Sunshine and Snow by Harold Bindloss

Arthur Gordon built his homestead on the Assiniboian prairie, mostly of slender birch-logs and sods, because he was too wise to waste what money he had left on sawn timber. He also built a sod stable and barn; and being clever enough to realise how little he knew, which some men as well as boys are not, hired a grim old Scotchman, Peter Mackenzie, to advise and help him. Meantime he bought two big working oxen, a few cattle, a team of horses, a heavy breaker-plough to rip up the matted sod, harrows, a light waggon, and a seeder to sow the grain, besides a binder which would both cut and tie the sheaves. Then finding he had very little money left, he at once proceeded to plough for his first crop, while Charley always remembered the day they drove the first furrow.

There was a straggling wood of slender birches behind them, a clear blue sky above, and on every other side a great white waste of grass dotted by sloos, or lakes of melted snow, which would dry up in summer. Still, a breadth of yellow stubble ran across it where another man had raised a crop. They slept in the barn because the house was not finished yet, and Charley, whose clothes now showed more than signs of wear, was lighting fires with a bundle of old newspapers among the stubble. The warm wind caught them, and with a loud crackling a red blaze raced across one part of it, while he ran to and fro lighting those which had gone out again, until he was sooty all over. Next he led his brother's oxen, tapping them with a stick, while Arthur laughed when the heavy breaker-plough which tore a long furrow through the snow-bleached sod zig-zagged awkwardly, or the oxen stopped dead as its share struck some soil still frozen beneath the surface.