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| The Fraser farm site (Google Earth) |
The land is virtually indistinguishable as a home site now. After Pete and Annie retired to town, the land was absorbed by a neighbouring farm. Were it not for the correction line as a visual clue, we'd be hard pressed to find it.
Geographically, Dad and his sister Jessie really were supposed to attend school in Crystal City, but no-one protested when they showed up in Pilot Mound School instead. The fact that they were excellent students probably helped. Good thing, too -- when weather was brutal, they could stay with Fraser relatives in town overnight.
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| Murray Fraser shows us where his childhood home used to be. |
Frasers arrived in Pilot Mound in 1906, and the Fraser farm included a large barn, plenty of equipment, haystacks, shelters for livestock, and the house itself. Pete had about 20 horses (of every sort, from race horses to Percherons,) and there was a chicken coop, and room for a few pigs. I suspect there was at least one milk cow around for milk and butter.
Nothing remains to show that Frasers once lived here. The farmstead had no trees, unless you want to count an electrical pole that shows up in the occasional old photo.
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| Toddler Jessie Fraser beats a path from the barn to the house. |
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| A particularly hard winter. Add snow clearing to those farm chores! |
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| The Fraser farmhouse. With no trees in sight, what's left for an adventurous Jessie Fraser to climb? Collie follows, and a remarkably calm and understanding mom (Annie) recognizes a unique photo op. |
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| Thomas Latimer had an even more humble abode on 33-2-11. It wasn't just Dad's birthplace, it was the birthplace of the Municipality of Louise! From Corner Stones of Empire: Crystal City and District in the Rock Lake Country in Manitoba, p. 15 [published by The Courier Publishing Co., Crystal City, date unknown. Reprinted 1970] |
Early homesteaders made do with what was available locally and quickly, thus the "sod brick" house, as the history book explains:
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| Corner Stones, p. 25 |
It surprised me greatly to come across a 2006 article in The Western Producer quoting farmer Percy Gemmill. This is a familiar name; Gemmills were Dad's immediate (and good) neighbours decades ago. The magazine explains that Percy is using maps to monitor fertilizer applications on his farm at 33-2-11:
Gemmill, who farms 1,600 acres about eight kilometres from Pilot Mound, had read about variable rate and prescription maps and decided it was time to take the plunge.
He contracted with Wade Barnes from Farmers Edge to make zone maps of the entire farm. The map of his east-west half section field designated as N 33-2-11 is typical of many fields on the farm. Gemmill said this map has taught him a lot in just two years.
“It’s very flat land. Just looking at it, you wouldn’t think there could be so many variations. There are spots where we had been putting on way too much fertilizer and other spots where we were far below our potential yield because we weren’t using enough."In another related article Percy Gemmill notes that:
“Quite honestly, we were amazed to see so much variability on such flat land. ... What we discovered was that all the main variations are man-made.”
They found that the more productive west quarter had been in the family for a long time. Although Gemmill had farmed this quarter since he graduated from high school in the 1970s, he was not fully aware of the field’s history.
“This west quarter has traditionally been more productive than the east quarter,” Barnes said.
“It’s been Gemmill land for a long time and these guys have always been high input guys. Grandpa Gemmill was one of the first farmers to use fertilizer, so now we’re seeing quite a carryover effect.
“The east quarter was purchased by Gemmill more recently. It had not been a high input field. There had been a lot of stubble burning and summer fallow. The organic matter level is significantly lower today. Same with residual nitrogen.”
Barnes told Gemmill that the maps indicated there had been farmyards and small fields located on the two quarters. Gemmill doubted it, but he was open to digging deeper.
When Perry’s father, David, entered the conversation, he looked at the map and quickly identified things that had happened before Perry was born.
The older Gemmill pinpointed the fenceline that had divided the two quarters, probably since settlement of the area. He located two farmyards, one at the north edge of each quarter, as well as pastures close to the yards and small fields that were once common.
David also gave the exact location of a 30 acre field at the far east edge on the map that had been summerfallowed during a dry year in the 1950s and the topsoil had blown away. This is an area that showed up as low productivity on the satellite image and the soil tests. Barnes said everything David talked about showed up on the maps.
“The old yard sites today have the potential to be very productive, but they have bad lodging problems every year. What they have under the surface here is old vegetable gardens, livestock barns, corrals, outhouses, hedgerows and other things that contribute to higher organic levels. A lot of the manure dumping would have taken place just south of these yard sites."It seems the Fraser presence is still discernible, if only for manure dumping. I blame the Percherons.
