One hundred years ago, Leonard Kieser came home to Sturgeon from the First World War and started a farm just six miles north of Morinville, buying the land from CP Rail for $22 an acre.
“It was all brush when he started,” said Celina Kieser, who married into the family in 1955, and he spent the next 40-odd years breaking the land with nothing more than sweat and horses. He didn’t get a tractor until 1951 – two years before he died.
That tractor, a Farmhall Model H, is still hard at work on the Kieser farm today, Celina said. She rents her land out to other farmers now, but still grows her own flowers in the garden.
The Kiesers were one of four clans to receive the 100-Year Farm Family Award April 10 at the Sturgeon Proud Awards held at the Morinville Community Cultural Centre. The award, which consists of a large plaque, recognizes families that have lived on and farmed the same land in the county for at least a century.
Also recognized were the Victoor, Hebert and Meunier families.
Rene Victoor said his grandfather, also named Rene, came to Canada from Belgium with his wife and seven kids in the early 1900s and initially farmed near Rivière Qui Barre. They established the family’s current plot south of Villeneuve in 1919, buying five quarter-sections for $4,500.
“It was a fair price at that time,” Rene said, as everything was pricey during the Roaring Twenties.
The family had to sell three quarter-sections of land once the Depression hit and grain prices dropped to $7 a bundle from $20, he continued. The farm survived, though, and in the 1950s expanded into selling crops for seed. Today, Victoor Seed Farm Inc. specializes in selling pedigree seed direct to county residents.
Guy Meunier said his grandfather Wilfred established the Meunier farm near Manawan Lake in 1919. Around 1928, Wilfred and two other family members drove a steam engine about 100 kilometres north to Flatbush to work as loggers, where they were paid in lumber. After three winters of work, they had enough wood to build their first barn – a barn that’s still around today.
Henri Hebert said he wasn’t too familiar with his grandfather Octave or why he started the family farm four miles east of Morinville. The farm used to host up to 800 hogs, but is now strictly grain, and utilizes technologies such as GPS that would have been unimaginable in Octave’s time.
Rene and Guy said their farms are going strong, and that their families have no plans to leave the farm life.
“It’s a life of work and enjoyment,” Guy said, and it’s a heck of a lot more relaxing than his side job running one of the Shell stations in Morinville.
Henri said his family farm would probably come to an end when he retired as his kids didn’t plan to take it over.
Celina said she wasn’t sure what would happen to her farm once she was gone, as her sons weren’t interested in taking over. (She rents the land out to others now.)
“I love farming,” she said.
“I’m going to stay in farming as long as I can.”
See bit.ly/2Z9FctP for a list of past 100 Year Farm Family Award recipients.
