So Long Saskatchewan

Five hundred acres, fence and cattle guards
A combine and a bailer, a windmill and a barn
Driving up the home road for the last time
Trying not to look back and trying not to cry
Turn off the gravel at the school bus stop
Twenty-nine fence posts to the mailbox
A few miles of range road and a little prairie town
I used to know everybody here but there’s no one left around
So long Saskatchewan they’re tearing the elevators down
So long Saskatchewan they’re pulling the stakes out of the ground
Farm for sale forward my mail, so long Saskatchewan
Pier twenty-one in Halifax port
Father’s own father first came ashore
A Westbound arrival with a ticket in his hand
A C.P.R. handbill advertising farm land
At the station in Weyburn first blizzard storm
The love of a young bride burning warm
They built a life out on the land and they broke the ground
It’s a good thing they’re not here today to see it now
I’ll miss the railroad line
West to Saskatoon
Counting the hopper cars
When the grain trains roll through
Gophers in the back field where the Caragana grew
And a rusty old Moline down by the slough
Red-tailed hawk and barbed wire, silos in a row
And so I bid farewell to the land that I have known