6 Gus Ross

Gus Ross has the quiet mannerisms of his older brother S tewart*. The 130- acre farm where he lives with his wife Anna was owned originally by his great-great- grandfather and was passed on to him by his parents.

A lifetime farmer who did not buy his first tractor until he was 40, Mr. Ross speaks with some regret of his empty horse stalls and his diminished workload. The Ross farm is currently being worked by a neighbour.

O h well, I don’t like to be telling that but I guess they’ll see it on my

tombstone anyways. I might as well tell you, what? I was born in 1904.

Gifts of the Land

I guess the first thing we were able to do was haul the seaweed... Stewart and I were about 10 and 12 when we started. My father wanted us to go to the shore in the summertime hauling... We had three horses and carts and he’d get us up before daylight. We’d be off with the horses for the shore... Course, he knew when the seaweed would come and he’d have to get over early before somebody else’d get it.

Well, they thought it was good for the land. See, there wasn’t so much straw then as there is now and it was great to keep cattle and pigs clean. We’d pile it up there and haul it home in the wintertime with the horse and sleigh, across the ice, for manure. We didn’t have much time in the fall with the other work. We just piled it up in a big pile. That was for the winter. It’d be generally around in January or February. Cold weather too. We didn’t mind it too much.

Another thing we used to do in the wintertime was haul mussel mud from Pinette River. In the end of March, we used to haul it with the horses and

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