More Letters from the Country - Softcover

When Letters from the Country was awarded the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour one of my neighbours told me not to let it go to my head.

"After all," she said, "didn't they give a pig named Babe an Academy Award?"

Living in the country helps you keep your sense of things straight. Later, when I was signing books at my local Stedmans store during the height of the 1996 Summer Olympics I let a boy of about eleven years hold the solid-silver Leacock Medal. He began tossing it casually in the air to feel its weight. When he palmed it back to me, he said, "Gee, just think, if you'd swum faster, you would have got gold."

Humor is the observation of an unprejudiced heart. It does not hit you in the face like a cream pie. It reveals itself in tickles of irony stroked by insight. Stephen Leacock himself suggested that might be "the mingled heritage of tears and laughter that is our common lot on earth." I could not agree more. Mr. Leacock also fancied himself a farmer. He once tried raising turkeys on linoleum to solve the problem of cleaning mucky pens. Say no more.

More Letters from the Country is not what you would call an original title, but that is exactly what this collection represents. I hope it gives reviewers something to comment upon without confusing readers with something that it is not. When nature and human nature synthesize, there are bound to be stories. The farm and its community are constant sources of inspiration and pathos.

Since the publication Letters from the Country, I have met many urbanites who are considering a rural transition. Some are serious about farming; others just want to enjoy the crunch of their own organic carrots and the crow of a rooster in the morning. I see myself in their enthusiasm, and I know that their dreams are not for tempering. They tell me that they understand it will not be easy and they are ready for hard work.

Inevitably, I discover that they all have some ambitious self-portrait that forms a sentimental painting in their heads of what country life will be like. It could be a family scene straight out of television's The Waltons. It could be a James Herriott-type Hallmark greeting card. It could even be a virtual reality hologram of standing at the manger on Christmas Eve in a moment of pure contentment. I know where they are coming from, having conjured such images myself and discovered that they can find form.

No doubt, they will encounter the inevitable tragedy that accompanies animal husbandry, and the vexing variables of weather and other weevils, but I admire their spirit of adventure. Their neighbours will be watching, as country neighbours do. Hopefully, they will find in their community as generous a spirit as I have found in my mine. Hopefully, they will learn from their mistakes and hold steady to the positive.

Country life is not for everyone. For that matter, most of us will never spend a summer in the south of France, but we enjoy reading about what it might be like. I have met many people who are perfectly content to maintain an armchair-reader's distance from stupid sheep tricks and the travails of haying or the physicality of barnyard midwifery. There are times when I wish I could join them.

Farmers, real farmers, present and past have a natural suspicion of any outsider who attempts to translate their world. Too often, they are portrayed as "complainers." On April 3, 1979, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau said of farmers: "When there is too much sun, they complain. When there is too much rain, they complain. A farmer is a complainer." Well, Mr. Trudeau lost that election but he remained well fed by the complainers, as did the nation.

Today's farmers, male and female, must contend with environmental issues and global marketplaces, along with local politics and straightening the blade on the plough. One hundred fertile acres cannot be guaranteed to provide for a family as they once did. Even with specialization and genetic manipulation and irradiation, there are no guarantees. Panaceas and technology cannot replace the instinct of farmers.

Instead of a mixture of livestock and crops, all of the eggs tend to be placed in one basket and scrambled into something that barely resembles real food. Instead of being a place of purity, chemical residue and pollution put farmers in a battle against the very land they live on. Instead of passing from one generation to another, the farm is often passed to the bank.

So, I have been pleased when farmers tell me that my stories put them to sleep at night. This might not seem like the accolade most writers would treasure. However, when you know how hard farmers work in a day and the stresses they are under, it is a great compliment to be granted any moment of their time.

I was speaking to a businesswomen's gathering and I met a spunky senior entrepreneur.

"I was you forty years ago," she said. "A city girl all my life until I married a farmer. I did all the dumb things you did and I'm glad I did them, too."

She went on to tell me about her first farm garden. Like me, she planted every seed she could lay her hands on and waited to see what would happen. But when it came time to harvest her turnips, she hid them from her new mate.

"I thought I'd done something terribly wrong," she confided. "My turnips were nice and round, but they didn't have a lick of wax on them."

I have heard many such stories since then. They include the one about the fat lady who got stuck in the outhouse with the beehive. Sometimes there really is nothing more to say.

In the best-selling Stephen Leacock Award-winner, Letters from the Country, Marsha Boulton took us on a joyful romp through the country, introducing us to rampant pickles, wayward sheep and just slightly eccentric neighbors. Now Marsha Boulton is back with More Letters from the Country, an entirely new collection of heartwarming and lighthearted tales of life in the country. What happens when a city woman trades in her high heels for sheep manure and a pitchfork? As Marsha Boulton tells it, anything can and does happen to this transplanted shepherdess from the city.