I'm not trying to find excuses, but I’ve turned into quite the sentimentalist driving along our country roads, just as night begins to settle on cool fall evenings, and I see the lights of your threshers over the horizon, or your well-lighted barns along the way. I can’t help but feeling pride and emotions as I observe the beauty of the country, and imagine the felicity of its inhabitants and I allow myself to appreciate the serenity of the moment.

At such times, I begin an internal discourse with you all. Here we are, you and I, just like old friends, looking to find some sense and have a chat about everything or nothing at all: about the next crop that promises to be average, about the heavy debt load, about WTO negotiations in Hong Kong, where the fate of our agriculture is to be decided, about neighbours thinking of selling their quota, about that disturbed woman terrorizing pork producers in the Haut-Richelieu, about André Boisclair, that overconfident young politician and the next leader of the Parti Québécois, who sees agriculture as a convenient political tool despite his complete lack of understanding of the issues involved.

Once again, I’ve taken up this internal discourse with you when I read the latest book by André Beaudoin, La grosse ferme d’à coté. This time, you are talking to me: about your concerns, but also about the greatness of your chosen employment.

The book may not win any kind of literary prize, because it’s not an action adventure story – no cow gets shot in the head – nor is it a tragic drama – where the wife is cheating on her husband with his best friend. Rather, it’s a touching story depicting a series of still lives about the everyday lives of a farmer and his family. Reading it, you’ll most probably think of the loneliness and the health of the land that stands before you, and you’ll wonder…

The following is a loosely translated excerpt:

Martin [the father] had set his mind on doing the silaging in only two days. With the equipment at hand, that meant three days work crammed into two. He asked Alexander [his young son] to help him, one evening after school.

It had been a long day. It was time to go back. Both tractors turned around tracing a huge loop at the end of the field. They looked like four pupils of light inside a blanket of night carefully enveloping this small parcel of existence.

On this night, inside each cabin are the souls of men illuminated by a new light, happy to be together, at this moment in time. Martin was deeply troubled by the slew of emotions within…

Once in the yard, the lights went off. First the tractors’, then the house, and finally, those of father and son…

This excerpt is sublime by how it expresses the universal pride of seeing a son, a daughter, become interested in the family business. It’s also heavy with meaning, because it could just as easily describe the end of any other day as it could the end of an era…

For professional reasons, I’ll have to take a few months leave from writing this column. I’ll most probably be back early next summer, once I finish my “ploughing” and “seeding” chores. In the meantime, others, younger, perhaps a little crazier, will take over these duties and take you Around the World!