Note: Over the next few months, Agri News, which is a part of the weekend Lifestyles publication, will be presenting a series of articles focusing on some of southeast Saskatchewan’s farming and ranching operations with a particular interest in their historical features and how local families have nurtured the land over generations.
This historical farms series is brought to you through the courtesy of several local and regional businesses that understand the significance of history and how it relates to the farming community.
This first offering introduces readers to the Yergens family farm.
It’s hard to leave the farm, we mean it’s really hard.
Once you’ve been engrained in the captivating world of agricultural production, there seems to be no such thing as just picking up and moving on, untouched.
You have become sons and daughters of the soil and that farm can keep you captive for years, just ask Allan and Doris Yergens. That family farm keeps drawing them back home whether they like it or not and, just for the record, they like it.
The Yergens family farm in the Outram/Torquay area once consisted of near Ponderosa proportions with more than 45 quarters of land to prepare, seed and harvest annually. On occasion there was additional leased land to tend to, just to make it more interesting.
The family enterprise dates back to the spring of 1915 when Allan and Dallas Yergens’ father Herb arrived in southeast Saskatchewan to operate some threshing equipment for Holly Sovdi and family.The Yergens family had originally settled down into the Minneapolis area in the United States, but Herb obviously liked this particular area of southeast Saskatchewan and determined he would somehow make it home.
After a couple of years of hard labour and saving, he managed to purchase a small plot of land, and the rest, is a rich history enhanced by several tales of successes and failures, which is the script for any self-respecting farmer and his family.
Herb Yergens knew what he was doing, or so it seemed, as the spirit soared, and by 1969, Herbert Yergens and his wife Emma with Dallas and Allan as business partners, earned the title as southern Saskatchewan’s Master Farm Family of the Year Award.
Herb and Emma recalled then the original struggling years when the bread baking and garden products were all produced at home, without electricity. That didn’t come until 1945. And without any running water, that arrived in 1946 as their home became much more efficient, giving the couple a little time to reflect and engage in planning for the next generation. A well-kept farmyard, huge garden and growing family, kept them totally engrossed in the rural lifestyle.
The corporate farming operation continued with Allan and Dallas each finding their particular niche in the operation, combining their talents when the combining needed to be done, also the seeding. There were books to be kept, seeding decisions to make, equipment to repair and maintain and shared contemplation and discussions whenever new pieces were to be added, either in the field or at home.
It sort of came to an end in 2005 when Allan and Doris Yergens decided to follow the path of brother Dallas to join the ranks of the voluntarily unemployed ( i.e. retirement class). The then 23 quarters of land and equipment were sold at auction, but seven quarters remained in the family with sister Berva.
Dallas died in 2007, and Allan had been easing out of the game, first by doing a little driving and combine operation work for neighbours, but when the colder weather arrived, there was no pressure to stay homebound to get the last of the crop off. They could disappear for a few weeks to enjoy some Arizona sun and warmth.
But home is always home and for the Yergens, you definitely can come home again… and again.
That rural homestead has still been with them since 2005, but the couple has now decided to make a move into Estevan this spring, having sold that last piece of history.
Following Herb Yergen’s retirement in the early 1970’s Allan and Dallas had split the operations into separate corporations but still worked co-operatively, as expected. Dallas retained the home quarter and Allan and Doris “moved down the road” in the late 1980s and built and, eventually, rebuilt a home. The final seven quarters had also been sold by their sister.
Over the years, the family recalled, Herb stuck mainly to the traditional crops and marketing practices while the brothers did branch out to seed lentils, peas and other crops along the way.
With the next generation finding other avenues of interest, it was determined that selling the majority of the land and the equipment would allow Allan and Doris to cut that final string, sort of. But nobody is fooling anybody. Others may now own and operate this land, but that Outram area’s huge patch of food-bearing real estate, is still “the Yergens place.”
That’s just the way it is in Saskatchewan.
