Yorkston, SZ

Andreas Paepcke
Aug 9, 2017 · 6 min read

what can Andreas possibly pick up on Rt 16 (Yellowface) between
Winipeg and Yorkton — an expansive plain so wide you imagine seeing the curvature of the Earth? You’d be surprised. For example, I learned why you’d want oxen instead of horses here. And why rash youth chops down trees without thinking about why those trees stand.

But first:

The Gift of Time

It’s the most wonderful surprise when I check into my night cuddle space and learn that it’s an hour earlier than I thought. I’m recovering the hours I lost on the eastward flight one little hour treat at a time. I very much savor that re-won time. More so than having all the hours poured into my lap upon
landing at SFO.

Only downside: The GPS provides the Time of Arrival in local time. So
I then think ‘oh, just a 4 hour ride. Piece of cake.’ But no, it’s 5. Small
price to pay.

Neepawa ‘Beautiful Plains Museum’

While riding through the flat farm land I accumulated a number of
questions I wanted answered. So, upon reaching Neepawa I rode off the
16 into a side street, hunting for the Beautiful Plains Museum I’d
seen advertised at the entry to town.

The Beautiful Plains Museum

And Bingo.

As much local information as you could wish for. And I wished for a lot. They had enormous patience.

She was quick and sharp. He was surprisingly open minded, though more
plodding, slower to start speaking, even slower to smile. A retired
farm couple. He:

“The way Trump speaks is inappropriate. It’s not like a president.”

She:

“He means it’s not presidential. My husband is a CNN addict. In our coffee group we have a real Trump fan. He tells my husband to watch Fox News to get the truth.”

I:

“Oh, you have a coffee group?”

“Oh yes we meet in the cafe next door every day and hash things
out. We’re all retired.”

[Sounded familiar to me :-)]

So, I’ll list what I learned, intermingling those snippets with photos
from the 4-story museum. The contents were all donated by local
citizens. The husband is on the board.

I helped operate one of these when I was a boy, vacationing in the Black Forest. Pour in cow milk. Rotation separates cream from the milk.

Crop rotation is no more. The soil’s role is at this point just to
hold up the plants. The crop is grown entirely on fertilizer. Soil
richness is irrelevant.

Rows of trees mid-field were planted with government subsidies. The
purpose was to slow soil erosion, which I had suspected. But also to collect snow drifts that then provided extended moisture sources as they melted.

The young farmers chop all the trees down, so the large farm equipment
doesn’t need to navigate around them. Soil erosion is less of an
issue, because: ploughing is no more. Not ploughing keeps the top soil
hard, and retains moisture. Since regenerating soil nutrients is not the
goal any more, ploughing is irrelevant.

The husband did not approve of those innovations. A small triumph
occurred when the buyer of the couple’s farm decided to chop down the
trees that the couple had planted to prevent their driveway from
snowing in. Come Winter, the new farmer’s driveway was down
under. Great feeling for the couple; I could still hear the
satisfaction in their voice.

Not Jewish
Seriously doubt it. Nah, not Jewish.

The pig slaughter operation at the edge of town: big win. A thousand
or so pigs slaughtered every week or such. But where does the labor
come from for the operation? And for the hospital? And the old age
home? Imports. The wife:

“People complain that immigrants take our jobs. But they tried local
natives, and they worked till the paycheck arrives, and then they
disappear. And whites don’t want to do the work.”

So: Koreans do OK, but they have language troubles, and they are not
used to this type of work. They finish the 2-year contract, then open
a restaurant.

Ukrainians: refused to take instruction from women.

Which group is perfect? Filipinos. Reliable, great neighbors if you
live next door to them, hard working. OK, one small cultural problem:
they don’t tend to mow their front lawn. They park their car there
instead. But:

“There’ll always be some cultural differences. They really are good
neighbors. They participate in the community.”

These rules could easily have come from Germany. Practicality insidiously mixed with morality. I don’t mean the unmentionables. I mean the “what would the neighbors think?” Shaming and group pressure are built into several of these. I do remember the ‘use one clip for two adjacent items,’ and the prohibition against visible housework on Sundays.

19th Century immigrants received land grants for $10/acre. Sounded
like US homesteading. They were under time pressure to clear acreage
at a prescribed rate. Interesting to me: while the prairie grass lots
were trivial to get ready for planting, most immigrants preferred
wooded ground, in spite of the bone breaking labor. Reason: they were
able to build housing, and had firewood. It’s all a tradeoff.

Brassiere of a formidable Russian immigrant woman? (Probably antisemitic?)
Nope: part of an oxen pulling stuff setup.

Why were oxen preferred to horses for pulling? Particularly since you had to let them rest mid-day, lest they overheat. First, they were cheaper. Second, no need to feed them oats; they ate the prairie grass that needed getting rid of anyway. Third, they were less likely to run away, or be stolen. If they were, you could easily catch up with them on a horse. Pretty cool, eh?

Question from the husband:

“Do they not teach geography in the US? We travel there, and say we
are from Manitoba, and nobody knows where that is. It’s a bit
disappointing.”

I didn’t have the heart to mention that my experience with East Coast
Canadians is that they view Canada as a country with a giant chasm in
the middle. Maybe caused by some cataclysmic geological event millions of years ago. Canada is everything up to Thunder Bay. Then the country
starts again in Alberta.

Who are these people? What’s common to them?
They were all from Neepawa, and they died on the Titanic.

The grain silos serve a number of functions. Obviously, a place grain to be collected by the railroad or truck. Farmers used to try and lock in a price. Then the timing of when the grain traveled was not critical. The young farmers continuously check their computers for grain prices, and hold the grain till the best moment. Often a while after the harvest glut.

So much interesting stuff in that museum. Plus all the ag biz info.

On to Saskatoon. Which is disconcertingly reminiscent of Brigadoon. Hope it’ll be there!

Andreas Paepcke

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