A milestone in farming in the Lang area was celebrated along with the town's Homecoming 2000 event over the weekend.

The Kerr farm was awarded the Century Farm Family Award by Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food on Saturday, with the yard sign presented to Garth and Doris Kerr and their family.

In speaking for the Kerr family at the presentation held in the Lang Community Hall, Gary Kerr said this award fit in well with the Homecoming theme.

"It seemed like a very fitting gesture to do this at this time when all these people are back home. Everybody in this room is a descendant of the pioneers who came here, so in a way this recognizes all these people as well as the early pioneers," he said.

Garth's father, Colin, homesteaded the land and filed the papers in October of 1900. He came here from Owen Sound, Ont., after first arriving at Indian Head in 1897. He was too young at the time to take up a homestead, so he returned east for a year before coming back to Saskatchewan.

He married Zella Barker in 1905, and they had three sections of land, with a half-section of land for each of their four sons and a full section for themselves. After Colin died suddenly in 1929, the oldest son, Ralston, took the farm over until the late 1940s. Garth, who was married to Doris in 1942, began farming after serving in the air force during the Second World War.

The three-storey farm house, which still stands today, was built in 1911-12 for $9,000.

According to the Lang history book, Lang Syne, Colin was well-known in his day for horse-racing, travelling the circuit for harness races at Weyburn, Regina, Dummer, Parry, Ogema, Milestone, Yellow Grass and Lang. His prize horse was Tony, and he only lost one race when the wheel on his sulky broke.

The early days were hard ones on the land, said Doris at the award presentation, noting the land had to be broken by horse. Ralston took the farm over at the time the Great Depression and the dust bowl of the Dirty Thirties began.

Zella and her four boys were able to keep their land through all of that, without having to go through the Debt Adjustment Board. In the 1940s Ralston ran the biggest mink and fox farm in Saskatchewan on the farm. He ran this farm for about 10 years before moving it to the west coast, where he continued until his death in 1976.

Garth's other two brothers, Merne and Jim, both farmed on their own; Merne passed away in 1961, and Jim moved to farm in the Yellow Grass area where he built the first locker plant in that area.

Garth and Doris have three children, Gary, Terri Lynn and Cathy. They will celebrate their 58th wedding anniversary on July 28.