Sask. farmer trying to sell or donate town’s grain elevator to avoid demolition

Another small Saskatchewan town’s classic symbol of prairie life is in peril, but the owners are doing what they can to keep it standing.

The grain elevator in Raymore, Saskatchewan, about 115 kilometres north of Regina, was built in the 1960s to support local farmers. By 2006, it was no longer in service and a local farmer bought it as a storage space.

Twenty years later, Duane Kirstein says he can’t keep up with the maintenance, so he’s put it up for sale.

“We’ve offered it to the town and they don’t want it,” Kirstein said. “We’ve got a couple commercial people interested. Other than that, we’ve talked about maybe listing it with a real estate company, but I don’t know what it’s going to be like to move it.… they’re kind of a thing of the past.”

Kirstein says his farm doesn’t have much use for the building anymore, but a lot of money went into fixing it up — the roofing was redone, and almost $50,000 was spent repainting part of the structure.

“It’s just my son and I now, and it takes us over an hour to leave the farm here with a set of super-Bs, go to town, dump and come back,” he said. “And I built some new bins in the yard here this year.… if you take tougher grain, there’s no way to dry it in the elevator in town. So it’s just logistics, and it’s just time to move on.”

If he can’t find a buyer, he’ll have to pay for the elevator to be demolished, because it sits on leased Canadian National Railway property. With no interest from the town, he’d even be willing to donate it to a historical society, Kirstein said.

“It’s actually in really good shape. Like we’ve put a lot of money into it over the years, like trying to keep it up, and it’s a pretty good-sized one. It holds in between that 180,000 to 200,000 bushels of grain.”

Landmark of the past

Dianne Eckel, secretary treasurer of the Raymore Pioneer Museum, said the building has real historical significance to the town.

“It’ll be sad to see it go because then that’ll be all of them gone,” Eckel said. 

“But we’ve got Bunge, it’s west of Raymore now. So when you go through towns now where the elevators are gone, the horizon looks different and everything. I just find that it’s sad that everything’s going so big, and they’re losing the history of your Saskatchewan pool. It was to help the farmers and now your big companies are just more for themselves.”

Eckel referenced From Prairie Wool to Golden Grain, the Raymore and district history book documenting the period from 1904 to 1979.

“The first one was built in [1923], and it was torn down in ’62 to make room for a 50,000-bushel elevator, a Saskatchewan Wheat Pool. It was built at the cost of $55,633, and it had electric power, an electric hoist and a 20-ton scale.”

Eckel said her father and her husband were farmers who frequented the elevator, giving her a personal connection to the landmark.

“It’ll just be sad to see it go, especially for the older people. The younger ones, I mean, it doesn’t have the same meaning to them,” she said.

“I’m thinking of Punnichy. When their last one went down, you always used to come over the hill and the elevator was there. And with it gone, now you come over the hill and it’s just another town.”