Where the people live

Daphne Lowth

Chapter Two - Surviving on the Farm

Mum and dad worked hard on the farm. They had cows to milk night and morning. The milk was separated using a small hand turned cast iron machine that, on top, had a large bowl for the milk. Below the milk bowl were two smaller bowls with spouts, one for the cream and the other for the skim milk. Most of the skim milk was given in buckets to the calves. Half the cream was made into butter and we ate cream on everything like porridge, desserts, bread and jam.

Dad built yards and pens for the fowls and we always had plenty of eggs to eat. Morning and night they were fed wheat and during the day were allowed out of the yard to run and scratch. Every Sunday we had roast fowl for dinner.

Mum and dad worked as a team. They stooked and carted hay, sewed up bags of wheat as they harvested the crops, and cut chaff to feed the horses and cows. Dad helped in the house with meals, washed dishes and swept floors. They cleaned out the cow yards and fowl pens using the manure for the gardens.

Around the house in the winter months they grew vegetables and flowers from seeds and in the summer months had a garden of vegetables in a fenced off area at a spring in a paddock a mile (1.6 km) away from home. The fresh water from this spring welled up and made the ground damp all year round. The summer garden would have been about a quarter acre and here were grown watermelons, rock and pie melons, beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, sweet potatoes and cabbages. Jam, pickles and chutney were made from the melons. When picked the water melons were stored under the house to keep them cool.

Quandong trees grew on our property and every spring we collected the fruit for mum to make jam. The Quandong tree is a parasite and therefore difficult to cultivate. It produces more fruit in the dry seasons than in good rainfall years.

There were a nice lot of natural trees and shrubs growing around the farmhouse. These included wattle, jam, curaras, grevillias and gums. A pepper tree was planted just outside the back gate and became a lovely shade tree. Two lilac trees were planted in the front garden. While on her honeymoon in Perth mum had picked up seeds from an Eastern States Kurrajong tree in Kings Park. As only one seed grew, the Kurrajong at the back door was her pride and joy. It is still a lovely shady tree and has tiny cream and pink flowers in spring. Several native kurrajong trees grew on the property and they managed to grow one of these from seed also. These planted trees had to be hand watered for many years and my Dad used the water from the bathtub and laundry troughs.

A small area of couch grass lawn was planted under the two lilacs in the front garden. This too had to be watered with a watering can in summer. Many years later lawn was also grown at the back of the house under the kurrajong tree.

Mum loved to keep her yard clean and swept inside and outside the garden fence. Dad chopped boughs from bushy tea-trees and used them as a broom. Unfortunately they raked and swept all dead leaves from under the native trees and shrubs and this caused most of the trees to die over the years because all the mulch was removed. The dead leaves were swept into heaps and burnt in the evenings. Mum and Dad had no knowledge of preserving the natural bush, which was a shame.

Mum made all her own bread. She had to keep up her stock of yeast made from dried hops. All the cooking was done in a wood stove and the hardest thing to do was to guess the temperature of the oven when baking. The stovetop was also used to heat the Mrs Potts irons. Even on very hot days the fire had to be kept burning so that we could do the ironing. Many a time, using the horse and cart, Mum gathered dead trees and sometimes chopped them into firewood. Even as very young children we all helped gather wood for the fires.

Mum also made all our clothes, underclothes included. We wore second-hand coats or hand-me-downs. Mum did not learn to knit until the war years so she used to buy jumpers for each of us. For some reason Mum never attempted to make any men's clothing so all of Dad's clothes had to be bought. All her sewing was done on a treadle sewing machine.

For many years our only illumination came from candles in the bedrooms, a hurricane lamp, and a kerosene lamp which was used mainly in the kitchen. Every morning the glass chimneys of the lamps were cleaned ready for use in the evening. . If Mum sewed at night she put the kerosene lamp beside her. It gave only a poor light but she managed. At night, we used the hurricane lamp to walk outside to the "dunny".

Our porridge was made from gristed wheat that had been lightly roasted in the oven, to give it a nutty flavour. We all had to take turns at using this small grister or grinder as some folks called it. It held about a cup of wheat at a time and by turning the handle it ground the wheat into wheatmeal. It was clamped onto the tank stand at the back door, so if we made a mess it did not matter. With the gristed wheat, Mum and I made dog-biscuits for our dogs when there was no meat for them.

We had eggs for breakfast every morning with toast made by holding bread on a wire fork over hot coals. We all drank tea at an early age as well as plenty of milk.

Dad killed a sheep every Friday night. It was hung in the shearing shed over night to allow the meat to set. In the morning the carcass was sawn into sections. In the summer time because of the heat, it was difficult to keep meat so only half of the carcass was kept enclosed in a calico bag and hung from the rafters on the back verandah as fresh meat. Mum made up pickle brine in a four gallon can and the remaining carcass was left in the pickle until we needed to cook it. The meat was salty as the brine contained salt and saltpetre (potassium nitrate). This meat had to be boiled in water. The can of pickled meat was stored in the wash house in the back yard where blow flies were always a problem because this building had no door or windows.

Washhouses for washing clothes were made of all sorts of material. For many years mum had a washhouse made from bush timber. She-oak posts were erected first, wire netting was tacked on both sides of the posts and then tea-tree boughs were jammed between the netting to make the walls. The roof was made the same way. Every farmer's wife had a copper next to the wash house. A standard size copper was bought and fitted into a 44 gallon drum which had the top and bottom cut out, a hole cut out of the front for the wood fire to be lit, and, on the opposite side, a hole near the top for a chimney . All cotton washing was boiled for twenty minutes, then lifted out with a wooden broom handle into a wooden draining box. In the wash house were three galvanised iron tubs, two for rinse water and a final rinse in Rickett's Blue to make the clothes bright and white. All washing was done by hand and took many hours.

Mum did not waste water. When all the washing was finished she used the hot soapy water from the copper to wash all the floors in the house. Washing day was hard work.

Most farmers' wives made their own soap. The ingredients were mutton fat, caustic soda, resin, borax and water. It was boiled in a kerosene tin on the stove, allowed to cool, put into suitable flat vessels until cold and hard and then cut into bars. It was an all purpose soap. We used it to wash clothes and as a bath soap as well. In the winter mum bathed us by the kitchen fire in the largest tub from the wash house. Our parents also bathed before retiring and next morning Dad emptied the water on to the pot plants.

Dad cut our hair as well as that of some of our relatives and they in turn cut his hair. I was twenty years old before I had my hair cut in a hair salon. It was not until I earned my own money that I bought shampoo to wash my hair.

The farm had stock water in several different paddocks. Each well had a windmill to pump up the water into a tank. From the tank the water went into a trough for the stock to drink. Quite often we had to check the windmill to see that the pumps were working. If not, we climbed up the stand with a can of water to prime it. We poured water down on to the dry suction pump and once wet, it would pump the water.

If there was not enough wind to turn the mill, then you found all the stock waiting at the trough for a drink. 'No-wind-days' were rare but it did happen and Dad pulled water from the well with a bucket on a rope. Over the years Mum did her share of pulling water and so did my brothers and I.

No water was laid onto the house during my years on the farm. If our rain water tanks went dry, which they often did in summer, Dad carried water in two buckets twice a day for drinking and washing. There was a well nearby on Mr Lee's property that had good drinking water but no windmill. It had a windlass that you turned by hand to bring up a bucket of water.

The lavatory, which was built from sheets of corrugated iron nailed to sawn timber, was situated in the back yard. The floor and seat were made from pine board obtained from old packing cases. Ashes from the house fires were kept in a bucket just inside the door and sprinkled into the pan to keep away the blowflies. Phenyl was mixed with water and bottles of it were used to keep down the smell and as a disinfectant. Newspaper cut into squares hung on a wire behind the door, as we did not have toilet paper. Of course every farmer had to empty his own lavatory pan. The town folk had a "Dan the Dunny -Man" with his horse and cart to do the job.