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Southeast Saskatchewan resident decorates fence with bicycles

A farm family in the Carievale area has attracted a lot of attention by putting 100 bikes along their perimeter fence that runs adjacent to a road.
Darren Ireland pic
Darren Ireland has decorated one of his farm fences with bicycles. Photo submitted

A farm family in the Carievale area has attracted a lot of attention by putting 100 bikes along their perimeter fence that runs adjacent to a road.

The Ireland family has been running their farm and living in the area for a long time and Darren Ireland thought of the idea to put bikes along his fence. He has been putting the bikes up along the fence for about two years.

“I have about 100 bikes out there now and I have about 100 more to go there, all along my perimeter fence,” said Ireland.

Ireland said he likes to make his neighbours talk, which is why he decided to put the bikes on his fence in the first place.

“I was at the dump one day and there was a whole bunch of bikes in the dump. I took a few of them home and ending up putting them on my fence, and I went back to get some more,” said Ireland.

The Ireland family also runs a small museum on their property, with about 12 buildings. One them is an exact re-creation of mid-18th century prairie church.

The family, over the years had amassed a lot of antiques, such as horse drawn farming equipment and they decided one day to finally put it all in a museum.

The Ireland museum has been an ongoing effort but in recent years has nearly been completed. Beverly Ireland, who also helps run the museum, said the family ended up going in the direction of the museum with all the items they had accumulated around the farm. 

She said that since the museum first became real some years ago, the museum is now about preserving farm life and Saskatchewan Prairie history by taking in donated historical items or using the Ireland family collection to preserve history.

Since he put up his first few bikes, Darren Ireland has been amassing more to dot his fence with bicycles.

“Since then I’ve gone out to different farms that have had bikes and auction sales and that sort of thing. We have a lot of people just coming by and dropping them off at our bridge,” said Ireland. “After they drop their bikes off its funny because they can drive by and see their bikes up on my fence.”

He has also mounted some bicycles before those family members were ready to stop using them. 

Ireland noted that putting the bikes up along his fence isn’t the most difficult thing to do and he looks forward to adding some more.

“I’ve built a lot of this with oilfield tubing and any tubing I have left around. I am going to be putting more bikes up along my fence and I am planning one day to have the whole thing done up with bikes,” said Ireland.

“It doesn’t take long to put the bikes up, you just weld a rod on the bottom and away you go. It isn’t too hard, not a whole lot of fun putting them up in the winter.”