The first weeks must have been very difficult and one of the earliest tasks would have been the digging of a well to provide fresh water for the family and horses.  At first, the family slept in a hole in the ground covered by the upside down wagon box and the new lumber leaned into an "A" shape.  The lumber would eventually be used for a framework for the sod house and for furniture.  dad recalled the daily check for snakes before going to bed in this hole in the ground which was home.  He was just seven at the time and there were three children younger than he was.

Dad also remembered the digging of the well.  During the night one of the horses fell into the new hole.  probably while rolling in the grass on its back as horses often do.  I can still remember the first time I heard this story.  Dad asked, "How do you think we got the horse out?"  They gradually filled the well with the soild, which had been removed, and the horse was able to step out.  A deep, cold well was not only important as a source of water but, it also provided refrigeration for mild and other things during the Summer.

The new house was built of carefully cut rectangles of prairie sod chinked together with mixture of gumbo, which is sticky clay, some straw or prairie grass and water.  It had three rooms.  Most important was the kitchen, crowded with a stove for cooking and heating the home and with a large table and benches.  The table was, I'm sure, the family gathering place.  The other two rooms were bedrooms for sleeping and storing supplies.

A sod house was very warm in winter and cool in the summer.  The sod hut stood for many years after my grandparents died.  I can remember well its whitewashed walls and lovely coolness on hot Summer days as we played inside as Dad farmed the land around it.  Our won home was just about two miles from the original homestead.  The soil in this area tends to be quite sandy and is actually only a few miles from the great sand hills of Saskatchewan, where in the very dry years the contour of the land changes with each windstorm.

These sand hills were the home of the Martin brothers, Bill and Watt and their wives.  The Martins were sheep ranchers and had trained sheepdogs which they often brought to the Calgary Stampede to demonstrate their abilities.  I will talk about the sheep again later.  the Martins were good neighbors and always welcomed families to picnic and pick chokecherries on their land.

In addition to the sod hut, and equally as important, was a garden and, of coarse, a rhubarb patch.  There was one big poplar tree in the yard and I've often wondered whether it was actually planted or perhaps just happened to grow there.  As soon as possible, cows were acquired and some chickens and a pig.  It probably was a year or two before anything could be spared from the barn for the family table.  Every bit of food for the large table had to be prepared from scratch:

1.      --Wheat was ground into flour

2.      --Wheat would be soaked overnight to make the morning porridge.

3.      --Chokecherries and Saskotoons were preserved or dried

4.      --Sauerkraut was made in big crocks.

5.      --Dough foods played a prime part in day to day meal; dumplings, strudel,   perogy, birok, (birok was a kind of dumpling with fried onions inside).  kuchen with cream and fruit filling and a very Romanian dish called plachinda, a type of pastry filled with a sweetened pumpkin filling and my favorite kneffle, little bits of dough boiled then covered with a  sauce made from cream, fried onions and browned bread crumbs.