190 honoured with Information Services Corporation’s Century Family Farm Award
Norm Rebin’s family has lived on the same patch of land near Blaine Lake, Sask., for more than 100 years.
The Rebins are one of 190 families recently honoured with a Century Family Farm Award through the Information Services Corporation, given to families who have farmed the same land continuously for 100 years or more.
Rebin told CBC Radio’s The Afternoon Edition he has great memories of growing up on the farm but times were not always easy.
“I used to watch my grandfather and dad … go out to the field and plant and come back with nothing. Watching everything shrivel, watching everything die.
“And I used to ask Grandpa, ‘Why do you seed when nothing’s growing?’ And he said, ‘We’re not seeding seed, we’re seeding hope.’ I never forgot that.”
Land purchased with ‘petticoat money’
The farm started when Norm Rebin’s grandmother saved enough money to purchase the land with her husband and her father-in-law.
Rebin says his grandmother was “fiercely independent, way ahead of her time.” She owned her own property and had her own bank account, rare for that time.
“With grandmother’s petticoat money, we bought the farm. We’ve been there ever since.”
Agribusiness is vitally important to the Saskatchwewan economy, Rebin said, but family farms are all about passion.
“When I look around the farm, I look at pride, I look at passion, I look at sustainability,” he said.
“When I look at this farm, I look at what can be accomplished if you really are a steward of the soil and want to get better rather than just bigger all the time.”
I used to ask Grandpa, ‘Why do you seed when nothing’s growing?’ And he said, ‘We’re not seeding seed, we’re seeding hope.’
– Norm Rebin
He and his family have worked and lived on four continents but came back to the family farm near Blaine Lake — about 80 kilometres north of Saskatoon — in the end.
Rebin said he’s staying until the end.
“I’m here not only to live but to die. I’ve said to my wife and my kids, since bronzing me and standing me in the corner isn’t going to work, I want to be cremated after they’ve taken the appropriate organs from me … and I want to join the lilacs and the 4,000 trees and shrubs that I planted by hand with my wife and my children.”
Information Services Corporation has honoured nearly 4,300 Saskatchewan farm families with a Century Family Farm Award since starting the program in 2007.
The awards were celebrated during events in Saskatoon and Regina earlier this month. Award winners received a copy of their ancestors’ original land title.
