24<\/p>\n
The McGrath place was about 7 miles outside of Magrath proper. The spread had been mostly grassland with over 300 head of mixed Herefords grazing on it, along with some hay and a bit of this and that, but the family had lost a huge chunk of their land near the Nine Mile Coulee when the government had decided in its infinite wisdom that it needed some off-stream storage and created the Milk River Ridge Reservoir. That had been 1956, and while she admitted the reservoir was pretty, she missed the sense of pride that came with owning a piece of the land. She still had some, but it wasn’t the same as standing on the edge of the coulee with her dad and staring out over the family property. Property was wealth, and it had broken her dads heart a little to know he wouldn’t be passing that wealth to his only daughter.<\/p>\n
Thank heavens her place was on one of the coulees feeding the main reservoir; otherwise, she would have to put up with the jet skiers and boaters and who knows what nonsense. As it was, she saw the occasional early morning fisherman down in the shallow bay that was formed by her part of the coulee, and it was a peaceful place.<\/p>\n
Of course this meant that for the last 45 years she really didn’t need to do much to get by. The payout for the McGrath land had gone into the bank when she was barely 28, and it\u2019d done well by her over the years. Not rich by any means, she got by and hadn’t too much to spend her money on except her brother\u2019s kids and a trip or two. Meredith was a homebody and really didn’t feel the need to travel outside Southern Alberta, barring a few trips a year to Montana to shop.
\nAfter her folks had died when she was in her thirties, she had dabbled with a bunch of different crops on the hundred acres she had left, but mostly she had keep livestock, a dozen head of cows, a horse now and again, and some llamas for a while. In the 80s, the Dekkers down the way had encouraged her to get into hogs, but she didn’t much like pigs and the effort to actually make money off the smelly buggers wasn’t in keeping with her idea of a farmer’s life. She didn’t mind hard work, but farming was seasons to her, and those damn pigs were a 365-day-a-year chore. She would stick with what she knew, thank you very much.<\/p>\n
The old farmhouse was a relic from the early years in Alberta’s short history. A two-storey gabled monstrosity with room for twelve and a kitchen set feed an army of hungry hands. It had been mostly hers for years, with the occasional long-term visitor. Sometimes an oil worker looking for room and board , her nephew for a couple of years when he was going through that difficult phase, and of course Barney.<\/p>\n
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24 The McGrath place was about 7 miles outside of Magrath proper. The spread had been mostly grassland with over 300 head of mixed Herefords grazing on it, along with some hay and a bit of this and that, but the family had lost a huge chunk of their land near the Nine Mile Coulee […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3747"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}