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I
54 THE RURAL VOICE
Book Review
Tales from the country
REVIEWED BY KEITH
ROULSTON
While thousands of rural young
people leave the farm for jobs in the
city every year, a smaller, but
dedicated group of people reverses
the direction of the flow, leaving
city life for the country. Marsha
Boulton was one of those, and
she has used her writing skills to �'rl
educate the urban friends she
left behind to a little of
country life.
Boulton led a heady life
in Toronto 15 years ago.
As editor of the People
section in Maclean's
magazine, she got to rub
shoulders with the
cream of society and
the stars of the arts and
entertainment world. But she gave it
up for the world of sheep and cattle
and horses on a Mount Forest -area
farm. Well, not everything. Her ties
to the media world in Toronto helped
persuade CBC Radio to have her tell
her stories of rural life, first on the
weekday afternoon program Later
The Same Day and more recently on
Fresh Air. Much of the book is a
collection of pieces she wrote for
those programs.
Written as they are for mostly
urban consumption, it's hard to know
just how the book will be received by
farm audiences. Most rural readers
will probably enjoy the anecdotes
about using roosters to catch worm
pickers illegally poaching night
crawlers or the scheme of her stock-
broker friend to make a fortune off
farming, but some will worry that
Boulton isn't portraying the true
commercial farm of today to her
urban readers. After all, former
urbanites who now raise sheep will
always be regarded with skepticism
by "real" farmers.
But anyone who gives the book a
chance will find some fun moments,
and a few that are moving. Anyone
(like me) who has ever been involved
in a plan to grow cucumbers for
dancing in her head, she plants two
and a half acres of cucumbers in her
first year on the farm. After months
of planting, weeding and picking and
trucking the cukes off to Teeswater,
she still has more than she can sell
and gives them away. In the end she
realizes a total profit of $23.16 —
and gets a valuable lesson in
the economics of
food production.
Many farm people
will nod in recognition
at some of the
experiences Boulton
portrays, such as the
early -morning, pajama -
clad chase to get livestock
out of the flower bed (The
Soaking Baby -Doll Defence)
or the problem of going to the
beach when your tan marks you
unmistakably as a farmer (The
Farmer Gets a Tan). Owners of farm
homes will see themselves in stories
about combatting cluster flies (Fly
Wars) or stripping woodwork
(Wainscoting of Many Colours).
There are tributes to some of the
small pleasures of rural life, like
Santa Claus parades (Santa Claus is
Coming To Town) and the local
village (The Humps of Holstein).
Urbanites, indeed, might be put
off by just how countrified Boulton
has become. Tales of her taking up
hunting (A Hunting She Will Go) and
the difficulty of plucking and
cleaning a duck (Glasnost Can be
Ducky) aren't likely to be pleasant
reminders of the life -and -death
country world.
Mostly the book is another
addition to the grand old country art
of story telling. There are some
larger than life tales (Elwood's
UFOs) and some good tales like
selling a lamb of questionable sex
for a premium price (Winners,
Losers and llermaphrodites). The
book is rounded off by a touching
tribute to the loss of a majestic maple
tree in the last story, Maple
Memories.0
Letters From The Country by
Marsha Boulton, 247 pages,
paperback. Published by Little,
Brown Canada, $14.95.
profit (but definitely not fun) will
enjoy The Pickle Summer where,
with visions of $2,000 an acre profits