Fields, oil wells and farm stories...

Ms Katie was worried she would be bored driving through Alberta after the mountains!

Not so!

Alberta is farm land, beautiful fields, blue skies, warm sun, puffy clowds, rolling hills, oil wells (yes! Oil wells scattered on the hills and in the middle of the fields) and cows! Ms Katie knows her cows! The light colored ones, Guernseys, are the best for milk; the black ones, Black Angus, are best for steak; then there are the Holsteins, the Herefords and the White-faced somethings and the farm stories began...

At age 9 and 10 Ms Katie was responsible for bringing the cows home to milk. Every afternoon someone would help her mount the favorite family horse, Star. She would ride a mile and a half or so, round up the cows, bring them home and help milk. She had to be careful - if she fell off Star, she walked - she couldn't get on by herself.

Opa and brother Ike, broke wild horses. Opa loved horses and would win their hearts with bits of carrots and sugar. Eventually, Ike would mount and get bucked off, mount and get bucked off again and again. Opa had patience and Ike was young enough to not get broken himself.

At 14, brother Jack drove a team of horses home from cutting wood 20 miles north of the farm. The farm itself was on the north edge of the north! It was winter, cold and snowing. Really snowing! The farm dogs found him and led him home.

Sister Anne learned to drive in a model T! She drove it into a water filled ditch. Opa had to team up the horses to pull it out!

Sister Mary, the quiet, shy one was the first to move to the States.

Sister Theresa died at 35. She was much too young.

Brothers Harry and John, the youngest, did what the youngest of a large family on the farm do best - all the leftovers!! The chores no one else wanted to do!

There were stories of picking berries, feeding animals, walking to school and wearing home spun and knitted woolen stockings that itched and itched and itched; two story farm houses with only a wood stove and floor grates to warm the bedrooms, and traipsing out the door, down the path, through the cold and sometimes dark and wondering why it was a two holer when only one person used it at a time!

Wonderful, precious stories of a childhood and family life long past.