The Jeffery Family of Alma wins West Prince Graphic's "Favorite Family Photo Contest"

     In the Wednesday, Feb. 13th, 2013 issue of the West Prince Graphic it was announce that our family won the "Favourite Family Photo Contest" - the first annual contest in honour of Family Day on P.E.I.   The photo submitted was taken in July 2009 at Thunder Cove, Malpeque Bay, Prince Edward Island.

"The family of Wilbert & Verna Jeffery, Alma"

Back Row: Kerras, Robert, Randy, Kenny

Front Row: Diane, Verna, Wilbert, Darlene and Carter

Photo taken by Heckbert Studio & Gallery, Summerside, P.E.I.

Below is Wilbert & Verna accepting the $150 Gift Certificate from Rodd Hotels.

Presenting is Jan Cox of the West Prince Graphic - this photo appeared on the 

front page of the West Prince Graphic, Wednesday, February 20th, 2013.

Photo by West Prince Graphic Staff, Alberton

           The winning photo was taken in the summer of 2009 at Thunder Cove.  It was 36 years earlier, in 1973 that Wilbert and Verna had their first family photo taken when their youngest was a year old – also taken by Heckberts.  "It was alot of money at the time, but potatoes were a good price that spring and we really wanted a family photo." said Wilbert, "it’s priceless today."

          Wilbert was born in Lauretta, son of Louis and Annie Jane (Cannon) Jeffery and Verna was born in Knutsford, daughter of Roy and Empress (MacNevin) McDowell.  Wilbert and Verna were married in 1961 and raised their seven children on their farm in Alma.  All their children live on Prince Edward Island: four in West Prince; two in the Summerside area and one in Hunter River.  Wilbert and Verna have 14 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Inside the House

     The following are photos taken inside the house.  Below - you enter the porch from the verandah on the east side of the house.

Below:  As you step inside the Porch.

Below: "Have you been farming long" photo in front porch.

Below: Kitchen facing east - note the Porch on the left.

Below: the Kitchen looking in towards the Dining area behind.

Below: looking back in to the Kitchen from Dining.

Below: Bathroom/Laundry.

     Below: The Living Room.  Note the door to left is to the backyard and orchard.  On the right of the fireplace is a door to the Master Bedroom /w Queen Bed.

Below: Master Bedroom with queen bed off Living Room.

Below: stairs up from main floor - door is opposite Laundry /Bathroom.

Below:  Front Hall upstairs - Bedroom-2 ahead.

Below:  Bedroom-2 - double bed with homemade quilt.

Below:  Bedroom-3 - double bed with homemade quilt.

1982 Aerial Photo of Farm

    Here's an aerial photo taken of the farm in the summer of 1982.  Lots of changes since then.  The folks sure did grow a huge garden - lots of turnips and carrots to do all winter!        

     A few of the outbuildings were moved/demolished to make way for the large addition to the barn in 1987.  In the  mid 1990's the house had lots of work done to it complete with a new verandah.  Today the pasture fields on the north and west sides of the brook have been re-forested by PEI Forestry.

Winter Skies, Sunrises & Sunsets

     Here's a few photos I've taken around the farmstead in winter - great cloud formations and incredible sunrises.

     These clouds are called Cirrocumulus clouds, high altitude white clouds made up of ice crystals.  They indicate that weather is ahead.  See - http://www.ehow.com/how_2131426_read-clouds-forecast-weather.html

Below: lots of snow - the garden arch is near buried in snow.

Below: perfect snowfall on spruce trees behind the barn/pastures.

Below: a storm looms to the northwest.

Below: after an early April ice storm.

Below: early January, southeasterly sunrise.

Looks like a fire, but it's just the sunrise shooting into the sky.

Christmas on the Farm, 1950

     This is a great story which recently appeared in Allan MacRae's column "From our Past" in the West Prince Graphic - Wed December 19, 2012 issue.  It could very well have been written in our rural community.

     "My earliest memories were of Christmases at the farm of my grandparents.  It meant a house filled with people, mostly relatives and the neighbours.  There were distant cousins, the children of friends or the farm help and their families." Louis Bromfield (1896-1956), "Summerside Journal," 22 December 1950.
     "At my grandparents' house there were always 20 or 30 persons with an immense appetite with a ritual of eating...a late breakfast, dinner about 3 in the afternoon, and a pot luck supper from the delicious leftovers about 8 o'clock in the evening before the families who lived a long way off started for home."
     "The decorations came off the farm itself...golden ears of corn, blue-black branches of native hemlock, clusters of red dogwood and sumac berries and bittersweet plucked in bright October from the old twisting rail fences.  The Christmas tree, brought inside in a day or two earlier with some ceremony, came from grandfather's farm.  In a sense, it was as much a festival of plenty as of Christmas."
     "I grew up and went away, my grandparents died, and at length the home place, from which a family the size of a small village had come in the course of five generations, was swallowed up by the suburbs of the town.  But through all those years the memories remained of the plenty, the good feelings, the sumach, the meals, the bittersweet.  They followed me where ever I went.  Never did I find a Christmas as satisfying and as authentic as those holidays back on the farm."

     "When I got older I grew tired of wandering and returned to the country where I was born, and bought myself a farm a few miles from my grandparents' place.  When the holidays come round it is filled to bursting with family and friends, just as it was years ago.  On Christmas morning the family and guests of all ages come creeping down the stairs about 9 o'clock through the wreckage of the party that took place the night before.  Most of them are in wraps and pajamas and have breakfast in the dining room, with its Christmas tree decorated the night before with the aid and advice of all."

     "The tree is surrounded by a three-foot bank of gifts brightly wrapped and tied.  Even the dogs know it is Christmas and share in the bacon and toast with the rest of us.  The distribution of gifts takes an hour or more and then everybody goes upstairs to make ready for the rest of the day.  That means long walks, and card games in front of the fire, and, if there is now, skiing, sledding and skating."

     'The old abundance I remember is still there.  Instead of my grandfather's deep cellar and pantry there is a freezer stuffed with beef, lamb, pork, poultry, fruit and vegetables of all sorts.  The root cellar is filled with cabbages, turnips, and potatoes.  On the starlit Christmas eve when you step to the door you hear the noises of the animals in the barn a hundred feet away and when you go to the barn and switch on the lights the Holsteins stand up and stretch and blink, and look softly at you, and the new calves waken and stand on wobbly legs eagerly waiting to suckle their mother."

     "It is a nice Christmas, very much like the Christmas of my childhood.  It couldn't happen anywhere but on a farm, and the best of it is it happens naturally.  As in the remote past it is as much a festival of plenty as of Christmas."  Merry Christmas Everyone!

Eaton's Christmas Catalogue 1975

     This brings back memories - my brother Kerras found it on his travels.

The Garden is near done

    Here's a few photos from around the yard and the garden with the lovely sunflowers.

     The garden was great this year!  The potatoes grew fast - the beans, cucumber, tomatoes and strawberry's were plentiful.  Lots of pickling this Fall - mustard pickles; green tomato chow chow; tomatoe relish; bread & butter pickles, etc.

In mid summer we planted these Giant Sunflower - they grew fast!!!

 Below:  we planted 5 blue spruce last summer.

 Below: we also planted a row of spruce trees.

The Barns and Garage look good!

 The house from a different view - the sky sure looks like Fall!