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     Our family (Mom, Dad, & 3 kids) arrived in Neudorf from The Netherlands on Halloween 1953.  I was almost 6 years old at the time.  Dad was sponsored by Jim McLeod to work as a farm hand on the farm which I was to learn, about 40 years later, had been the village of Hyde. 

     We lived in the huge house which could well have been a hotel or the manor house in its heyday.  The house had a grand wooden staircase to the upstairs as well as a brick fireplace in the front entry room which could well have served as a great room or hotel lobby.  This room could also be divided by hanging and folding wooden panels.

    Upstairs to the best of my memory were 5 rooms as well as a bathroom with a claw foot bathtub but no toilet, we still used the old outhouse at that time.  Also, I don't recall having running water although, there was a boiler and cistern in the basement.  There were also steam heat radiators throughout the place.  As the house was so large, we never used more than the main floor and we kept that area heated with a coal stove.  One of the upstairs rooms also had a huge foot pumped organ in it, at least it looked huge to us kids!

     Our fresh water supply came from a spring about 50 yards to the west of the house and it bubbled up out of the ground not more than several hundred yards upstream from there.  Someone had built a wooden catch basin in which we could dip our pails.  The spring was fresh and cool enough that we also used the catch basin as a place to store our eggs, milk and butter.
Scattered around the property were several other buildings.  To the west of the barn was a building which sat on a walkout basement as did the barn.  This building could well have been a bunkhouse as there was a cookstove on the ground floor which Dad used for deep frying our Christmas olliebollen.  The walkout basement was used as a chicken coop.  This building and the barn were built into a slope, hence the walkout basements for both.  The cattle could be walked into what could be considered the basement of the barn and the hayrack could be backed right into the hayloft at ground level above, where it was unloaded by a system of pulleys and ropes.

     There were also several machinery sheds on the property, as well as some smaller outbuildings.  There was also a smokehouse out back and I remember hosting community slaughtering and sausage making bees.

    The railroad water pumping station was located just a short distance to the east of the farm and at the time was manned by Andy Reid who lived there with his wife "Tiny".  They were our first neighbours in Canada and were a godsend to our new immigrant family.  Regrettably, Andy passed away several years later and Tiny left the valley.  I last visited Neudorf in '96 and noted that Andy and Tiny rest beside each other in the Neudorf cemetery.  The dam which contained the water for the pump station had a fish ladder and I do recall the odd local coming around and sticking a dip net into it, making for some very successful fishing.

    My older brother and I attended LeCain school.  LeCain school was located on the south side of the valley on top of the hill.  Although we did bicycle and walk to school, we were again blessed with a neighbour (Rathgeber I believe was the name) who frequently drove his children to school and would also give us a ride.  My brother attended school almost immediately and I had to wait until the fall of '54, neither one of us could speak a word of English.  I do recall practicing my English by reading dirty words off the outhouse walls and getting the strap for it because somebody ratted me out.  The schoolhouse was sold and is now a cabin on one of the valley lakes.

     We moved away from there to Alberta in the spring of '56 and are now scattered around that province.
                        by Henry Middelhoek-  henrymiddelhoek@yahoo.ca