BORDEN, Sask. – The blizzard of January 1956 brought lots of snow, tiring out the horses that were taking Isobel and Barry Tracksell to catch their bus.
So the couple got out of the sleigh and walked the last five kilometres to the highway to catch the storm-delayed bus to Prince Albert, Sask., where they were eloping. When they got back on the bus after the ceremony, they couldn’t even get a seat together.
It could have been considered a bad omen to start their marriage, but the Tracksells laugh about it today.
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The couple, who have been farming “in a 50-50 partnership” for 47 years, laugh about a lot of events in their lives. Their good humour and determination brought them success, five children who all live nearby, and a century farm award that will be presented in June on their Borden area farm. Isobel jokes that they never considered parting because “the first one who left would have to take the kids and the cows.”
They began married life on Barry’s parents’ farm, 240 acres near Borden close to where former prime minister John Diefenbaker was born.
Barry’s father homesteaded here in 1902 from Ontario. He died in 1944 when Barry was 10, but he has memories and a black-and-white photo of him. His father worked the farm with horses and never drove a car.
Isobel remembers the fruit trees that her father-in-law planted. While most are gone now, for years the grafted crabapple trees provided large fruit, as well as a windbreak around the farmyard. Old-timers reminisced about the Tracksell root cellar that even in late winter yielded baskets of beets and potatoes.
Barry and Isobel added to their land, eventually expanding to seven quarters. It was always a mixed farm with beef and dairy cattle, chickens and pigs, as well as forage and other crops.
Isobel remembers they paid $6,000 for the farm after Farm Credit Corp. told them in 1961 that they needed more land to make a living.
For the past two decades they have contracted to run a rural mail route. Barry said Canada Post keeps their route open because “we didn’t ask for a big bid because we’re used to being poor farmers.”
While the route’s coverage area has stayed the same, the number of families has dropped to 33 from 70.
“It’s depressing when you see farmers leaving,” Isobel said.
During a slow period this winter she added up her numbers and discovered that they have paid $173,000 in income tax in the past 20 years, despite experts telling them they were supposed to be an unviable farm.
But she agrees that when it’s time for their children to take over the farm, it will be a hobby rather than a career. One of their four sons farms nearby, but the other sons and a daughter have non-farm jobs.
The Tracksells don’t know why their children stayed close, but it probably has to do with the family’s sense of fun. Their house was the gathering place for teenagers when the children were younger. The family was also active in local hockey and baseball teams. When asked the name of the team, Barry laughed and called them “losers.”
The couple’s life is relived in boxes of photographs.
There are pictures of the fire that destroyed their farmhouse in 1959, forcing the family to move into the washhouse and use neighbours’ donations of clothes for the kids.
In 1966, a Canadian Armed Forces Hercules plane landed in a nearby field. The Tracksells went to take pictures, got stuck and had neighbours help them out – while Isobel kept quiet about the contractions she was having for a son born later that night.
There was the lightning strike in 1973 that burned one of Borden’s five grain elevators. It was school graduation night and many people showed up to fight the fire in their good suits.
In the early 1980s, they had trouble with cattle mutilations, a problem that disappeared when they went to the media with their story and pictures.
The Tracksells are semi-retired now. They spend much of the winter in their family room with its cozy wood stove. Isobel knits scarves, afghans and crafts to sell at the Borden farmers’ market, which she helps run.
They have reduced their beef herd by half to 100 cows. They calve all year round and use all breeds.
“We like to keep them well-mixed,” Barry said. Isobel added that they like “lots of colours.”
Barry said when they had the dairy herd, people asked why they didn’t get rid of the animals because it tied them to the farm. Isobel said it was the cream cheques and then the milk income that kept them going for many years.
Barry added that they built a cheap dairy barn when others were spending $200,000, “but at least when we sold the quota it was all ours.”
He added that he thinks agriculture is going the wrong way, with the push to bigger and more specialized farms. He also wonders about the wisdom of using chemicals, saying his father thrived without using any.
But when asked what legacy they want to leave, they agree that it would be the fun they have had together.
