MURAL
Valley Farm Life – Mid 1900’s
The “Valley Farm Life” mural depicts a beautiful day in the farming life of the Fraser Valley during the mid 1900’s. The mural is intended to encompass an era, and spans the decades as well as the growing seasons of spring and summer.
By 1930, Sumas Lake had been drained into the Fraser River and was developed into farmland creating the Vedder and Sumas canals. The 1940’s saw the immigration of foreign landowners starting family farms, including the Dutch/Mennonites, depicted by the girl feeding chickens in her clogs.
The mural was painted as a pastoral: bright and colorful, barefoot children playing, hard-working families farming the land, all in the beautiful Fraser Valley we call home.
The mural begins with a long gravel driveway that lines a strawberry field. A woman is picking berries and pauses in her efforts to make eye-contact with the viewer. Farmhands fill the oxcart and plow the land with their team of draft horses in preparation for a new crop. Mt. Cheam and Mt. Baker make a great backdrop for the many lush crops of that era including hops, raspberries, corn and tobacco.
With a wedge of geese flying overhead, a farm owner enjoys the moment as he leans on an open field gate.
A young boy and girl are fishing in the Sumas canal. The blonde–haired boy, along with his faithful companion, concentrates on his bobber. The water ripples out, as did the concept of the mural, for this was the starting point of the design.
A massive willow tree offers some welcome shade to the girl while two boys scurry up the tree to jump again from the branches into the cool water. A blue Heron flies away to a quieter spot on the canal.
Across the canal on a neighboring farm, the corn is looking good and the tobacco harvest is in full swing. The tobacco is cut and carefully laid on racks to dry in the sun before being loaded onto a large horse drawn wagon. Further away, hay is being piled up around a big red barn. Looking southwards, bulrushes, lily pads and daisies line the calm water surrounding an old wooden rowboat that is tied under a tree. A family of geese feed in the grass of their nesting grounds.
