Marcus, 52.

Sunrise on the section. Frost on the stubble. The shop door is open and the dog is already out, doing her rounds of the yard. It is, by every visible measure, an ordinary morning in late October.

His phone buzzes. It's his grain broker in Calgary. The Port of Vancouver — where roughly eighty percent of Marcus's wheat moves through — is in British Columbia, which is still in Canada. They need to talk about export documentation. Soon.

His combine is a John Deere S780. The parts depot is in Regina. The dealer mechanic is in Swift Current. Both are now in Canada. The mechanic, who is a friend, sent him a text last night that just said: "call me before you order anything."

Coffee with his wife Janelle at the kitchen table. She runs the books. She has a spreadsheet open. The new tariff schedule — if there is one, and there will be one — is unknown. She is making three columns: best case, middle case, worst case. The middle case is bad.

His property taxes might go down. The federal carbon tax is gone. Those are real. He writes both on the back of an envelope, in pencil, and stares at them. He's trying to be fair to the case he voted for.

At ten he drives into Lethbridge to see his accountant. The waiting room is full of farmers he knows. Nobody is making jokes. The accountant tells him, gently, that he should not make any decisions about spring planting for at least sixty days.

On the drive home he passes the grain elevator at Coalhurst. Two CN cars are sitting on the siding, the way they always are. He realizes he doesn't know who owns the rail line now. CN is federal. He'll have to ask somebody.

He stands at the edge of the south quarter at dusk. The land does what land does. He is the third generation to stand here at the end of October and worry about next spring, but he is the first to do it from a different country than the one his grain is shipped to.