A Saskatchewan family was forced to bid farewell this weekend to the farm that has been a part of their history for four generations, all so that a new highway could move in.

The Saskatchewan government is building a giant four-lane highway that will skirt around Regina, called the Regina Bypass. The new project is designed to ease traffic congestion and improve road safety, but one of the interchanges just happens to go right through the land that the Burns family has owned since 1882.

The provincial government expropriated the land for the new road, forcing the Burns family to make plans to pack up and leave.

Homeowner Rod Burns says it’s been tough for the family to say goodbye. Their ancestors were among the first wave of settlers into the area and arrived the same summer that Regina was founded.

"Our great-grandfather actually came out here in 1882 and set up a makeshift building,” says Rob Burns. “He went back to Ontario for the winter and came back in the spring and the building he had set up had blown away."

That may be why the farmhouse that Burns’ great-grandfather eventually built was made with concrete walls that are 35 centimetres thick.

But now, everything must be cleared out by the end of the month. The family held a good-bye party and rummage sale over the weekend, where stories were told and a few tears were shed.

"Grew up here, all our family was here our whole lives. It's home,” said an emotional Penny Dufour.

Neighbour Neil Cromarty isn’t hopeful that much will be left of the Burns homestead once the road construction is over.

"Sort of the way the government expropriated the land, you know they're not going to give them any of the old buildings. They're just going to knock everything down,” he said.

The government is in a hurry to get going on the nearly $2-billion bypass project, which was scheduled to start this summer and is already projected to cost $700 million more than expected. That’s even before adding in the costs of buying up thousands of acres of land around the city from landowners such as the Burns.

The Burns are still negotiating their settlement with the government, but given a choice, they say they would have rather kept the land.

The family owns other property in the area but don't know if they will continue to farm. They say they've lost the farm yard and all the buildings and they don't know if it's worth starting over.

With a report from CTV Regina’s Wayne Mantyka