A prairie homestead — complete with general store, houses, a barn, a chicken coop, and even an outhouse — has sprung up in Ashcroft, thanks to the imagination and creativity of a resident of Thompson View Lodge.
Ida Cumming, 91, has only lived at the Lodge for four months, but she has deep roots in Ashcroft. She first came to the town in 1949 and was here for two years, marrying Terry Cumming, grandson of longtime Journal owner and editor R.D. Cumming; she recalls coming down to the Journal office and helping out by folding the papers.
Terry had a road construction business and the couple built a house at 16 Mile, where they lived for 50 years; then they moved to Kamloops, where Terry passed away in 2012.
Ida grew up in Saskatchewan, where her musically-inclined father taught all his children to sing and play instruments. “He was a natural-born musician,” says Ida. “It was a natural part of our upbringing, because we had no radio.”
Her father was also a blaster and driller, and the family spent some time in Wells, B.C. before moving to Vancouver Island in 1945. Ida recalls one of their neighbours, a boy who was a year younger than her.
“He lived down the street, but I didn’t know him from a hole in the ground. One day, when I was nine, he came over and asked if we could go rafting together. Afterwards we were sitting under a tree, and we strung some wires across an old apple box and pretended it was a guitar.”
The boy was Ian Tyson. “We became good friends; then he and his dad took off to the Cariboo and I never saw him again. I’m happy he did well in the music business; he was a really nice fella.”
Ida describes herself as someone who has been a “crafty” person all her life. “I could never sit still, and to this day I have a hard time with it. My mom taught me how to sew, and I don’t use patterns, but I made all my children’s wedding and grad clothes. I also do baby clothes; I have 11 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. I’ve done knitting and crocheting, but I didn’t like that as much.”
She was looking for something to do at the Lodge (“I don’t watch TV”) and hit on the idea of crafting a prairie homestead based on memories of her youth.
“I started building a barn and it took off from there. It was the barn as I remembered it, and the little village that was four miles away. No one lived close by, but everyone helped everyone.”
She admits that she didn’t know what she was doing at first, but one thing followed another, and a month later she had her prairie homestead. A doctor’s office sits beside IDA’S Pharmacy (which is also a general store and a hardware store), where a guitar-playing cow sits outside. A dog plays in the yard outside one house, clothing is strung up on a line near another, and a chicken sits outside a hen house. A Model T car drives past a bucket hanging over a well, and a pig and cow play outside a barn.
“The log house was the hardest to do; the logs kept rolling,” she confesses. “I was going to make a horse as well, but it didn’t look too good.
“I enjoyed every part of it, though. It was fun to do things like the clothesline. Every house had a clothesline, and we had diapers on ours every day.”
She had some help from a couple of other people at Thompson View Lodge, and she has nothing but praise for her neighbours.
“They’re good people in here; they’re kind and caring. I like people, as a rule. I don’t find a reason to dislike people unless they do something I don’t like.”
She adds that it’s important for people to keep active as they grow older. “I think older people, if given the chance, would do things. You can’t just stop and sit in chairs.”
Now that the homestead is complete, Ida says she has to come up with a new project.
“I have a new great-granddaughter coming, so I have to start making baby clothes. And I get the urge to write every now and then. I got into writing for a while, and I might write another book. My mind just takes right off, and there’s always something to do.”
