Deep Furrows

Produced by Al Haines
Which Tells of Pioneer Trails Along Which the Farmers of Western Canada Fought Their Way to Great Achievements in Co-Operation
GEORGE J. McLEOD, LIMITED
BY GEORGE J. McLEOD, LIMITED
Foreword I The Man on the Qu'Appelle Trail II A Call to Arms III The First Shot is Fired IV That Man Partridge! V The House With the Closed Shutters VI On a Card in the Window of Wilson's Old Store VII A Fight for Life VIII A Knock on the Door IX The Grain Exchange Again X Printers' Ink XI From the Red River Valley to the Foothills XII The Showdown XIII The Mysterious Mr. Observer XIV The Internal Elevator Campaign XV Concerning the Terminals XVI The Grip of the Pit XVII New Furrows XVIII A Final Test XIX Meanwhile, in Saskatchewan XX What Happened in Alberta XXI In the Drag of the Harrows XXII The Width of the Field XXIII The Depth of the Furrows XXIV And the End is Not Yet Appendix
Once in awhile, maybe, twenty-five or thirty years ago, they used to pack you off during the holidays for a visit on Somebody's Farm. Have you forgotten? You went with your little round head close clipped till all the scar places showed white and you came back with a mat of sunbleached hair, your face and hands and legs brown as a nut.
Probably you treasure recollections of those boyhood days when a raw field turnip, peeled with a toad-stabber, was mighty good eatin'. You remember the cows and chickens, the horses, pigs and sheep, the old corn-crib where generally you could scare up a chipmunk, the gnarled old orchard—the Eastern rail-fenced farm of a hundred-acres-or-so. You remember Wilson's Emporium at the Corners where you went for the mail—the place where the overalled legs of the whole community drummed idly against the cracker boxes and where dried prunes, acquired with due caution, furnished the juvenile substitute for a chew of tobacco!
Or perhaps you did not know even this much about country life—you of the Big Cities. To you, it may be, the Farmer has been little more than the caricatures of the theatres. You have seen him wearing blue jeans or a long linen duster in The Old Homestead, wiping his eyes with a big red bandana from his hip pocket. You have seen him dance eccentric steps in wrinkled cowhide boots, his hands beneath flapping coat-tails, his chewing jaws constantly moving the little bunch of spinach on his chin! You have heard him fiddle away like two-sixty at Pop Goes the Weasel! You have grinned while he sang through his nose about the great big hat with the great big brim, All Ba-ound Ra-ound With a Woolen String!