Winters were always the hardest. The air was cold, the sky was still dark and the rain fell. And I got wet. Some mornings breaking news held up the deliveries. A much younger me was there quietly waiting at the newsagent for the delivery when the news came through that the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up and I received that news before most other people had even woken for that day. Other mornings, I suspect that the printing presses simply broke down. Either way, any delay meant that I was sitting around the local newsagent – reading the latest video game magazines – waiting for the inevitable newspaper supplies so that I could get out on my pushbike and cycle around the suburb delivering the daily newspapers.

As a child it never even concerned me that other children got to sleep in whilst I was traversing the suburb in the early morning delivering newspapers. And back in those days, there used to be an afternoon edition of the newspaper too which had to also be delivered.

Don’t forget the chemist rounds either, where I used to deliver prescription medicines to elderly customers. And on Saturday mornings the chemist staff used to instruct me to burn off all of the cardboard and plastic packaging that they’d accumulated during the week in the incinerator at the back of the shop. Imagine that happening nowadays…

As an interesting side story, one day on the chemist round whilst riding my push bike for a delivery, I hit a particularly nasty hole in the road and one of the prescription medications bounced out of the basket and landed on the road and smashed. Back in those days, chemists used a lot of glass packaging and so the glass bottle smashed all over the road along with an unusual pink coloured liquid spilled which everywhere. Being an idiot, I thought to myself that there is no way I’m putting all that sticky rubbish back into the basket of my pushbike, so I simply (again being a complete idiot) kicked the contents down the nearest drain and that was about where I thought that the matter would end. Au contraire! Upon arrival back at the chemist I naively explained what had happened and then the chemists (note the use of the plural) started grilling me about what had happened, where it happened and was I lying about it. After about a quarter of an hour of that intense grilling, I broke down and burst into tears, and those tears achieved what no amount of truth telling or snivelling could ever have done – they believed my story, which was merely the truth anyway. It never even occurred to me – as a child – that the medications that I was blithely push biking around the suburb had a street value! Who would have thought that? What was even better was that I didn’t lose my job. This was a good thing because Space Invaders was an expensive game to play and without the job, the pinball parlour would be a distant memory, not to mention the fish and chip shop, because with all of that bike riding, I really needed to keep my energy levels up!

Working as a child at that time was not unusual or even noteworthy. Some of my friends did the daily milk deliveries to people’s front doors. Other mates were employed with pamphlet drops, or they worked in the local milk bar. I eventually ended up getting a sweet job working for Tandy Electronics (the now defunct Radio Shack in the US) Friday nights and Saturday mornings and that job was a total blast. One evening the boss made the mistake of allowing me to lock up the shop. That was his mistake, because I invited all of my friends over and we raced the many remote controlled cars up and down the street. Fun times! I didn’t even get sacked for that!

I’ve been thinking about such matters recently because I have noticed that most (but not all) of the visitors to the farm at some point during their visit put on a very serious face and pronounce to me in a doleful tone: “It’s a lot of work”. The actual meaning of that pronouncement is that they themselves could not ever consider undertaking so much physical labour because they clearly don't need to. And that is fair enough because I understand that physical labour is an unpleasant prospect for people who are unused to such things. I also understand that many people in our society consider that those who undertake – even menial – physical labour are low in social status. I disagree with such a perspective, because whilst I would not dispute the fact that as a child I did some idiot like things, as an adult the converse situation now applies and I hold both an under graduate and a post graduate degree and in one compulsory subject at University I actually achieved the top mark and scored a prize. The editor has even more papers and titles than I. Its also a fair thing to say that we're not allergic to hard work.

So, I will tell you a little story about dog food. Long term readers will recall that I bake and cook most of the dog food from scratch. Producing dog food from scratch takes a bit of effort every week of the year, but I cannot understate just how much cheaper it is to make your own dog food. Once I worked out that I was working one month of every year in order to pay for purchased dog food, I thought to myself that I must have regressed back to my childhood status of an idiot.

However, I still purchase the occasional box / bag of dog food for times when I’ve been too busy to attend to the task of cooking / baking the dog food. So this week I noticed that the dog food biscuits which used to be $5.30 for 1kg (that is AU$0.53 per 100g or 3.5oz) now have had the box size reduced to 800g costing $5.00 (that is AU$0.625 per 100g or 3.5oz). Maths is not my strong suit, but an 18% increase doesn’t look very good to me. This means that the home made dog food, despite being what some may consider hard work, has become much more valuable by stealth.

Earlier this week the final two fruit trees were planted. Both of the fruit trees were of a type of citrus trees which produce an excellent quantity of fruit through the winter and are also very heat and drought tolerant. 

The Australian round limes here are almost ready to eat fresh from the tree, and over the next few months there will also be lemons, grapefruit and mandarins. Apart from rhubarb, no other type of plant produces sweet tasting goodies for our breakfasts during the depths of winter.

For the rest of the blog entry click on: http://ferngladefarm.blogspot.com.au/