Budd Gardens celebrates 100 years

In the late 1950′s my granny’s sisters family would visit us on the farm in Blackburn. Back then we were way out in the boonies so visits were infrequent. I was about 8 or 9 and my cousins the Gravelle’s and Kaluski’s were the same age, some a bit older. These ‘city slickers’ would be shown the chickens and cows that granny looked after, maybe gather a few eggs or do some milking. A tractor ride down the fields was a must with each taking a turn driving if they were brave enough, age had little to do with it. The adults would catch up on news and we kids would play in the barn or climb some of the huge willow trees we had. It seems so long ago and I guess it is, over 50 years.

Since we started renting land from the National Capital Commission in the late 80′s we’ve been finding all kinds of artifacts from days gone by. Horseshoes of all different sizes and shapes, as well as nuts and bolts, and various pieces of metal that had fallen off of old machinery. Last week my younger brother James was visiting my brother Dave in the fields and was walking behind the cultivator when his eagle eye spotted  an old penny, a 1895 Canadian penny with a young Queen Victoria on it. In days gone by these fields were worked by my wife Evelyn’s  family, the Kemp’s, so maybe this penny belonged to her great grandfather Adam. What a strange time to find this treasure, this being Budd Gardens 100 years in Blackburn anniversary. Photos of coin taken from web (coin from field was worse for wear) and man in buggy is Adam Kemp.

Several years ago, Budd Gardens began renting lands from the NCC in Blackburn below the Blackburn Bypass. These fields had been used as pasture land for decades and as we began to till the soil and plant our crops, ancient hidden treasures began to reveal themselves.

Thrown from different size workhorses, some small some large, horseshoes galore from a different agrarian era kept surfacing. I showed some to my father-in-law, Eldon Kemp, who is now in his mid-eighties. Except for the war years, when he served in the Navy, Eldon has spent his entire life in Blackburn. He picked up one shoe that was different from the rest, as it has several long rusted nails in it and declared, “This is from a horse that died and was either buried out in the fields or left for the wildlife to dispose of.”

Blackburn always had a blacksmith and I’m sure these men were responsible for re-shoeing the horses that had lost their iron shoes in these fields. Leo Mainville, a bachelor, was the blacksmith when I was a child. He could do anything from shoeing horses to building a complicated piece of farm equipment of his own invention.

Leo owned one plate, one fork, one knife, and one cup and after each meal he would use his bread to carefully clean his plate and cutlery with an expert swipe and then turn these utensils upside down onto his table, ready for his next meal. As a blacksmith, he was a genius, but as a homemaker, he was lacking.

Another note of wisdom from the past is this. When hanging a lucky horseshoe in your home, always have the open end pointing up. If you hang it in reverse, all of your luck will fall out.

First photo-Eldon Kemp. Second photo Leo Mainville.