Fred Burfield's Homestead Memoirs

Evening light

5/7/2017

Dad had been out milking and was now washing the supper dishes in the kitchen. As I burst in excited with my new camera in my hands I noticed the light on his face from the late evening sun.

He was blind and couldn’t see me point the camera, so I said, “Hey Dad, I’m going to take a picture of you.” He smiled.

I’m glad I did. It’s my favourite photo.

At his funeral service two decades later I set this photo at the front of the room, surrounded by sheaves of wheat.

And finally, now, thirty years after that, I’m realizing how much of me is an extension of him: his odd interest in both science and poetry, his love of nature and the country, and his stubbornness.

What would make me happier and more content than anything else in the world right now would be to drive an old tractor in circles around a fragrant field, pulling a disc or a mower or an old-fashioned rake, the air awaft with freshly cut hay, sea gulls hovering.

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Fred milking cows on the farm at Ponoka

5/7/2017

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I took this photo of my blind father milking cows when I was 15 (1965). My job was to go out in the bush or pasture and bring them in. I could locate them in the bush by the bell one wore. We had all of three milk cows at the time. The chickens would sit up on the stanchions, and sleep there at night. In the photo, Dad is milking the little Jersey, whose milk was about half cream. The Holstein behind itproduced a lot more milk, but less cream, and the Hereford less of each, but more meat to eat. The pail hanging from the hook has a lot of dents in it. Those were from the cow kicking forward when Dad was milking and happened to hurt the teat a bit. The rope tied to the leg in the bottom of the photo prevents that. The bucket is probably full of milk and it is hanging because Dad was blind and if he were to just set it on the ground he would kick it himself.

After the milking, I would separate the cream from the milk in a centrifugal separator in the basement. I always enjoyed that heavy whirl of it. It was an amazing piece of technology that demonstrated to me, a simple farm kid, the power of reason to solve problems, and so planted the seed in my mind of a future totally changed by science and technology. Soon science fiction supplanted the separator, and then science supplanted science fiction.

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Fred, my father.

5/7/2017

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I don’t know how old I was. Maybe four. Maybe five or six. I was sitting on the couch in the living room, feeling totally safe and cosy. My mother was sitting close on one side and my dad on the other. Mom was probably just sitting with Dad, who was reading his Braille, his fingers moving across the page and his eyes looking up into the warm air. I was feeling so good because I had never sat between them before. I know I hadn’t because I can still remember seeing the space there and wanting to sit in it, hesitating, then finally actually doing it.

Even today the worn leather of the couch presses against my fingers. Dad was resting where he always did after his farm chores, beside the right arm rest. And on that uncomfortable-looking split, he had worn into the leather with his backside. Across the room from him was the nicest piece of furniture we had -- other than the old, ornate organ Mom had inherited from her mother. It was our HiFi and the most beautiful music was emanating from its cloth-covered front, filling the room. Even now, whenever I happen to hear a bit of that particular piece on the radio, the room with me sitting there between Mom and Dad fills my mind. I still have the album Dad played that day. Here. You can listen to it with me while you read this:https://youtu.be/t4lnWB7R_qM It’s a serenade by Mozart, called Eine Kleine Nacht Musik, or A Little Night Music. And six decades later it’s still one of my favourite pieces of music. A little night music in the middle of the afternoon. For me, it’s the sun dancing on grass. I was looking out the screen door of the porch opposite me. The warm sun was glancing off the tall green blades in our lawn, grass that Dad would let grow to farm length, then cut with a scythe. I watched through the screen the slow flight of a bee from dandelion to dandelion, as in a dream. The bee and the sun were part of the music. At the far end of the wide lawn, our fence posts stood white in front of the neighbour’s trees, which lounged green and tall and comfortable there. I thought of going out, but not yet.

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1. Baby Fred and the Ferris Wheel

2/19/2017

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Upon retirement to Calgary from farm life in central Alberta, my father Fred Burfield, in the 1960s, wrote a chronicle of his life and that of his family of Alberta homesteaders, of the sod houses and log cabins they lived in, of living off the land and carving a life out of nature. This is my first excerpt from that stack of hand-typed pages (typed by a blind man). I intend, in time, to work my way through the entire memoir, excerpting the most interesting parts and summarizing others. (Stan Burfield, son)
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Fred was born Nov. 20th, 1906. When he was three, in 1910, his family moved to the Canadian prairie from a very comfortable upper-middle class home in Hastings. (His father had inherited a brewery, which apparently his grandfather had mismanaged and driven into serious debt, no doubt worsened by the rapidly growing temperance movement of the time.) Because of the shocking difference between life in wealthy Hastings and the endlessly flat prairie, some of the more dramatic memories of his very early childhood remained fresh in his mind all his life. The one he describes here had to have been from an age of about one year old. The details were no doubt later embellished from other participants’ memories.
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“One time we went to the giant ferris wheel that used to be included in every photograph of London’s skyline. It went up, believe it or not, three hundred feet. The thrill was not in speed but in the height, which in those days was the nearest thing to a birds-eye view the ordinary man could get. Mother, older-brother Robin, and I got into one gondola—I think there were other people in the rest of the space—and sister Sylvia and our aunts Allie and May got into the next behind us. These gondolas were hung at intervals all round the rim of the great spider-web of a wheel. You moved up a few feet at a time with stops to allow people to disembark and enter each gondola as it reached the bottom, thus one complete turn took a considerable time, perhaps an hour. Robin stood up by the end window where there was an uninterrupted view and as we gradually rose higher his excitement rose with us. He kept calling for us to, “Come and look.” I stayed where I was. (Fred said later that at only one year old, he would have been in the arms of either his mother or his nanny.) Finally at the very top the two gondolas were for a few short minutes level with each other and we could see Sylvia and the two aunts in the back gondola. We laughed and made faces then we dropped down out of sight. It seemed a long time before we got to the bottom.”
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(The Great Wheel of London carried two and a half million passengers in its lifetime. It was the world’s tallest Ferris wheel from 1895 to 1900. The Great Wheel opened on 7/17/1895 in Earls Court; London, UK. The observation wheel is 308 feet tall. There are 40 cabins, each capable of holding up to 40 people at one time, resulting in a seating capacity of 1600 passengers. The duration of the ride was 20 minutes, resulting in a total capacity of 4800 people per hour. The Giant Wheel was the predecessor to the current model, the London Eye, which is taller--435 feet vs 308--but which has fewer carriages--32 vs 40--and each carriage has less capacity--25 people vs 40.)

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Evening light

Fred milking cows on the farm at Ponoka

Fred, my father.

1. Baby Fred and the Ferris Wheel

Fred Burfield

Stan Burfield

Memoirs
1. Baby Fred, Ferris Wheel

Other
Evening light
Fred milking cows
*Fred, my father.

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Evening light

Fred milking cows on the farm at Ponoka

Fred, my father.

1. Baby Fred and the Ferris Wheel

Fred Burfield

Stan Burfield

Memoirs1. Baby Fred, Ferris Wheel

Other*Evening light*Fred milking cows *Fred, my father.​

Archives

Categories

Memoirs
1. Baby Fred, Ferris Wheel

Other
Evening light
Fred milking cows
*Fred, my father.