowing Match on Mr. Dobson’s farm outside Smiths Falls
Photo- Linda Seccaspina Plowing Match on Mr. Dobson’s farm outside Smiths Falls
cbc
Photo- Linda Seccaspina Plowing Match on Mr. Dobson’s farm outside Smiths Falls
Photo- Linda Seccaspina Plowing Match on Mr. Dobson’s farm outside Smiths Falls
Photo- Linda Seccaspina Plowing Match on Mr. Dobson’s farm outside Smiths Falls
This was an anonymous letter sent to the Almonte Gazette in 1889
Dear Editor,
I am not only a minister’s wife, but it should also be read that I am a farmer’s wife. Sometimes, indeed, the terms are synonymous. There is the raising of children and chickens and making butter, cheese, and bread. Then comes the omnipresent jobs of cutting, making and mending the clothes for a whole household. Not to speak of doing their washing and ironing, taking care of the pigs and the vegetable garden. Making winter applesauce, and picking my radishes and cucumbers, drying fruits and herbs are also on my list. There are no men involved in putting my twins through measles, whooping cough, mumps, scarlet fever and chicken pox. With a child on each hip I must also keep a river of hot grease on the kitchen table to float potatoes, carrots, onions and turnips for the family and farmhands.
However, your farmer is a round stalwart comfortable animal. There is nobody wailing at his pantaloons while he plows and makes a fence. He lies under the nearest tree and rests or sleeps when he can no longer work for his profit. The man comes into the house midday with the appetite of a hyena and the digestion of a rhinoceros and then goes forth again into the hay field till called home for supper.
Tintype photo from the collection of Vicki Racey
There stands his wife with the same head with which she rose in the morning still darting hither and thither for whatever is wanted– helping the hungry children or farmhands. After the supper is finished then comes the dish washing, milking and thoughts for tomorrow’s breakfast. Perhaps she sleeps with her eyes open for a baby or sick child and rises the next day to pursue the same unrelieved tread mill wearing ground the next day.
Mrs. Abel Wright of North Elmsley has shown what can be done by a good housewife. She had two cows from which she began to make butter about the 7th of April last and on the 10th of September she got a third cow and from the three cows Mr. Wright has obtained 390# of butter at the present date. Mrs. Wright used large tin pans. Surely she deserves praise and should be a good example to all farmers’ wives to do likewise.
lindaseccaspina 