By Edven Torgerson – Turtleford, Sask.
In the mid-1950s, when I was in my teens, we were living at the homestead of Nels and Maria Anderson. We used to live in the hills about 15 miles south of Riverhurst, Sask. Central Butte was about 20 miles east of the house.
Every once in awhile, we’d get up in the morning on a clear day, you could see a mirage of the Central Butte elevators and part of the town. We could count 42 elevators with the naked eye just standing on the step of the house!
In the wintertime, we’d have a snowbank in the yard and had to drive over the top with a team and sleigh. By the next morning, the bank would be just about gone as the wind would cut it down to nothing.
One winter we had a three-day storm and we had the yearlings in the barn. The snowbank went a foot over the top of the barn and we had to shovel down to the door to open the door.
The cattle had to climb up and over the snowbank.
We also had a pair of geese on the farm and the gander was pretty feisty. He would chase everything and anything on the farm. He took after me one day and grabbed my finger in his beak. I didn’t realize they could bite that hard. Luckily, I had gloves on.
When a pig had got out of the barn and was wandering around the yard, the gander went behind her and grabbed her tail. She started running with the gander hanging onto her tail, his feet out like skis and his wings spread so he wouldn’t tip over!
If only we had movie camera! It was pretty darn funny.
