Bill would often take a full cream can to the creamery in town, over ten miles away. Sometimes he traveled by bicycle and other times by buggy. They would sell cheese and milk to make extra money. Dora would sell eggs for 25 cents a dozen, as well as produce from her garden. Dora praises her old garden plot at the farm. Although she is not able to provide an explanation, the garden plot has never been affected by frost. Plants above or below the garden might be damaged by frost, but as Dora put it " I could stand in the garden and feel warm air rising up from the ground". Maybe it was the horse manure or an underground thermal heat that made her garden warm. She does not know the reason why.
Power came to the farm in 1952, making life a lot easier. It was three more years before they put a bathroom in the house; this came about because "the girls were getting too big to bath in the kitchen anymore". The only space available for it was in the pantry, Bill made more cupboards in the Kitchen to make up for the lost storage space in the pantry. They had room for a very small bathtub, toilet and a tiny washing machine. The house had a dirt basement with a cement foundation. Bill had to trench the waterline from the well under the foundation, and this was all done by hand. When digging in the basement he would fill buckets and then hand them up to Dora, who would dump them outdoors. This was a long and tiring process. While the water from the well was great for drinking, it was much too hard to do laundry or bath in so, once again Bill went to work. This time he wanted to put in a 1000-gallon cistern in the dirt basement. The cement had to be poured through a very tiny window in the basement and then into the forms. Once completed, the family was able to catch rainwater for bathing and doing the laundry.
The original road into the farm was very steep and extremely slippery when it rained and during wintertime. They were forever getting stuck and had to use the horses and later the tractor to pull the car up the hill. For years Bill was after the R.M. to gravel the road, but was told there was no money for this. Yet, the road to nearby Dropmore, was graveled. Then one day a councilor came to the farm and asked Bill if he had any ideas on how to solve the road problem. Bill said that, in fact, he did have an idea. Move the road to the west and come down the side of the hill, rather that straight down. So Bill sold some land to the Municipality and a new road was built, down what is now called "Bodnaruk Hill".
Bill's health forced them to sell the farm in 1985 and they moved to town. Sadly Bill passed away in 1996. Dora is still very active and often drives out to the farm. She is an expert berry picker and knows all the right spots in the area to look for the biggest and best berries. She has had an encounter or two with bears while out berry picking and a small tornado upset her in her lawn chair once while fishing, but she has calmly survived these experiences. She regularly fishes, late into the evening, at the lake right down at the bottom of "Bodnaruk Hill".
The house has undergone many changes over the years, but is still a very cool place in the summer and warm in the winter.
Source: Dora Bodnaruk January 2002 |
