The weekend ahead is always a rather special one in the city of Yorkton since it is the time of the annual Yorkton Threshermen's Show & Senior' Festival.
While Yorkton hosts many annual events which attract large crowds from both within the city and tourists, but among the list of events the one held each year at the Western Development Museum is unique.
The importance of the show is that it is a doorway through which patrons can step to glimpse what is essentially our collective past.
Many of us are now detached from agriculture, having been two, three generations removed from actually tilling the soil, and chasing cattle around a pasture.
However, agriculture is the cornerstone of our history. The region was originally populated by farmers, immigrants moving to Canada because of the promise of nearly free land on which they could build a new life. Those people were the ones who tamed what was once simply wild lands and made Saskatchewan what it would become, the bread basket of the world.
Sadly today, the farm population is only a fraction of what it once was. Where once a family lived on nearly every quarter section, today's farms are thousands of acres. The result is a dwindling farmer population and a growing lack of knowledge about both current farm practices and about the past.The Thresherman's Show at least helps to get a feel for what our forefathers had to do to farm in the past.
There is something special seeing horses cutting grain with binders older than many in the audience watching.
It is interesting to watch stooking competitions, although there is a sadness too as it is recognized there will come a day in the not so distant future when no remembers how to do something which was once an integral part of farming.
To see massive steam engines spewing gray hot steam, the machine hissing and belching away is something which may soon be lost too. Where once the museum had four steam engines working, the number has shrunk as age has claimed some of the great beasts now unsafe to operate.
It is still something special though to smell the steam and grease of the old steamers, and recognize how different they are from today's tractors, with computers and global positioning technology, radios and air conditioning.
The farmers who bought the steamers new could not even visualize what farming is today.
Luckily though, we can still get to know about how farming was as Yorkton and area grew from a spot on a map to the city it is today. We can do that this weekend by attending the show at the WDM, take it in, learn about our past, and have fun.
