Category: Authors

It’s when the grain is ripe for harvest in late August or early September that I miss going to our local Alberta Wheat Pool elevator the most. Jumping off the combine and going to the elevator to have its friendly agent, Bill, run a moisture test on a grain sample and discuss the state of the crop was one of my jobs on the farm. When I arrived in Alberta in the 1980s, drinking coffee and shooting the breeze with the neighbours while the elevator agent was busy, was part of the culture, but the old-timer grain farmers could smell change the air. How right they were.

Our closest local elevator, a single composite wood crib facility constructed in 1963, at Eckville, closed in 2001. Since then we rarely visit an elevator. Now we have our own moisture tester, analysis market conditions using the internet, and have our grain trucked from the bins in the yard to the inland terminal at Lacombe or further afield—selling grain over the phone and having it trucked to a concrete silo is not much fun!

In past decades farmers were in and out of the elevator office in a rhythm that reflected the farmer’s seasonal activity. A major reason to go to the elevator was to update the permit book, which kept a record of the type, quantity and grade of grain delivered as well as the number of acres seeded to various grains, and the acreage assigned to each grain for quota purposes. Canadian Wheat Board regulations required that all grain sales, even to local users, be recorded in the permit book.

The permit book had its origins in the quota system on cereal grains introduced during the Second World War. Beginning with the crop year 1941-1942, farmers were only able to deliver limited amounts of grain, based on their acreage, at certain times. The quota system, administered by the Wheat Board, was designed to prevent the clogging of the grain handling system at a time when production exceeded available markets. It continued after the war in an attempt to give each producer an equal opportunity to sell his or her grain at the Wheat Board price for the crop year.

A farmer’s pay check and hence his loyalty to one grain company over another was ultimately determined by whether he could get space in the elevator to deliver his quota of grain. If there was room, some farmers preferred to haul to the Alberta Wheat Pool or United Grain Growers elevator, lured by the promise of patronage dividends on deliveries in relation to the companies’ profits for the year.

Many farmers made a point of being at the elevator office often, not only to find out what was going on but to establish a good relationship with the agent. They sometimes helped out when the agent was especially busy. In years when the harvest was plentiful, railway box cars were often in short supply and elevator storage space was limited, bonds of friendship, along with a reputation for reliable delivery and honesty might ensure one’s grain would be taken in before the neighbour’s.

There were a thousand and one reasons why a farmer might be at the elevator other than when he was delivering grain. He bought coal and flour throughout the year, seed in the spring and from the 1950s, fertilizer. He might be in to check prices, find out if there was space in the elevator for his grain or pick up a cheque for grain previously delivered. Farmers needed the use of the scale at the elevator for inter-farm grain sales, and the elevator agent usually obliged.

There was no need for a business excuse to go to the elevator. On wet days farmers dropped in to see who else was there, play crib or just to complain about the weather. The elevator office was a good place to catch up on local gossip: who had bought a new tractor, who was selling out, who was renting land from who, and to gauge the relative condition of neighbouring crops, as well as shifting land and machinery auction prices.

Farmers gravitated towards the elevator they dealt with and elevator agents played host to groups of farmer-customers in their cramped offices during visits to town. The elevator agent, urged on by his company to network and increase sales, was part of the community, involved in social and sporting events. At Forshee, a long forgotten elevator siding between Rimbey and Bentley, Harry Proudfoot, a U.G.G. agent from 1946-1968, was a member of several athletic teams, and helped his farmer neighbours during haying season and other times when grain deliveries were slow.

Back in the 1930s when elevator agents often had the only radio in the district, broadcasts were a lure for farmers, who might hope to catch more than the day’s grain prices. In the 1990s farmer went to the elevator to catch the farm weather cast and to watch world-wide commodity trading on cutting-edge computers. The farmers gathered whiled away hours discussing every farming topic under the sun. The agent would go off to receive a load or two of grain, and they would often still be there when he returned from the driveway.

From the mid-twentieth century, much of the farmer’s economic news, social connections, information about the latest cropping practices, and even family activities and entertainment came through the elevator office as grain companies vied to be foremost in the farmers’ lives and keep their business. All grain companies, especially the farmer-owned Alberta Wheat Pool and United Grain Growers, pushed the image of the grain elevator as the stable symbol of rural life.

It ended for us in 2001. We knew it would happen. We saw elevators topple all over the province after 1995. When Eckville went down in a cloud of dust we did not go to watch. Now in 2014, the Canadian Wheat Board is no more: there are no quotas, no permit book. We market our own grain. Like so many others in the farming community we have lost a connectedness with fellow grain producers and direct involvement with the grain handling system that really was centred in the elevator office.

Written by: Judy Larmour.

Radway is home to the 1929 Krause Milling Company Grain Elevator. Beside the elevator are the foundations of a once thriving flour mill: together with the elevator it was part of a grist mill operation located on a spur line from the main C.N. line. The mill exemplified the independent local flour milling industry that accounted for nearly one third of Alberta-milled flour in 1937. It was first licensed to produce 125 barrels (11,136 kg) of No. 1 flour per day.

Withold Krause, a second generation Alberta grain buyer and miller, who owned several other elevators and a flour mill in Leduc, built the elevator to his own design, and then began construction of the mill, which opened in 1931.The mill was a sturdily-built rectangular three-storey frame building clad with tin sheeting painted white. A basement addition on the northeast corner housed the diesel engine that ran the machinery and the steam boiler that heated the mill. The main line shaft to drive the roller mills ran beneath the first floor.

Withold Krause designed the flow line (machinery layout) inside the mill to give a flow of about 25 bushels of wheat an hour. The first floor, with solid 3 by 10 plank Douglas fir flooring, housed the tempering bin, the roller mills, and also the bagging chutes where the refinedflour ultimately finished its journey. Bags of flour were stacked for sale or collection on the east side of the first floor. The entrance to the mill and the loading platform were on the south side facing the elevator. On the second floor were the scourer and the centrifugal cloth sifters. The third floor housed a holding bin for wheat, the cylinder where the wheat was washed, and the final sifter.

Milling involved a number of steps before flour was produced. Wheat cleaned in the elevator was hauled to the mill to be scoured, washed, tempered and sent to the roller mills. The wheat was run through five roller mills referred to as breaks: each ground the wheat more finely. Each roller mill was connected with a sifter for bolting (refining) the stock (the wheat after the first break). A system of numerous small elevators (cups attached to webbing fabric moving inside wooden chutes), moved the stock between machines and from floor to floor. The flour produced was given a final sifting and bagged. Krause ordered plan white bags without the company’s logo during the height of the depression as so many people wanted to reuse the fabric for clothing.

In the 1930s Krause operated mainly as a grist mill; he took in farmers’ grain at his elevator and they took home its value in flour and by-products such as shorts and bran, picked up at the mill door. Swapping wheat for flour appealed to farmers in a cash-strapped economy. At Radway the farmer did not actually get his own wheat ground. His load of wheat, weighed and graded at the elevator, was given a value in terms of Number 2 Northern Wheat (milling grade) and he was entitled to the flour products from this amount of wheat less a gristing charge of 25 cents per bushel. In his best years, 1932-1933, Krause cleaned about 50,000 bushels of wheat in his elevator and milled it into number one “Kernel” flour and “Creamo,” cream of wheat cereal.

Krause operated the mill during the day time, which was just as well for the village as the mill was powered by a thundering Fairbanks-Morse two-cylinder, two-cycle, 120 horsepower diesel engine. As the engine burst into life, Krause’s son, Vernon recalls  “the whole town would shake.”

During World War II, as flour mills in Europe shut down and flour was urgently needed for the war effort, Krause and other millers had limited access to wheat. The Canadian Wheat Board allowed small millers a subsidy on flour sold domestically to compensate, so Krause concentrated on milling for sale, selling in Edmonton and from the mill door.

After the war Krause sold the mill. From 1949 Fred Weder operated the elevator and flour mill business under the banner of the International Grain Company and Radway Flour Mills, respectively. There was a big change in how the mill was operated. Weder ran the mill 24 hours a day, six days a week, producing 140 pound (64 kg) jute bags of low quality unbleached flour for export to countries in the Far East starving due to the ravages of World War II.. Weder shifted the huge diesel engine aside and installed an electric motor. The mill started up at the flick of a switch, and ran quietly ensuring Radway residents got some sleep!

Three two-man teams—a miller and a helper/bagger—operated the mill in eight hour shifts around the clock. More workers were needed to haul clean wheat from the elevator to the mill and load the bags into railcars. The mill crew, mostly local young men, lived in a bunk house nearby. They pushed out at least three box cars of flour a week, over triple the production of the Krause years.

This new level of production took its toll on the flour mill. By 1953 the milling rollers had been pushed to their limit and all the equipment was in need of overall. Fred Weder closed the operation and put the mill up for sale. There were no buyers, and eventually it was dismantled for salvage. Today, the Krause elevator, the only remaining country elevator in Alberta that is associated with the flour milling industry, stands alone next to the foundations of the mill that it once supplied.

Written by: Judy Larmour.