Homesteaders
by: Lana Alberts
In the Prince Albert district, farming was the major occupation of the people in the early years. Settlers came to the area to homestead and work the land.
Homesteading was a rough life and it took years of hard labor to build up a productive farm. Many of the men who took up homesteading had no previous experience and encountered many hardships. Settlers could obtain one hundred and sixty acre homesteads for ten dollars, however, some conditions applied.
The conditions included that you had to live on the land for six months of three years and you had to successfully clear and farm the land. You also had to be eighteen years or older in order to file a claim.
A claim could be cancelled in order to obtain a homestead as well. If someone was not fulfilling the agreements of living on the land or clearing the land you could go to the lands office and place a claim on it. The office would notify the person in violation of the conditions and would grant the individual a grace period.
If things did not improve within this time, another person could claim the land. Often men came up from the United States, paid the ten dollars, and then went back home and never returned. It was mainly due to these circumstances that homesteads changed hands.
When it came to breaking the land, a hand plow or three sectional furrow pulled by horses or oxen was used. Some farmers used a stump pulling machine pulled by horses to remove tree stumps while others dug around the trees, severed the roots, and waited for a strong wind to pull the tree over. It was not unusual to work an entire day to remove one stump.
Once the land was cleared, the first seeds for planting were usually obtained from a neighbour. Seeds were kept and recycled after this from year to year.
Farmers would often get together to do spring plowing by horse and thrashing crews of about twenty men would travel in the fall to harvest. Thrashing crews would work from 6am to 8pm receiving a penny a mile and a large dinner made by the farm women.
