There are few legacies as powerful and enduring as the one Alf Bexfield left to his family – and everyone with a passion for farming, innovation and growth. For over a century, he sowed and harvested the seeds of change, leaving our world a far better place when he passed on at the age of 101.
In celebration of what would have been his 102nd birthday, it’s a pleasure and privilege to add Alf’s story (originally published in the November 2012 Issue of the Wild River Review) to our Edible Legacies archives:
“It is unlikely that any generation in history has seen the changes that my generation has. I can vividly remember my dad, James Scarlet Bexfield, driving oxen – and here we are today with everything computerized and able to put a man on the moon. What a change in one man’s lifetime!”
At nearly 100 years old, Alf Bexfield is a vigorous man with a farmer’s strong hands, a twinkle in his blue eyes and a raconteur’s lilt in his voice. It’s not surprising that he seems to love music as much as farming – and that the down-home twang of Alf’s banjo has accompanied a long lifetime of adventures.
When you listen to Alf tell his stories, you realize how long a century truly is. Over ten of the most vibrant decades in North America’s history, Alf has witnessed the extraordinary journey from homesteads, covered wagons and living-off-the-land to a tech-savvy society charged by the superpowers of computers, cell phones and corporate-owned mega-farms.
Edible Legacies 