Roscoe Grant is 97 years old but wouldn’t dream of retiring.
He tried once already, but a life of leisure didn’t suit the Alberta farmer.
“I love this life,” he told CTV Edmonton on his farm south-east of Wetaskiwin. “I like the independence. I like the lifestyle. I like to be with nature.”
He still works 10-hour days “no problem,” his son Neil said. “Dad was born to be a farmer.”
When Neil’s children got old enough to take over some of their grandfather’s work, Roscoe briefly retired. But the lifestyle change was too much for the man.
“He kind of felt left out,” said Neil. “He was just going stir crazy.”
The land has been in the Grant family for six generations. When Roscoe was a young man, he pursued other work, but eventually came back to the farm. It’s where he belonged, he said. He couldn’t let go of his decades of farming, so when he came back from the brief retirement, they bought a second combine so Roscoe could work alongside his son and grandson Jarvis.
“I can’t get out of bed that well in the morning let alone – imagine being 97 crawling down combine steps like that,” said Jarvis. “He’s a young man at heart. He’ll just keep going until he can’t.”
That’s his advice to others ageing – to keep going past retirement age. “Don’t retire,” he said. “You’ve got to have something to do after retirement.”
With a report from CTV Edmonton’s Amanda Anderson
