There’s a very familiar feeling I get every time I go to the Bar U Ranch National Historic Site, and it’s not because I’ve been covering events there since my first week on the job as a reporter 12 years ago.
I went to the opening weekend at the Bar U on Sunday. Walking through the ranch in the rain, grabbing a ginger cookie in the cook house, taking a look inside the barn and the blacksmith shop, it all takes me back to my family’s summer visits to my grandparent’s farm when I was young.
I always think of my grandfather whenever I walk past the Bar U’s blacksmith shop.
Some of my fondest memories of my grandfather are sitting with him in his blacksmith shop. It was jam packed to the rafters with old tools and equipment. The shelves were all lined with old tobacco cans filled with bits and pieces grandpa either made or saved to use to make something else. My cousins and I would jockey for a spot next to his hand-cranked forge, to be the one who got to fire it up for grandpa.
I can envision my grandmother next to the stove in the Bar U cook house’s kitchen, making her famous cookies and cakes or getting spices, sugar or flour from her cupboards. Sitting at the roundup camp reminds me of evenings spent with family around the fire in the backyard.
There wasn’t much farming going on by the time I was around. My grandfather still grew wheat crops and my grandmother raised chickens in the old coop and grew berries, fruits and vegetables in her large garden behind the house.
There wasn’t much agricultural work left to do. I never visited during harvest and allergies kept me out of the henhouse. That meant I would be put to work picking berries or tending to the vegetable garden pulling weeds - a dreaded job with grandma’s massive garden.
I grew up in Edmonton, with a suburban existence a long way from the farm. I am grateful for the time I spent there. It wasn’t much longer after I was 10 years old or so when my grandparents moved to Lethbridge and visits to the farm became few, then soon stopped altogether. The last time I was there was probably five years after my grandfather died and by then no one lived there. The barn and blacksmith shop had fallen over and most of the other buildings weren’t too far behind. The land has since been sold.
This is probably why the Bar U is one of my favourite places in the Foothills. My grandparent’s farm is gone, but the memories come back every time I head out to the ranch.
