Model farm a highlight of recent North Easthope Antique Tractor Club banquet

Roy Berfeltz is shown with a scale model of the barn his ancestors owned and still farm to this day in Wallace Township of Perth County. Gary West photo

By Gary West

The North Easthope Antique Tractor (NEAT) Club at their recent annual banquet had the opportunity to see an intricate, scale model of a mixed farm and buildings the way they were at the turn of the century. Club member Roy Berfelz, who is now retired and living  in Stonecroft in New Hamburg, has a unique hobby. A few years ago, he endeavoured to recreate the farmstead where his ancestors farmed in Perth County and, at the same time, research his family tree. Berfelz’s family traces back to the Jungblut family in the mid 1800s and, along the way, the J was dropped in favour of a Y to become Yungblut.In order to get to the history of the farm and buildings, Berfelz researched the interesting history of the family.Johannas Jungblut was born Jan. 5, 1849, came to Canada in 1856 from Germany with his parents and settled in Tavistock. He was confirmed in Trinity Lutheran Church, Sebastopol, in 1862 and married Maria Becker of Wilmot Township in 1871. They moved to a 50-acre farm on Concession 10 in Perth County’s Ellice Township.On Jan. 8, 1900, the Yungblut family moved to a 150-acre farm in Wallace Township. They had all their belongings loaded onto sleighs for the trek to Gowanstown but had to reload onto wagons because of the lack of snow that year. The farm remains in the Yungblut family to this day. The barn shown is a scale model of John Jungblut’s barn circa 1867 built from the scaled-down measurements drawn up by Berfelz, who is the great grandson of John Jungblut. He says he had it built by a 14-year-old Mennonite boy from Elmira, who took seven months to build the model shown. Even though this is hard to show in pictures, the barn was one of the largest Barns in Wallace Township around the time of Confederation. At the time, the main barn measured 85 feet by 48 feet by 30 feet high, and a horse barn beside it was 60 feet by 30 feet by 26 feet high. Berfelz said this barn was called a high-end beam barn with the entrance at the end instead of the side, and the barn had squared rafters as opposed to round poles. Also, there was a poured-cement silo with an eight-sided wooden roof in the early 1900s when there were very few silos in Perth County. He said it was one of the few barns that was painted red with a green roof and a white trim in the early 1920s. What is also unique is a litter carrier throughout all of the stables that was used to clean out the manure before the advent of stable cleaners, and they even had another litter carrier coming from the silo in order to feed the cattle corn silage. They are all shown in the model.Due to a lack of electricity, the engine room with a line shaft in the stable was run by a hit-and-miss gas engine, which ran a stable grain grinder, a cream separator, root pulper and table saw as well as other woodworking equipment. A pulley went to the upper story of the barn to run a grain grinder beside the wooden granary, as most farms had back then. All of the above mentioned is shown in the model, which Berfelz is most proud of.With his good nature, he said he would happily invite anyone to come and see his masterpiece depicting what was a modern mixed farm in its day.