I Married a Farmer’s Son….
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Today is National Ag day.. and Chooky challenged us to do a post about it to show our support for our farmers… I’m only too happy to do that!
Chooky asked:
what does agriculture mean to you………
what memories/connections do you have………..
Living in an apartment in Arabia is a far cry from the way I grew up… and especially from the way DH grew up…
I grew up in suburbia, in 5 different countries… always in a house… with a garden of some sort. Sometimes with a veggie garden, sometimes with chooks… never in the middle of a city like we do now.
DH grew up in a small country town called Edenhope, close to the South Australian border. He was a farmer’s son…. but much to my dismay, he was determined not to become a farmer.. he had seen how tough the life was first hand.
One year we visited one of the farms where he grew up… the house now sadly abandoned…
He and his mum reminisced about when they lived there… of course back then it was spotless, that’s just how my DMIL is… she used to cook for the shearers, the kids took turns milking the cow… and then there was the story of the feral rooster…. 🙂
While we never “farmed” when we lived in Australia, we always tried to live as far away from the city as we could. It meant more of a commute for DH, but we both love the country life. We lived in several places with acreage, one of them was just around the corner from Shez’s house, but sadly I didn’t know her then!
Most of our houses were smaller than the shed… because all Aussie boys (especially farm boys) need a shed, right?!
But I didn’t mind. I loved growing veggies, preserving, having chooks… even had fun putting some duck eggs under a chook one year..
Poor mum was a bit frantic about her babies wanting to go for a swim in the dam… 🙂
DH’s parents were still on the farm when we got married. We would take the kids down to see them and let them experience a bit of real farm life…
And in our local community we would help some of the “real” farmers bring the hay in, or feed the cattle… meet Lucy our neighbour’s milk cow (I made butter from her cream quite a few times!)
Although we never farmed ourselves, we made sure our children knew where their food was coming from. Most of the lamb on our table came from Grandpa’s meat house… if we didn’t have our own eggs, I would buy from neighboring farms…
I could never quite get used to killing the lambs we bottle raised though.. so in that sense I would be a terrible farmer’s wife…
Farmers have to face so may extremes.. droughts… floods…
Fires…
And yet we need them more than ever.
Here’s to farmers in Australia and all over the world….
Thank you for working hard to put food on our tables…
Hi Joy this is a great post,yes we would all be in trouble if we lost our farmers,we would be getting our food from places like China and Thailand,not good.
I think the goverment need to look after our farmers as they face big battles on their land day in and day out,thankyou for this wonderful post my friend xx
Great post Joy, I have yet to take up Chooky’s challenge, but thinking about it, when I finish this quilt that has been on for toooo long!
Lovely to read a bit more about you and see the pictures…. some great memories and lovely to be in touch with the land…
Hugz
Great post Joy. Brought back memories of being a country girl. So miss that even after 30 odd years. Would love to move back to a country area. Hugs, xx
Great Post Joy – I couldn’t bear to eat the animals I had raised – I would be a terrible farmers wife too – love my modern conveniences far too much and I couldn’t live in the country – not in AU – maybe in England where it is green!
I always wanted to be a farmer’s wife, but maybe it would have to be more on the agronomy side, as in orchards/veg/grain etc. I still grow some veg & of course you know about me and animals!! Thanks for the great post. Take care.
I didn’t realise there was such a thing as National Ag day, even though I grew up on several farms in Padthaway and schooled in Naracoorte. An Edenhope boy should know where those places are! Isn’t the world such a small place?! And to think that you were in Arabia when I “met” you. Oh that poor chicken…. how very confused she must have been about her chicks unnatural tendencies!! hahaha I have very fond memories of hand raising orphan calves, roustabouting in the shearing shed, drenching, putting out hay…. it’s all so more romantic now that we are not doing it of course. I had always assumed that my kids would get to do some of this too, and it is one of my few regrets that my family has no farming connections anymore.