High Stakes / 2016

High Stakes / 2016

ism Bill McBride

Trains don’t stop any more at Matfield Station, that is, not for loading and unloading cattle. The redundant stockyard is severely hit by a big prairie fire. Most horizontal beams are barely supported. Matfield green turned into a ghost town. Gambled and lost? Or, the old workers houses are restored, a new barnhouse off the grid, some artists move into the area, alternative agricultural experiments, ….

‘Hedgerow’ trees, non-native to the praire, were cut and ‘skinned’, balancing graphs on burned posts turning in the almost always strong winds.