On behalf of the Dauphin Agricultural Heritage Club, Dennis Forbes, left, accepts the Ron Brook Memorial Award from Jim Kaleta at Dauphin Agricultural Society’s Farm Outlook 2022, Mar. 10. In presenting the award last Thursday, Kaleta told the crowd the club was formed in 1995 when a group of like-minded people met around a kitchen table.

The mission of the group is to promote and showcase early agricultural practices by showing and operating equipment such as steel wheel tractors, one and two cylinder tractors, threshing machines, plows, cultivators, harrows and seed drills. The group shares its passion at events such as the ag society’s annual fair and parade, the Parkland Chamber of Commerce Street Fair, Canada’s National Ukrainian Festival parade, on site at Selo Ukraina and Mossey River Days, as well as the group’s own Threshing Day each fall. 

Forbes indicated what an honour it is for the group to receive the award. “It’s not something that we ever thought we would be in the running for,” he said. “We’re just a group of fellows that enjoy playing with vintage equipment.

But yes, we do, throughout the course of a normal year, promote the technology that’s evolved through the years in agriculture. We’re looking forward to resuming our activities on an annual basis. I’m not going to say we’ll be as active as we have been in the past, but there’s going to be three or four shows that we will attend, the fair being one of them and our annual Threshing Day.”

At this point Threshing Day will be held this fall. “We’re not sure what date, it depends on when the crop ripens, at the same location we held last time. We’re able to do that because that land has been purchased by the Marzyk family and they approached us and said that they would continue to supply us with an acreage of wheat to harvest for our show,” Forbes said. “At this point I’m taking this opportunity to thank Marzyks publicly for everything that they’re doing for us.”