Anecdotes and Updates 1882-1982 - Virden Centennial ... - Manitobia

oatmeal, bread, molasses, cheese, tea, dried apples and tins ofpreserved fruit and tomatoes. They melted snow for water to drinkand wash. They wore moccasins and walked or snowshoed sixmiles to Virden to post and pick up mail. Sometimes they stayed ata hotel in Virden if the weather was particularly bad or if somethingexciting was happening like an election. They experienced aprairie fire, a blizzard, getting lost on the prairie, and learned that"everything gets frozen in this country" .In the spring of '83 when their land came on the market, theywent to Brandon and "entered" for their land under The Homesteadand Pre-emption Act and began their first season of farming.Gardens were planted on the two half-acre plots ploughed by theprevious owners. A second house, 12' x 24', with a cellar forvegetables and a blacksmith shop in the end, was built, and also astable. Thirty acres were ploughed with oxen and back set; stoneswere drawn off; oats were seeded on sod; and twenty tons of haywere taken off. Among the bluffs they found wild cherries, plumsand raspberries.On Christmas Day, 1883, a target shooting match involvingten contestants was held in the creek valley on their farm, followedby a party at their house. During the year a shanty and stable werebuilt on a town lot which they had purchased in Virden.During the winter of' 83-' 84 loads of poles from the sandhillsand ash and elm logs from the Assiniboine Valley were drawn withoxen. A stop-over was made at the shanty and stable on the Virdenlot and the material was later taken to the farm for fencing andbuilding.From the Indian squaws fishing through the ice at Oak Lakethey bought, after bargaining, twenty-four fish weighing two tofour pounds for fifty cents.They arranged to have a new settler coming from Englandbring with him special Sheffield steel for their blacksmith shop.They purchased a second yoke of oxen, a sleigh and a pony andbuckboard. In the spring they seeded twenty acres of wheat and tenof oats. During the summer they fenced sixty acres of pasture andbroke ninety acres for the next year's crop. They built their firstgranary and harvested three hundred and twenty bushels of oatsand four hundred and seveny-five of wheat.The cyclone in 1884 destroyed their stable in Virden. It hadbeen on Nelson Street opposite the present United Church.In February 1885 the brothers cleaned and hauled wheat tol4