Introduction

Keith and Buster

Having celebrated my 77th birthday and our 50th wedding anniversary, here it seemed like a good time to complete a project I have thought about – and worked on – for quite a long time. It’s about recalling things that have happened during my lifetime and the many changes that have taken place since the early 1930s. I am talking about farming and the way rural life on the prairies has changed so much over the last 100 years. I have lived through many of these changes.

Few are still alive who remember harvesting back then – the cutting, pilule stooking and threshing of Manitoba’s grain crops before 1950. These memoirs descibe that era. It has, perhaps unfortunately, turned into an autobiography of sorts. But as well as chronicling my own life, I really did want to tell something about the ‘early days’ on the farm.

Robert Keith Smith

Qualicum Beach, BC

February 2009