“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

– Socrates, Ancient Athenian philosopher

“There was something about the way he spoke, the words he chose – each brushed with an insight, coloured with a wisdom beyond simple learning. He knew it was going to rain before the man on the radio did, how long and hot the day would be, whether to cover the cucumbers or not. Dad told me the roots of the old country ran deep in Grandfather. There were secrets the ‘old ways’ had revealed to him. I began watching and listening more carefully.”

It was 1988 and I was sharing with my writers’ group the first in a series of farm-related stories I had been commissioned to write for the Western Producer farm paper. When I finished t...

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