Nancy Baker:  

My Life up until now, Feb 2020: After I graduated from QE, I went to Simon Fraser for 3 yrs in search of a teaching degree. That summer at the end of my 3rd yr, I thought I’d work my way across Canada to take a summer walkabout in Europe—what did I have to lose? Along the way I stopped to work in LK Louise & Banff just long enough to make enough money to keep driving east. While there I met a guy from Saskatchewan, and a few weeks later we were married. Obviously I never made it to Europe at that time (although I did take 22 students there in 2000) but I did make it to Saskatoon where Terry had to finish his last year in Engineering, and where during that bitterly cold winter the bedspread froze to the wall for over 2 weeks. I grew up in Surrey, we didn’t have those problems, and I cried for longer than it took for the bedspread to be torn slowly and carefully off that icy wall. . Terry finished his B. Eng that year at the Univ of Saskatchewan, and later his masters in Civil Engineering. It took a few years but I did get my B.Ed + an extra 2 yrs more at the U of S, which should have gone towards a masters but that’s another story.. We worked for a couple of years in Dawson Creek & later in Saskatoon, before deciding that the family farm was where we wanted to settle and raise a family. From that point on Terry and I lived and worked on a 4 generational family farm (cattle and grain) in West-Central Saskatchewan, 17 miles from the Alberta border for well over 40 years. This large family farm began when his grandfather emigrated from the US around 1908, built a 12ft X 12ft sod ‘home’ and survived his first freezing winter, along with his horse, in that fairly meagre space. The next spring he and the horse walked 90 miles and back to set his claim and to settle in that area of West Central Saskatchewan. That’s the old history. Newer hisory: In 1975 when our first son was just 4 months old, we packed up in Saskatoon & turned our heads from Engineering and teaching, and moved back to help run the farm. I can’t begin to fully explain what an unexpected life this was going to be for this city girl. I had not even a sniff at all about what a farm was. But in 40+ years it gets into your blood, for sure. Now today we don’t live there full time any more, but we still have our 1917 farm home and the barns, sheds, machinery, corrals, cattle handling facilities, and the machine shop, as well as pastures and grain lands. In 2015, to be closer to an airport and to medical facilities, we bought a bungalow condo and moved in to the not too big a city of Saskatoon (about 300,000 people) a nearly 3 hr drive from our farm. It took months, and many helpful hands, to move our 40 yrs of life a bit at a time. We sold our large black angus cow/calf herd, but we kept the farm and now rent out the grainland to one wonderful young family and the pastures to another lovely young family, both of whom we are proud and grateful to call our friends as well as well as our renters. They are exemplary stewards of this land which has been leant to us by God to manage for those years were are on this earth. I hope Terry’s forefathers are proud of what we have done to develop and improve the land, and what we as a group continue care for and build on. We have been married 49 yrs this August, and have 3 grown children (2 sons ages 45 and 40, and a daughter, age 43). Our eldest son & daughter-in-law have two children (20 and 17yrs old). Youngest son & wife have a 10 yr old son and a 5 yr old daughter. And our daughter & her husband have two lovely daughters, 7and 5.. Being a Grandma & Grandpa is just about the greatest experience and blessing in the world, I remember when Terry’s pare...Expand for more