Your great neighbour deserves a prize

You still have two weeks to enter the Grainews Great Farm Neighbour contest. The deadline is March 31. E-mail your entries to me. My address is at the Grainews home page under the "contacts" link. We’ve had a few entries, and I’d like to share a couple of them with you.

Allan Enden of the Broderick area near Outlook, Sask., nominated Lyle Derdall. Allan says, “Lyle runs a small farm himself, but people call on him all the time and he’s always there to help. He’s so handy at anything mechanical. There used to be a time when you would drop everything to help a neighbour. Lyle still lives by this principle. If anyone deserves this award, it’s Lyle.”

Helen Wiebe of Portage la Prairie, Man., nominated her neighbour Onalee Wright. Helen writes, “I’ve often observed Onalee's care for others. She was the one to call to arrange for neighbourhood gifts for newlyweds or for those moving away. She is often serving at showers for brides or babies, and at funerals and other community events. I'll always remember how, for five or six years running, she would arrive at my house with enough warm apple pies to feed my potato harvest crew! This happened in spite of the fact that she was a very busy hands-on farm wife involved in a dairy operation. Perhaps my greatest admiration for Onalee is the fact that three of her closest neighbours are her three sons. From my vantage point, Onalee is both an appreciated friend and neighbour to her daughters-in-law and a beloved grandma!”

Do you have a great neighbour you’d like to nominate? E-mail or mail your entries to me at the address to the left. Include your name, your neighbour’s name, and two or three sentences to describe why your neighbour is so great. I will print some of them in the paper, and pick one entry to win a prize. We’ll give you and your neighbour each a one-year subscription to Grainews, we’ll give you a copy of Elaine Froese’s book, Planting the Seeds of Hope, plus $100 so you can take your neighbour out to dinner somewhere in your area. The entry deadline is March 31.