Simon is the youngest of four brothers. He is smart and inquisitive, and a bit of a daydreamer. These are all admirable qualities in a boy, but when you grow up on a busy farm in the 1930s, they have a tendency to get in the way of what's important there: hard work. Old Simon, looking back, has not lost any of the knowledge he acquired working the land with his father and his brothers, even though his future took him away from farming as a career. Both versions of the same person have stories to tell, be they small anecdotes, vignettes of the strange and interesting characters a person comes across in the course of their life, or detailed descriptions of farming methods and a way of life which no longer exist, but need to be remembered.