Gordon Farr

Gordon Thomas Arthur Farr (1943 – 2024) was a kind, caring, and hardworking farmer who loved his family and his farmland.  He was born in Calgary, Alberta on August 31, 1943 to parents, Dorothy (Dolly) and Ellerby Farr.  From a very early age Gord had a passion for crops and agriculture.  After his father passed unexpectedly when Gord was 12 years old, he began farming and was proud to have never missed a year until the day of his passing.  He lived just north of Calgary, Alberta during his youth and eventually bought his own dairy farm (Farrview Farms) west of Didsbury, Alberta in 1971.  Gord was a loving husband to Sandy Farr; a proud father to Dale (Vicky), Gale (Brent), Scott (Mandy), Shawna (Dean), and Darcy (Morgan); and Papa Gord to 7 grandchildren.

Gord always made the most of every day, busy with the hustle and bustle of keeping a family farm thriving with the dairy, grain, pigs, and the occasional batch of chickens. He also custom farmed for many in the community west of Didsbury.  He built a house from the basement up with his wife Sandy, and wore out two pairs of runners shingling the barn (twice).  He could fill a sprayer, change the oil, and get 4 rounds of bales up before he was called in for supper after milking.  Gord was a force of nature for so many years because he was doing what he truly loved, and after they finally sold the dairy in 2009, he could focus on his love of grain farming instead of milking cows twice a day.  We turned around twice and all of a sudden it was over 68 years of tending the land.

Gord was quiet and unassuming, strong, and provided for those he loved.  He was soft spoken and showed his love by showing up when someone needed help or when something needed to be fixed within his family or his community.  When he wasn’t pulling someone’s broken pump from a well or mixing feed for one of the neighbors, he was plowing snow for everyone within 10 miles of the house or pulling a stranger out of the ditch at 2 am after a knock at the door.  Gord also loved his farm equipment!  He was an International Harvester / Case IH man, and “if it wasn’t Red he left it in the Shed”.  He had a small collection of antique tractors which he liked to enter into tractor pulls, and a larger collection of farming equipment to keep him busy where he liked to be best, in the fields.  On one occasion when Sandy went to get her hair done, he dropped her off and drove to the other side of Olds to the local CaseIH dealership where he bought two tractors before she could get a cut and blow-dry.  He didn’t want for much else though, and was content to have his family near him and a few inches of rain.  Up until the very last week before his passing he was checking crops and looking at his weather station.  Gord passed away peacefully at his family home on Tuesday, July 23, 2024.  He will be eternally missed and loved dearly.

“It had to be somebody who’d plow deep and straight and not cut corners, somebody to seed, weed, feed, and rake and disc and plow and plant and strain the milk and replenish the self feeder and finish a hard weeks work, somebody who would bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh and then sigh, and then reply with smiling eyes, when his family says he wants to spend his life doing what a farmer does.”