Headlands Picnic 1943

From the daily journal of Bill Nevard.
June 29, 1943
Dad and Uncle Horrie both went to Lipton with wheat. I was cultivating. Jubilee seemed to find it hard work so I let him out after dinner and got Spark instead. I found out this afternoon that Violet has a wire cut in her fetlock so I let her out tonight.
Roy and Joy went to Balrobie dance.

June 30: I caught Embers this morning and went on 25 with the John Deere gang plow. Dad had put the new shares on but it soon cleaned and is working alright though plowing rather deep. Not an awful lot of tall growth on the stubble yet excepting stinkweed. Joy and Donald went to Headlands picnic and all three of them went to the dance.

January 13, 1965 Continued

I drove back home for dinner. In the afternoon I went back to Lipton, called on Mrs. Goff. She phoned Joy to let them know I was going to see Uncle Horrie. I drove out to the cemetery again and gave Lerat a thermos of hot coffee. He thought he might be finished about 4:00 pm.
I drove out to the farm, parked by the gate and walked in to Silver Birches. They were not surprised to hear about Uncle Arthur. I did not stay too long as I did not want the car to get too cold to start. When I got back to the cemetery about 4:00, Lerat still had an hour's work in order to finish. I drove into town to see Bud but he had gone off again. So I called around at Mrs. Goff's for a while. Then drove back to the cemetery, waited til Lerat had finished, then drove him home. Hannah came along this evening with a few boxes of Uncle's things including the Waterloo stick.

January 14:Dick and I both off work today and we left home in good time going down to the Fort to pick up Lerat. Inclined to snow a bit but much milder. We drove right up to the cemetery as Lerat wanted to make sure everything was ok. Then going back to Lipton and we left Lerat at the hotel. Then went to Mrs. Goff's where Les, Joy, Ralph, David and Ivy Hobetzeder were there. . Uncle Horrie and Don soon arrived. The service was delayed as Mr Ellis got his car stuck near Jim Potter's and had to be pulled out so we went to Bud's place next door and waited.
Nothing else untoward occurred and at the close of the service most of us went to the grave side. Pat Neil, John Senft, Tom North, Philip Fisher, Manuel Miller and Melvin Grainger were the pall bearers. Then we came back to Goff's for a while. When we thought Lerat had time enough to fill in the grave we went back to pick him up. He wanted to go into the hotel for one quick beer so we left him and went to Our Store to buy a few groceries. We talked a bit with Tom North and Philip Fisher and then Dick went to look for Lerat. Met him coming back from the hotel. We drove back to the Fort and I paid Lerat with a cheque for $25.

Today In Bill's History

On his day off from working at the Fort San Bill Nevard walks the approximate 20 miles back to his farm home.
October 16, 1948
A miserable day. I walked most of the way home but Henry Meyer's two daughters overtook me with a car and gave me a lift for 3 miles. I had dinner with Uncle Arthur and afterwards went on up to Silver Birches where I saw Aunt Alice , Roy, Joy and Donald. Bud has gone to Calgary with little Eric. I collected a bag of stuff then headed back South. I had to walk all the way to Lipton getting there just in time to catch the bus. My first bus ride.
Oct. 17: Sunday. Got my first beets ready this morning. A messy job with beet juice all over the floor of the vegetable room making it look  like a slaughter house. At night Dick and walked down to the Fort to an Anglican service. Bill Levey gave us a lift in his car. It was a nice moonlight night.

Lipton main street in the late 1940s.

Narratives of The Nevards 6

In 1910 Goffs and Nevards went in partnership and bought a threshing outfit between them. It was an Aultman-Taylor thresher with 27 inch cylinder, 42 inch body, powered by an International Famous 20 horsepower engine. It was a six team outfit and fed both sides. Tom Goff ran the threshing machine. They would thresh Goffs first one year and Nevards first the next. They also did some custom threshing for other farmers. Some of which were Jake Martin, Jimmy Gray and Cecil Lewis.

They had some bad luck the first year. During a spell of damp weather when they could not thresh, the separator was burnt beyond repair by a prairie fire. My family was sitting at dinner when they noticed the smoke to the West. Uncle Horrie jokingly commented, "Oh that is probably the separator burning down". The next day Tom and Alf Goff came over with the bad news. They had to buy another separator.
That fall, at the age of 8 years, my brother Bill dug all the potatoes. All the men were away threshing.
One year Dad and Uncle Horrie rented Friedgut's quarter which was the northwest quarter of 18. They grew oats and grew such a heavy stand that Dad got fed up with cutting it and said "lets quit". They left the rest and Friedgut got a man by the name of Witzey from the Garnock district to finish the job.
The winter of 1910 Uncle Arthur and Aunt Daisy spent at Redpath's who farmed in the Parklands school district west of Lipton.
I think it was 1911 when Uncle Arthur and Aunt Daisy held a Church service in their home. The clergyman came from Cupar to conduct the service. He played the coronet and provided the music for the hymns.

Church service at the Arthur and Daisy Nevard home in 1911.

As Fall Turns To Winter

The Nevards were busy preparing for winter in November of 1940 as recorded here in Bill Nevard's journal.

November5

Jack Binnington called in tonight on his way back from Lipton to say he would haul a load of wheat fot Dad tomorrow.

November 6

Dad, both Uncles and Jack Binnington went to Lipton with wheat . Snowing and somewhat unpleasant but they managed to get down without mishap. Jack's team ran away on the road home while he was riding with Dad and Willie Miller caught them near his place. James Walton came here this morning to get wheat statistics in regard to the bonus.

November 7

Enough snow on the ground to stop going to town with grain for a while.

My grandfather, Horace Nevard with his grain wagon backed up to the bin preparing to load wheat.