Everything changed on January 3, 1995, when the saloon burned to the ground.

“Then we had to make a decision,” Thérse says. “Would we rebuild and continue with this, or would we return to farming, which was lousy back then? We decided to rebuild and go into the vacation farm business full time.”

The Denises embarked on creating the frontier town of Tumbleweed, “adapting the Old West to fit today,” Thérse says. It is known as Champtre County Wild West Resort.

The visitor’s first impression is of meticulous, well-treed grounds and neat, weathered-board corrals, fences and buildings. Opposite the front gate is the two-storey Howling Coyote Saloon with a balcony on the upper floor that runs the full length of the building. This is the town’s main facility with room for banquets and dancing, and a stage for entertainment.

A wide boardwalk connects the saloon with other buildings: the boarding house, the town hall and the general store, which stocks a supply of tasty confectionery treats and handmade giftware. In the rear of the general store is an old-fashioned portrait studio complete with a wardrobe of antique

costumes. The spacious grounds accommodate a vintage graveyard, horseshoe pits, a playground, ball diamond and the Lost Corral Maze, which Thérse says is very popular with visitors.

“We also have overnight accommodations for a limited number of people, as well as extensive space for trailers and RVs,” she says.

Arthur is the sheriff of Champtre County; Thérse is the mayor. Sometimes, the sheriff, authentically garbed in Western attire, comes on horseback to meet guests at the road and guide them back to the farm.

One must-do activity for visitors back at Tumbleweed is a hayride or horse-drawn wagon ride on a wilderness trail that passes an original homestead. “Arthur is a wonderful legend teller and entertains visitors on the ride,” his wife says.

Other activities include sleigh rides in winter, the calf-roping machine, Western relays (following the sheriff’s rules, of course), night hikes, overnight camping experiences, and much more.

“When you book an event at Champtre, you can choose the entertainment activity you want,” Thérse says. “That could be kangaroo court, square dancing, a casino or entertainment by everything from fiddlers to whip crackers. We can also do fireworks displays or craft events where guests make dream catchers or do jam making.

“In winter, we go snowmobiling and hold winter olympics. Arthur dresses up as a coureur de bois.

“Meals are our specialty,” Thérse says. “We cater as much as possible with homemade food, always serving homemade bread and jellies. Our chef is a local woman.

“We’re best known for our pitchfork steak supper, which is a real showpiece. People are amazed.”

Champtre County Wild West Resort is a year-round operation. It is a popular destination for conventions, meetings, retreats, staff parties, family reunions, weddings and anniversaries.

For more information on Champtre County, visit www.champetrecounty.com or call (306) 258-4635.

DarlenePolachicwritesfromSaskatoon, Sask.

———

The name Champtre comes from two French words that together literally mean “to be in the country”

The post Champêtre County — A Taste Of The Old West appeared first on Grainews.

ANNABELLE

Hydrangea arborescens Annabelle is an excellent, hardy variety. Its spectacular white drumstick blooms can measure from 10 to 14 inches across and more. Typically, Annabelle grows about three to five feet in height and blooms every year without fail, even after severe pruning or an intensely cold winter. Another plus is the dry-ability of Annabelle’s blooms. Allow the bloom head to dry on the plant for a while, then cut the stem, strip off the leaves and place it in a vase where it can give you ongoing pleasure while completing the drying process.

PEE GEE

Hydrangea paniculata Pee Gee is slightly larger than Annabelle and is the hardiest of all hydrangeas, growing three to five feet in height. Its cone-shaped flower heads, which come in mid-to late summer, are generally smaller than other hydrangea blooms, but what they lack in size, they make up for in colour. They start out white, and turn pink as the nights get cooler.

ENDLESS SUMMER

Endless Summer is a macrophylla hydrangea with blue flowers that come on new wood. It is the earliest blooming of the hardy hydrangeas. In order to keep the flowers blue, add aluminum sulphate to the soil. Otherwise, Endless Summer will fade to lighter pink each year. Endless Summer puts on a spectacular show right up to the first heavy frost, but will need heavy mulching to survive the winter.

PINK DIAMOND

Pink Diamond is a paniculata hydrangea whose bloom starts out white in midsummer and turns pink with a red edge later on. The flower heads are an open-cone shape. Pink Diamond generally forms a three-to four-foot-wide plant. Once established, it shows good drought tolerance.

LIMELIGHT

Limelight, another new paniculata hydrangea, has been known to grow to six and eight feet high. Flowers appear in late summer and start out as a tight lime-green cone that turns to pink and even burgundy if there is a long-enough autumn.

WHITE MOTH

White Moth is similar to Annabelle in appearance, though not as hardy. It grows about four feet high and four feet wide. Bloom time is from mid-to late summer until the first hard frost.

KYUSHU

Kyushu is a paniculata hydrangea with very large, open, lacy cream flowers that come in mid-to late summer. As the days and nights grow cooler, the flowers take on varying shades of pink. Under the right conditions, Kyushu will grow eight feet tall.

Experts advise that all hydrangeas receive some form of winter protection. At the very least, they should be planted in a protected area that gets good snow cover. The worst place for a hydrangea is against a house foundation with a west or south exposure since this is where snow tends to melt first during mid-winter thaws. And without snow cover, the plant will freeze.

Hydrangeas do best planted away from foundations in beds with a sunny to partial shade location.

The heavier the winter mulch, the better. Mulch at least three feet out from the centre of the plant in every direction, and two to three feet up from the ground. Spread on the mulching material as soon as the leaves drop in the fall and the temperature goes down to about -10 C. Piling up snow around the plants in early winter is also a great help.

Darlene Polachic writes from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

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The women like to say the company is owned, operated and managed by all the entrepreneurial female descendants of the original farm family.

What many people consider to be nuisance plants, Angela Hoffort and her family are turning into cool cash. Angela and her mother, Lyn Brown, and sister, Carmen Legge, operate Bedard Creek Acres, a family home business that turns flowers and herbs into edible delicacies.

The idea for making specialty products from edible flowers began a few years ago with Angela’s mother Lyn, making syrup from the blossoms of red clover which grows in the fields of the family farm, Bedard Creek Acres, near Choiceland, Saskatchewan. Lyn also made lip balms, creams and salves, and sold her products at a few local farmers’ markets.

“In the spring of 2008, I got on board,” Angela says. “I’m a stay-at-home mom with two little boys, and I figured I could help Mom do what she was already doing. The more I got into it, the more interested and motivated I became. Then my sister Carmen got involved, and our two other sisters, Arianna and Crystal, help as well.”

The women like to say the company is owned, operated and managed by all the entrepreneurial female descendants of the original farm family.

Most of the raw materials for the Bedard Creek Acres product line are harvested on the family farm which has organic certification. The products are all unique and visually appealing, particularly the line of “Prairie Jem Jellies” which boast rich jewel-toned colours (all natural) and delicious flavours.

Black Pansy jelly is a customer favourite, and is made from the blossoms of black pansies which are grown in a big garden plot on the farm.

“We harvest them all summer long,” Hoffort says. “The more you pick, the more they grow.”

The black pansy blooms produce a deep garnet-red jelly that has a flavour somewhere between raspberry and blueberry.

Nasturtium jelly is peachy orange with a rather peppery, radish-like flavour. The women make two kinds: a mild one and a hot version with habaero peppers. The hot version, Hoffort says, is very spicy and is delicious on crackers with cheese.

Goldenrod produces a light-yellow-coloured jelly that tastes faintly of lemon. Some of the goldenrod jellies contain calendula petals as well.

Fireweed blooms result in a lovely rosy-pink jelly that is sweet and floral in taste, while yarrow yields a golden-yellow jelly with a tea-like flavour.

“The yarrow was a surprise for

me,” Angela says. “We did one batch just to try it out, but when we took it to the farmers’ market, we got very good feedback from everyone who sampled it. Though we don’t mention it, yarrow happens to be quite medicinal.”

The flowers from red begonias are steeped with a cinnamon stick to produce orangey-red Cinnamon Begonia jelly.

Mint jelly is made from the wild mint that grows along the banks of Bedard Creek from which the family farm takes its name. “No surprises there,” Angela says. “It tastes like mint.

“We do our processing at a federally inspected kitchen,” Angela says, “in order to sell our product at shows outside the province.”

The women also make Red Clover Blossom Syrup and Black Pansy Syrup, and flavoured vinegars like Onion Chive Flower, Dandelion, Spruce Tip, Begonia, and Raspberry. Hoffort mixes the vinegar with oil to drizzle over salads.

“The response has been fun,”Angela says. “We’re producing something very different, but people seem to like what they taste. Black Pansy jelly is our bestseller right now, probably because of its rich colour, or maybe because people are familiar with that flower.”

For more information, visit www.bedardcreekacres.ca.

Darlene Polachic writes from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

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McKay’s paintings often depict Prairie landscapes, the simple beauty of nature and scenes from her childhood on the farm.

Art has always been a part of 88-year-old Frances McKay’s life. Her daughter Connie Haywood recalls her first memory of Frances in 1949, painting a picture of a collie dog barking over a lamb lying in the snow.

“As a fledgling artist, Mom had a limited supply of brushes,” Connie remembers, “so she borrowed Dad’s shaving brush to paint the dog’s coat. Afterward, she cleaned it carefully and put it back, but the secret was out the next morning when Dad emerged with a brown-lathered face.”

Haywood also remembers the time her mother decided to create an art collage. “She used an assortment of small metal objects — nails, nuts and bolts, and whatever else she could find. Mom glued them to a board and spray painted the whole thing. The next day when Dad passed the new artwork, he stopped in his tracks. There in the middle was a short piece of chain off the horses’ harness for which he had been searching everywhere.”

Despite a stroke in 1996 that ended Frances’ painting career, the Rosetown woman’s art has taken on a life of its own. A series of her paintings has been published in a softcover coffee table book entitled Memories of a Prairie Girl that is being used to raise money for reconstruction and upgrading of the hospital in Rosetown, including a much needed long-term care facility.

McKay’s paintings often depict Prairie landscapes, the simple beauty of nature and scenes from her childhood on the farm. The Memories series was painted in the late 1980s, and depict scenes from Frances’ childhood years and bear such memory-evoking titles as “Drowning Out Gophers,” “Cutting

and Stooking Oats,” “Collecting Crows’ Eggs,” “Picking Saskatoon Berries,” “Digging Potatoes” and “Feeding The Cattle.”

The Memories collection took on a new life when the Rosetown and District Health Centre Foundation began looking for ways to raise money for improvements to the hospital.

Pat Mutlow, a member of the

foundation fundraising committee, says, “The Memories collection, which Connie hung in the long-term hospital wing where Frances is now a resident, caught our eye. We began to look to see how we could use Frances’ artwork in some way to raise money.”

The committee considered several options, but when members learned that Frances had written poems to correspond with each Memories painting, the idea of putting poems and paintings together in a book seemed the clear choice.

The accompanying poems are warm and humorous, and bring the themes of the paintings to life. “Drowning Out Gophers,” for instance, is accompanied by “Our Bounty Money,” the first two lines of which read:

“A cent a piece for gopher tails — that seemed a pretty large sum

For in the Dirty Thirties it would buy a lot of gum…”

Four members of the Rosetown and District Health Centre Foundation, Ann Rice, Linda Jardine, Sharon Bell and Pat Mutlow, worked on the book, and had 1,000 printed in time for Rosetown’s centennial celebration last July.

“Everyone loved the book,” Pat says. “Copies have gone all across the country, but we still have some left.”

She says the books make an ideal gift, especially for people who enjoy a humorous and insightful look into life in the past.

The books sell for $25 each, with all proceeds going to the Rosetown and District Health Centre Foundation Building Fund. Copies can be obtained by calling (306) 882-3355, or emailing: memories books09@hotmail.com.

Darlene Polachic writes from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

The post Art Raising Funds For Foundation appeared first on Grainews.

“When I started, I was determined to leave as small a footprint as I could,” Joan says. “I’m an ardent recycler, and no scrap of wax is thrown out. Even when I shave off the bottoms of candles to level them, every shaving is collected and remelted.”

As her enterprise, Joan’s Beeswax Candles, grew, Joan continued to develop environmentally friendly strategies, including wrapping her beeswax tapers in recycled dress pattern tissue (with printed side away from the wax.)

Even her equipment is made from recycled material. Her son Bentley, a boilermaker, built her a boiler for melting the big, 27-to 28-pound chunks of beeswax.

The melted wax is strained into yet another innovative apparatus, an old-fashioned milk filter, through a non-gauze filter. (Joan used to use Pellon interfacing spread over a frame her husband Harold made from coat hangers.)

“Harold has been my biggest inspiration,” she says. “Whenever I asked him to help with a time-consuming job, he would go out to his workshop and make a handy tool or jig to make the job quick and easy.”

One such tool was a taper carousel that allowed Joan to dip and hang 64 beeswax tapers at a time with ease.

“I’ve probably done 6,000 to 8,000 pairs of tapers on the carousel in the last five years,” she says. “It involves 27 consecutive dippings.”

Pillar candles are made with both commercial and homemade moulds.

“It took me a long time to educate the Saskatchewan Craft Council about the fact that you can’t just pour wax into a container and get a good candle,” says Wiebe, who is a juried member of the council. “You can buy the best moulds and still get a shoddy candle. There’s more to it than anyone would imagine.”

Joan discovered the secret of making superior candles through trial and error. She says wax quality is all important.

“The wax should be clean, light coloured and smell like honey. If it’s been in water, or is too old, it smells fermented — like mead. Bad wax can get to a point where it just plain stinks.”

Proper rendering is another factor, as well as correct processing temperature and the type of wicking used. That varies according to the type, shape and size of the candle.

“If the processing temperature is too cool, you get lines in the candle. If it’s too hot, it ends up looking like the fizzy part of a soft drink, full of bubbles.”

The candle business has been very successful for Joan, who makes and sells between 8,000 and 10,000 candles a year.

“It’s been a wonderful journey,” she says, “but going to sales and trade shows was just getting too demanding.”

That’s when Emily, and Joan’s grandson Terrance, came up with a plan that suited everyone.

“Joan wanted someone to carry on the business,” Emily says, “and being entrepreneurs, Terrance and I looked at the numbers and said: Why not take over something that’s already established? It’s a lot easier than starting from scratch. Joan’s product has a very good reputation, and there are invitations all the time to be at artisan sales from Vancouver to Toronto. Joan kept it small, but we have the potential to grow the business and put a young person spin on it.”

For more information, visit www.joans-beeswax-candles.com.

Darlene Polachic writes from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

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“Things happen on the sewing machine, you know, things that make me feel like dancing when I’m done.”

Cindy Hoppe is a fabric artist — a term, she says, that leaves the field open to a whole lot of things. “I’m not a quilter because I equate quilting to careful, precise stitching, and the materials I work with are not conducive to precision piecing and stitching,” the Biggar, Saskatchewan farmwoman says. “I use recycled material and make them into wearables.”

The bulk of Cindy’s work is in recycled wool and silk fabrics. “I marry knitting with patchwork, and use thick threads to lay down the bulky seams which don’t behave like nice, neat cotton seams.”

The wearables she creates include jackets, vests, shawls and liturgical stoles. Her jackets are characterized by their knit sleeves, collars and bindings. “One reason I knit is because I don’t like zippers. They can break and when they do, the jacket is done. I like to hand finish my jackets with buttons. They can go on forever, as does the wool.”

One of Cindy’s specialties is pictorial jackets. Sometimes, she says, people have definite ideas about what they want. “A friend wanted a ponderosa pine in her backyard memorialized. I did it with patchwork and lots of machine stitching.”

Her designs tend to be abstracts with quilting accents. “I find that abstract-themed wearables are more versatile because they can be dressed up or down. You can wear one of my jackets with jeans, or pair it with a long black skirt and go to the opera.”

She likes the idea of having her art “walking out among the people rather than hidden away on a wall.”

Cindy’s Memory Jackets are also very popular. “I made one for a widow using her husband’s ties and his wool pants,” she says. “The logo from his golf cap went into the lining. All this was very meaningful to the wife. I have also used parts from men’s blazers including the pockets. It brings a lot of comfort to a woman to put her hands in her husband’s pockets.”

Cindy especially enjoys using her recycled materials to create Prairie landscapes. “I live in rolling bush, tree, rock and hill country near Biggar,” she says, “where you see old machinery aging in the landscape. I like to incorporate what I see in front of me in my fabric art. When I interpret Christian images and symbolism in my liturgical stoles, I incorporate things like a beached boat on a northern lake, or chokecherries instead of grapevines, or stalks of Prairie wheat.”

In 2008, Hoppe won a Merit Award at the Saskatchewan Crafts Council Dimensions Show, for her John Deere combine liturgical stole. The stole, which would be worn over an alb by a minister or a priest, has a picture of harvest on the back and a 1970s combine coming down a swathe.

“I created the field with elaborate machine embroidery,” Hoppe says. “Things happen on the sewing machine, you know, things that make me feel like dancing when I’m done.”

While much fabric art is created from images scanned into a computer, Cindy confesses to being “something of a Luddite when it comes to that. Besides,” she says, “I want to replicate what I see as faithfully as I can on my own. I want people to see the hand in the art.

“Because I work with piles of patchwork when I’m working on a scene, I generally get enough for two or three jackets. They are cousins to each other,” she says, “but you won’t see any identical jackets walking down the street. Each one of them is unique.”

Cindy Hoppe can be reached at echoppe@sasktel.netor phone (306) 948-2947.

Darlene Polachic writes from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

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When Harold passed away, Leona left the farm to her sons and moved to Davidson where she joined a variety of associations, became active in the Lutheran Church, volunteered with Meals on Wheels, led the 4-H Calf and Garden Club, and much more.

“One of the things I loved doing was putting on Christmas programs,” she said. “I’ve done 23 in all, and I did that for the seniors’ group.”

She also started a singing group, and organized travel tours for seniors.

A self-confessed collector, Morrison began accumulating arrowheads when her oldest son came home one day with an arrowhead he’d found on one of their blown-out fields. “We went back and found ever so many,” she says. “Every time it blew after that, we went out to hunt for arrowheads.”

A visiting geology student helped her catalogue the historic finds. She has examples of Cody and Agate basin arrowheads dated at 8000 to 6000 BC; Oxbow McKean (5000 to 4000 BC); Besant (2000 BC); right up to semi-modern Hudson’s Bay Company-issue metal arrowheads.

Around Davidson, Morrison is known as The Crocus Lady because of the exquisite crocus pictures she paints. “I’ve done 160 crocus pictures,” she says, “many in pencil crayon on black emery paper.”

Over the years, Morrison has donated a number of her fine paintings to raise funds for the Lutheran Camp Kinisayo and Ducks Unlimited. Another was given as a gift to former lieutenant-governor Lynda Haverstock.

Besides crocuses, Morrison paints other florals and landscapes (106 of them).

“I never waste anything,” she says. “I grew up during the hard years. If I have any paint left over (it always seems to be blue) I’ll use it to start the sky or water on a new landscape.

“And because I don’t waste anything, I sometimes have to be innovative. While one oil landscape was drying on the kitchen counter, it got water spilled across the sky. That left a whole bunch of little spots. I couldn’t just throw the thing away, so I made every one of those 60-some drops into a goose.”

When special anniversaries come up around Davidson, people often ask Morrison to write a piece of poetry for the occasion. Doggerel, she calls it. One of her poems was commissioned by the local veterans to commemorate war brides.

Morrison also worked as a researcher on both editions of Davidson’s history book, Prairie Tapestry, and wrote contributions and did artwork, as well.

Her love of history prompted her to volunteer when the town was thinking about putting together time capsules to commemorate two separate homecomings. “I thought it was a wonderful thing to do,” Morrison says. “I collected things like pictures from catalogues of the styles of the day, clothing of the day, a Davidson Leader, a Regina Leader Post, a Saskatoon Star Phoenix, pictures of cars and the different churches and stores in Davidson. There were also pictures of Davidson’s town emblem, the giant coffee pot, along the highway at the north end of town. I put everything in a tin container and the capsules are stored in the town hall. They’ll be opened at a later date — one was in 15 years, I think; the other in 20 years.”

Darlene Polachic writes from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

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He received an honorary doctorate from the U of S and was inducted into the Saskatchewan Agricultural Hall of Fame.

Honeywood Heritage Nursery near Parkside, Sask., has the distinction of being the only heritage nursery in Saskatchewan. It earned the designation through the tremendous horticultural contributions of its founder, Albert (Bert) Porter.

Porter came to Parkside as a five-year-old with his family in 1906. He became a teacher, but learned it was difficult for male teachers to get work during the early 1930s. In one case, he was told he was being rejected in favour of a female applicant because there were a number of eligible bachelors in the district, including some on the selection board.

Unable to support himself teaching, Porter and his wife Winnie moved to the Porter homestead near Parkside. He came up with the idea of selling apple and plum trees and fruiting plants like strawberries and raspberries to area farmers for a nursery in Estevan. Porter took orders, and then delivered the stock when it arrived by rail.

This, however, was the Depression and many clients were unable to pay, so rather than returning the rejected stock, Porter began planting it on his land in hopes he could sell it at a later date. He also sold produce from the raspberries and strawberries.

Unfortunately, most of the stock proved too tender for Prairie winters, and Porter began experimenting with crossing the tender varieties with hardy wild fruits. His efforts yielded “Honeywood Black,” the first black raspberry; a sweet honey-coloured raspberry “Honey Queen”; plus improved crabapples, plums, currants, sandcherries, gooseberries and rhubarb.

Correspondence with another horticulturist, Percy Wright from Carrot River, got Porter interested in Asiatic lilies. In 1948, Wright sent Porter a box of lily bulbs to plant and test, and once he saw the beautiful blooms he was hooked. Porter soon began his own lily hybridization and over his lifetime, officially introduced more than three dozen new lily varieties.

For many years, Honeywood Nursery issued a yearly catalogue advertising lily bulbs and fruit stock, and by the 1960s was receiving lily orders from around the world.

Porter was well recognized for his horticultural efforts. Among the accolades was the North American Lily Society’s highest award for outstanding contribution to the genus lilium. A silver medal was awarded to a collection of his lilies exhibited at the Stuttgart Outdoor Garden Show in Germany. He received an honorary doctorate from the U of S and was inducted into the Saskatchewan Agricultural Hall of Fame.

After the Porters retired, the 80-acre nursery property went through a few hands, and was eventually purchased by a group of longtime Honeywood patrons. Their plan was to reclaim the nursery grounds, restore the Porters’ log house, locate and acquire plants introduced by Dr. Porter, and promote the nursery as a historic tourist attraction.

Site manager Judy Harley says the work is ongoing. Through the efforts of the owner group, Honeywood Nursery is now an official heritage site, and hosts a number of educational and commemorative events throughout the year.

Reclamation efforts continue to uncover new treasures: towering linden trees, yellow-fruited chokecherries, hazelnuts, Siberian larch, a Douglas fir grove, a Siberian pinyon pine grown from a tiny cone brought by a visitor from Siberia. There are peonies, roses, irises, lilacs and lilies growing everywhere.

“We have a yellow-fruited mountain ash and a very old Hyers 14 apple that may be the only one of its kind,” Harley says. “We have found martagon lilies in the bush, a delphinium patch and probably 150 varieties of the peony on the property. They’re still coming up in the grass.”

For more information, visit www.honeywood-lilies.caor call (306) 747-3307. From spring to fall, Honeywood Nursery is open Monday to Friday, 9 a. m. to 5 p. m.

Darlene Polachic writes from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

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He left behind an agricultural legacy that is still recognized and respected today.

Had Seager Wheeler been one inch taller, agriculture on the Prairies might have been a whole lot different. At less than five feet, the young Englishman was too short to get into the British navy. Immigrating to Canada was his second choice, and in doing so, Wheeler became one of Saskatchewan’s most famous pioneers. He left behind an agricultural legacy that is still recognized and respected today.

Wheeler came to Canada in 1885, settling first near Moose Jaw, then at Clark’s Crossing, and finally choosing a homestead a few miles east of Rosthern.

He called it Maple Grove Farm for the avenue of maples he planted along the lane. A firm believer in shelter belts, Wheeler was one of the first to demonstrate the benefits of a protective border of trees.

Within this border, he established flower and vegetable gardens, plus a 40-acre orchard which thrived until the 1940s when -60 temperatures destroyed most of it.

Wheeler is best known for his grain. In 1911, he won the championship for the best Marquis Hard Red Spring wheat at a world competition in New York. He would go on to win the award four more times, as well as many dozens of other prizes.

Wheeler’s secret was selective improvement. He hand-picked the best, ripest and plumpest heads from his fields, grew out the seed, and hand-picked the best of that to grow out until he had the most consistent crop he could grow.

Wheeler and his brother Percy eventually developed a three-point seed-cleaning system that is still in use today with some modifications.

The brothers collaborated on a number of other farm innovations, including a pulley system to hoist loads of hay from the rack to the barn loft.

Seager wrote a book, Profitable Grain Growing, and offered it free to purchasers of his select seed. He gained such distinction in his work that Queen’s University awarded him an honorary doctorate of laws degree in 1920.

In his old age, Wheeler moved to Victoria to be close to the sea. The model farm he created was eventually purchased by a Rosthern-area farmer who launched a campaign to preserve the site and recognize Wheeler’s important agricultural work. Today the site is officially the Seager Wheeler National Historic Farm.

Site manager Janice Penner says most of the buildings have been refurbished including the seed-cleaning plant and the barn. Three houses stand on the site. One is the 1908 wood frame house that Wheeler built so his fiancée, Agnes Lily Martin, would marry him. Previously, he, his mother and a hired hand lived in a sod/log house. The largest house, which now serves as a tea house, gift shop, museum and site headquarters, was moved to the property in 1994.

Because Seager Wheeler was an avid photographer, there is a fine record of his early work on the farm. Many photos are on display in the little museum, as well as a picture of Wheeler with his five World Championship awards.

The farm is open to the public from 9 to 5 daily, Tuesday to Sunday, from Mother’s Day to the Labour Day weekend.

The tea room serves refreshments daily, and also has weekly events like the big Sunday buffet, barbecues and formal Victorian teas.

School tours are welcome at the farm, and during the summer, children aged eight to 12 can attend Children’s Camp which celebrates farm life and activities in the early days of the province.

For more information, visit www.seagerwheelerfarm.org.

Darlene Polachic writes from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

The post Seager Wheeler National Historic Farm appeared first on Grainews.

Take the gateway to the houseyard, for instance. Entrance is through a gigantic old steam engine wheel that Cliff sank into the ground a couple of feet. After Sylvie’s attempts to grow hops over the seven-foot steel wheel failed (the metal got too hot in summer) Cliff built a trellis fence that curves over the top of the wheel and flares out attractively on either side. The hops showed their appreciation by trailing over everything.

Thanks to Sylvie’s artistic eye, the view through the round gate is dramatic — a Japanese-style pond garden with masses of spiky reeds, waving grasses and splashes of flower colour. A rustic garden shed adds interest, and a backdrop of mature trees finishes the picture. The view is beautiful even in winter.

One of the outstanding features in the garden is a wooden footbridge.

“Cliff built it from recycled lumber,” Sylvie says. “Nearly everything we do here is with recycled material.”

A very innovative feature on the Shockey/Francoeur farm is the stackwall construction of their farmhouse. Stackwall construction involves embedding cut lengths of weathered logs into concrete. The result is a very thick wall with wooden rounds visible on the inside and outside.

Perhaps the most unusual structure on the farm is the pyramid greenhouse.

“You’ve heard about the power of the pyramid?” asks Cliff. “Apparently, when you have a pyramid exactly facing magnetic north, there is a certain special energy that is generated. A friend of mine was interested in the idea and persuaded me to build a four-sided pyramid greenhouse with angles of precisely 51 degrees. We sank it into the ground two feet. One-third of the way up is supposed to be where all the special energy collects.”

The pyramid greenhouse has a wooden frame supported by one big post in the centre. There is no metal in its construction, only plastic, wood and aluminum. Cliff covered the frame on the outside with huge plastic sheets held together with Velcro.

Cliff and Sylvie have a regular greenhouse as well, and have made comparisons between the two. They notice that because the pyramid is sunk into the ground, it doesn’t collect as much heat in summer, however, it takes 10 more frost to freeze the plants inside it.

Sylvie grows a variety of crops in the pyramid greenhouse. Cucumbers, especially the big English cucumbers, like it, as do lettuce, spinach, celery and herbs which grow in raised platform beds. Tomatoes thrive in tire planters. Everything is watered by a modified drip system.

In the other greenhouse, the plants are all grown in rubber tire planters made from used tires collected from tire shops.

“We are often asked if there might not be some harmful residue from the rubber, but we haven’t seen anything to indicate that.”

The planters are mostly two tires high, which Sylvie says is a nice working height. The cylindrical centre hole is filled with ordinary garden soil, peat moss and sometimes, some well-rotted, homegrown manure.

Cliff built a trough down the middle of the traditional greenhouse for water. It acts like a heat sink and creates an ideal environment for the nurture of kiwis, watermelons (“Sugar Baby,” “Tiger Baby,” and the yellow “Queen” varieties are favourites), and “Early Dew” honeydew melons.

“Touchdown” cantaloupes, says Sylvie, grow to football size in the innovative greenhouse conditions, and are “to die for.”

Darlene Polachic writes from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

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