July has flown by and we're looking for summer

I can't believe how quickly the month of July just whizzed by like a month on steroids. One day it was the Canada Day Parade and celebrations the next it was getting ready for the August long weekend and Haying in the 30s. Visit this incredible event here wwww.hayinginthe30s.org where we raised nearly $215,000 dollars in two days.

I'm thinking that because we were doing renovations we used up lots of daylight hours and of course there's all the volunteer things we get involved with. Oh, and then there's that crazy thing called work that keeps getting in the way of all the free stuff we do. It's all for the good of the community. Right?

Anyway, back to Haying in the 30s for a minute.  This event started back in 1999 when a few friends who had a common love of horses got together at the behest of Edgar Corbierre who had seen a group of wagon train fans travelling and camping together. They all got together on a long weekend (August as it turns out) and brought their horse-drawn machinery and cut and piled hay. There was a potluck supper so everyone was fed like back in the day when neighbours gathered to help each other harvest.

As it turned out, Edgar's son Real (pronounced Ray al) had been diagnosed with cancer and the folks all got together and passed around a hat and gathered $350 which they gave to the family to help offset travel costs for treatment. From there it grew year by year and became the event that it is today. Fortunately Real survived his bout with cancer and participates today.

It is amazing what has been accomplished since those early days. The county provided a lifelong lease on an eighty acre piece of property and buildings were developed to provide shelter during the meal (whether from sun or rain) and ever since, new buildings were added each year to add interest to the site. These buildings house the growing list of donated furniture, tools and equipment that was used in the past all contributing a sense of community that is not as evident these days.

Among the buildings, there is a typical farmhouse of the day, a pioneer's cabin, a trappers cabin, a fully functioning blacksmith's shop, a weaving house, a general store, a rail freight building, a harness and shoe repair shop, a creamery, an aboriginal teepee, a church, bank, telegraph/newspaper office and a saloon. All of these buildings have been outfitted with furniture and goods and are staffed by volunteers, dressed in period garb, on the weekend of the event and lend themselves to creating a living museum. In addition, more than 30 teams of horses are hitched to various agricultural implements and are used to till the fields, plant the grain, harvest it, thresh it and bring it to the barn and corrals. There's even a horse operated well-boring machine, a sawmill and a shingle mill.

All of these elements are operated by volunteers and they give everyone a true taste of what it was like to farm and live back in that era.

Another amazing thing is the visitors who come to the event and stay for several days. Nearly 260 rv's of all descriptions parked in a hay meadow just east of the site. These folks along with daily visitors who are parked off-site and then brought into the grounds on horse drawn wagons, number in the hundreds with more than 2,000 people sitting down to a great beef on a bun supper with all the trimmings.  Oh, there's lunch a noon and breakfast the next morning following church service and another lunch at noon on Sunday with about the same number of people taking part in each meal.  Now that's a pile of groceries and you wonder where it all comes from. Every speck and morsel is donated. Yes, donated by local businesses, individuals and large companies alike. Food like seven 4H steers, barbecued in a huge pit BBQ. Over a hundred pounds of potatoes grown and donated by a local farmer, thousands of eggs, hamburgers, hotdogs and the list goes on and on.

Here's a little video clip to show the scale of the event.

What's the charge to get into this great event you ask? Zero, nothing, nada, zip. There's no charge for parking, no admission charge, no charge for camping, no charge for food, no charge for the musical entertainment that happens all day and into the night. All that's asked is that you visit the bank on site and make a donation to the cause. They are a registered society so you'll get a receipt right there written out by the volunteers who staff the donation bank.

To sum it up, the weekend is about stepping back to a simpler time when we got to know our neighbours and pitched in if they needed help. It's about experiencing what our ancestors might have gone through to eke out a living for themselves and their families.  It's also about helping those who are undergoing the toughest battle of their lives. If you're in the area, Mallaig, AB next year on the long weekend in August you should really check it out.