| "On The Farm in Portage La Prairie" |
| Iola Prout Winters as told to the writer in March of 1995 ***There are over 140 living descendants of Iola's branch of the Portage La Prairie Prout Family Tree - and growing! *** |
| Page Ten |
Ellen, Iola, Roy, Carlyle, Emmeline and John Prout 1918 |
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| "The old Garrick farm that my father, John Wesley Prout bought when we moved back toPortage La Prairie, Manitoba used to be an old trading post at one time. Dad bought it after a short lived adventure trying to be a farmer in Amaranth,Manitoba. He sold out and returned to Portage. The traders and steam boats landed about a half-mile from the farm and then had to travel over land to reach Lake Manitoba. This was called "portaging" and I think that is how Portage got its name. They would stop at the post to trade for tobacco and supplies and then continue on their journey. Reverend Garrick had a large family and their ancestors still live in Portage to this very day!" |
| "Dad bought their place and we sure had tough times. He worked all day and night in town at the Brown Cocksheet Machine Shop. My brothers Roy and Carlyle ran the farm plowing and planting and the rest of us kids with our mother hoed the gardens and picked the potatoes and other vegetables grown on the farm. We missed a lot of school because of having to bring in the harvest." "We had no sanitary facilities but a place known as the "back house" sat at the very back of our property. We kids all went there to try to escape anything we didn't want to do. It sure was a strange place to hide out come to think of it. We relied on the ever loving Eaton's Catalogue and all of the Christmas tissue paper. The paper the apples and oranges were wrapped in were all lovingly smoothed out and hung on a nail. Mother used to throw ashes from our stove "down the hole" for disinfectant. We were true recycling pioneers and didn't even know it!" |
| "We never did have running water on the farm. Later, Dad moved an old house on to our property and the old trading post was torn down. Dad had put in an electric plant but we relied mostly on coal oil lamps for lighting. The good old toilet never did go out of style! Mother never got to enjoy any luxuries but I never heard her complain! She always had a friendly word for everybody - even the local Indians that used to come to our door as there was a reservation about a mile from our place. Most locals treated them very badly but not Mother. She was a special kind of lady!" "Our first telephone hung on the wall and had seven other people on the same line. One elderly woman was found with the reciever tied to her head so she wouldn't miss anything that was being said! Telephones were very dangerous during electrical storms. I remember seeing a ball of fire shoot from our telephone right out the window of our house during one severe storm! We learned real quick to stay out of the telephone's way!" |
| "Dad later went into the seed business - beans being a specialty. He was the only person I knew who could get twelve different varieties of tomatoes from the same stock! At least that's what he said and how he sold them! We used to pull bean stocks by hand and the boys would stack them in a room in our house. In the fall, us kids and Mother would shell the beans and pick out the good ones which Dad sold. Mother could make the best beans you ever tasted. My dad used to keep an exact register of everything he bought, spent or gave away. He'd give us fifty cents to go to the Portage La Prairie Fair and we'd give him back all of the change. All groceries were bought and paid once a month at Neumans General Store." "Sometimes I look back on those times and wonder how we could have been so happy - but we were! I look at what we have now compared to what we had then and my goodness! There is no comparison. We sure did have our good and bad times but Mother always kept us together!" "The year Mother died, she was about to leave the old place and move to the Waterloo Building where Uncle Norman Weber had built a suite. A few weeks before they were to move, she got a cold and ended up dying of pneumonia. Dad sold the farm to Carlyle and he built a new home there with his wife Ann. Dad went on to travel and had a short lived second marriage and of course all of us kids went our own ways. I think we all did quite good and have wonderful children and grandchildren." |
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Roy & Carlyle working the thrashing machine |
Ellen in the bean field |
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