My PEI Stories and Recollections

From the time I was six years old, I remember that we usually had a part-time helper on the farm. My father ran a small farm, but most of his income came from his self-employed accounting business. In those days, everything was books and paper, so to serve his clients, Papa would have to travel to their locations in all corners of PEI. Often, he would be gone from home for 2 - 3 days at a time. In the 60s, my three brothers and I were still too young to handle all the barn chores. So, we hired a local man (usually a neighbour). We had some interesting ones! When I was 8 -10 years old, we had Andre a Theodore as our main hired hand. He was our neighbour and a farmer's son. He was keen and had good farming knowledge from his life experiences. One thing that sometimes frustrated my father and amused us is that he had no education (e.g., he couldn't read, had math challenges for simple additions, etc.). But, in general, we enjoyed having him around -- he had a good sense of humour....

This story does not have a happy ending (for the pigeon)! As a kid, some of my earliest memories are all the wildlife hanging around our old family barn in St. Chrysostome, PEI. There were the expected wild barn cats, mice, and rats. But I also remember birds -- especially the barn swallows and pigeons. The barn swallows nested in the barn's horse stable section, and the pigeons were primarily up in the hayloft. I can imagine that the barn cats always looked for a lazy or injured bird.  The memories and details of this event are mostly from my mother's story in later years. Apparently, a pigeon had flown into a barn window, and I had managed to capture the stunned bird before it could recover. Then, I tied a string to a pigeon's legs and declared it my pet. This idea of a pet bird might have come from my Meme. She kept a pet bird (budgie or canary) in a cage in our house.  I don't remember how the pigeon behaved while I had its leg tied. But I suspect it didn't esc...

In the 1960s, my parents (Frank and Roseline) had a small mixed farm in St. Chrysostome, PEI. Our mixed farm was typical of other small farms in the Acadian community and probably PEI in general. The farm provided some cash flow from selling potatoes, milk, and beef. A mixed farm in those days also had the economic benefits of growing your own vegetables, meat (pork, beef, chicken), milk, eggs, and wool.   Throughout the 1960s, we had 4 to 6 milking cows that produced sufficient milk for our family's consumption and sale to ADL in Summerside. In 1970, I was in grade 10. The farm was coming to an end, and we were down to one cow. I assume we were still milking this last cow (i.e. the only reason it was still around).  The cows would spend all their time outside in a pasture in the summer. We would bring them to the barn only for milking. The cows would be confined to their stalls inside the barn for the whole winter. They got little exercise or fresh air from December to A...