Book Club on Serendipity

We had book club last night. Our bookclub is called The Sneaky Readers. We meet once a month with the following format. One member chooses the book which we have all hopefully read before the night for review, and they also direct the discussion. Another member hosts the evening and provides red wine followed by coffee and cake.

Sounds terrible, doesn't it? It's murder I can tell you.

We did Fleur McDonald's "Red Dust" last night. Fleur is a local Esperance farmer who manages to juggle working on the family farm, two young children and writing and publishing novels!

The book discussion went down well, so did the red wine and so did the cake. I made the cake that was on the front page of the May edition of Delicious magazine and it is an absolute ripper and to be recommended. In fact, every cake I've ever sampled at Book Club has been delicious, so good that I suggested we compile a 'Book Club Cakes for the Discerning Reader' publication. It would be a sell out I reckon. A slice of delicious cake and a good book to go with it. Yum...

All Sneaky Reader members live in town apart from me, and as we don't have a town house I have to make alternative arrangements when it is my turn to host. Therefore we have it on Serendipity (pictured) which is housed in a pen at The Esperance Bay Yacht Club marina. Let me tell you, getting the other members on and off is often more entertaining than the literary discussion. They have to leap from the marina jetty over an expanse of water, onto the bow of the boat and over a rail. Very amusing to watch, and to their credit we haven't lost anyone in the drink.......yet. Not even Peg Leg Hall who managed to get on and off last night with one leg in a cast. Pretty impressive, especially when faced with the prospect of getting on at a time when the boat is level with the marina, and getting off three of fours hours later when the tide has dropped a metre.

A merry night it is, particularly when we have finished discussing the book and get on to other matters that amuse and titillate the female mind. Last night it was how to botox your nether regions. Apparently it's all the rage!

Personally, given the choice of botoxing my bits or reading a good book, I'd choose the latter!

Seeding comes to an end

Seeding is almost at an end here at Hill Plains. I thought I'd better post a picture of 'the rig' that has put the whole 4500 hectares into the ground. Seems funny to think the whole farm is under crop this year having sold all of our sheep due to the shocking late break to the 2008 season.

Canola, wheat, barley and 10 hectares of peas are going in this year. The talk around the kitchen table is all about 'Do we need a bigger seeding bar?' Do we need another header? Do we need another chaser bin?' Boys, please...I know Prime Minister Krudd is encouraging us to spend in order to keep the economy going but there's no need to go crazy. What ever happened to cutting the stuff with a sythe and putting it up in stooks? If the world collapses and we run out of fuel that might be the only solution to getting the harvest in. Scary....all day out in the fields . I'd feel like Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Better get another milking cow.

I keep reminding the husband that it is only fair that I do my own personal bit to help boost the economy, and this time there is no question about it. 'I do need another winter coat. I do need another pair of winter boots. I do need another winter sojourn.'

But as they say....'some seeds fell on stoney ground'.

Lovely weather for ducks

At last we've had some rain and as we drove around the farm this morning we came across a mob of ducks on a dam. The collective noun for ducks escapes me for the moment. It's not a flock, I'm sure. This is one of the many things I love about Australia, everything can be lumped under 'mob' in the collective world and no-one contradicts you!

It's been a great week so far and this rain has capped it off. As I watched the dawn come up this morning, silhouetting the shearing shed and the eucalyptus trees, I could hear the steady throb of the tractor engine in a nearby paddock, seeding our barley crop. Above that, the heavenly sound of rain on a tin roof, whislt the fire crackled away in the sitting room, revitalised by a few well placed mallee roots. A perfect start to a June day on the farm.

On Wednesday I had a radio gig on ABC 720 with Eoin Cameron and the Slim But Savage One (his producer for those not familiar with the Perth ABC Radio breakfast program). We played The Appendage (the poem about having fun with chicken necks.) This led to many lovely emails from all sorts of people including a gentleman from a group of dog walkers in Perth; a lovely lady hoping to get a copy of A Bird in the Bush for her mother who is blind; two emails from old friends we haven't spoken to for over ten years, and one from a lady who remembered my dear departed mother when she was living in Kalamunda. She too lost her mother to cancer (her mother Sheila had lived next door to my mother, Jane) and we have decided to raise our glasses to them both at 6pm tonight.

Thanks for contacting me, Christine, and in answer to your question "Is 6pm to early for farmers?" the answer is "It is never too early for these farmers to appreciate a good glass of red."

This is one of the things I love about radio, its ability to connect, or in this case reconnect. Thanks to Cammo and the team having me on the program this week I shall be sharing a reflective moment at 6pm tonight, when I raise my glass with a woman in Perth whom I hardly know to toast our wonderful mothers.

"To Jane and Sheila".......wish you were both here...

Dodger the Dog

This is Dodger. Most indulged of Hill Plains' dogs. It was Christmas time five years ago when he arrived in our lives.

We went, the children and I, into the pet shop to get a pig's ear each for the working dogs for Christmas.

"Don't go up the back to where the puppies and other animals are," I said to my three very obedient children. "We are only here for pigs' ears."

And some seeds fell on stoney ground...

We came out with four pigs' ears and Dodger.

"A present for Dad," they chorused.

The pup was so traumatised to be greeted by four massive border collies when he eventually got to the farm, that he promptly bit the hand that fed when he was handed over to Tom, and drew blood. It was the start of a wonderful relationship. The man who swore there would be no dogs in the house, or in the tractor or in the car has let this little fellow into all of the aforementioned.

Dodger is out on pest control duties tonight with Tom and Will. We have been so indundated with rabbits this year that between the three of them they have a tally of over eight hundred, and if we don't keep on top of them they will rip into the emerging crops that are just starting to appear in the paddocks.

It's a bit like Watership Down here at the moment.

You've read the book. You've seen the film. Now eat the pie...

Not much rain so more gardening

Having only received eight mils of rain out of last week's downfall it is back into the gardening this week. Off in the ute we went with Dodger the Jack Russell and collected a pile of limestone rocks which I have set up around Will's plum tree.

This tree was given to Will as a christening present from his god parents. It is a brilliant idea for a christening gift, and this little tree has never let us down when it comes to yield. Earlier this year we were inundated with masses of beautiful fruit that I dutifully bottled, stewed and turned into plum sauce when we couldn't fit another fresh one in! Now that we have started to move towards the cold weather it is very satisfying to pluck a bottle of fruit from the pantry and make a delicious plum crumble.

I also made 'plum juice' this year. Sounds innocent enough, but it involves steeping a jar of plums in neat vodka and sugar until the liquid turns the most glorious deep purple. Beware! Two glasses will have you on your ear! The first time I was introduced to it we had gone over to the neighbours for dinner. So thoroughly imbibed were we, that we ended up having to stay the night! It reminds me of my mother making sloe gin out of freshly picked sloe berries found in the hedgerows of England where I grew up. I've never seen sloe berries here so presume they are not imported. You can buy commercial sloe gin, but like my plum juice, it never tastes quite the same as home made!

On farmers as gardeners

Sometimes farming husbands are quite useful in the garden. Mine, for example, dug sixty holes for me this morning into which I then planted the bottle brushes seen in the picture. These are Callistemon citrinus “White Anzac”.



I usually have to cajole and wheedle my Hunter Gatherer into doing anything in the garden. “I’ve got nearly twelve thousand acres to garden without your bloody acre too” is a well worn cry in this household. If there is the slightest whiff of a menial gardening task, both he and the dog are on that four wheeler motorbike and off in a cloud of dust faster than a kid sneaking biscuits from the pantry....and that’s lightning fast I can tell you.

However, mention the phrase “I might need a chainsaw” or “The backhoe might do it,” and suddenly you have a gardening maniac on your hands. A farmer with a backhoe will ignore seeding, harvest, or any really important farm job, if given the slightest opportunity, to dig up twenty years worth of eucalypts, garden beds, lawn, orchards; in fact he’ll dig up anything he can place his digging and ripping tool into given half the chance. A backhoe is like drugs to most men. Once they get a taste for it they are hooked for life. This is because they never really wanted to turn their backs on all their Tonka toys in the sandpit of their youth.

My advice is to supervise constantly. Do not, under any circumstance, pop into the house to quickly get that load of washing out and onto the line whilst leaving the husband to rip out the single dead tree you wanted removed. Big mistake. I did that once, and we now have no eucalypts at the front of the house at all. The same applies with the chainsaw. Men go crazy with this power tool in their hands. A light pruning or simple request for the removal of a few diseased branches on a fruit tree can leave you totally branchless, fruitless, leafless and staring at a single stick in the ground.

“I was only trying to balance it up” he will declare.

Finally, never forget that women sit on a potential fortune. Use it. Men always complain that they ‘never get enough’, so use your asset to get what you want done in the garden. In line with gardening terminology we call this “The Root System”. Warning.....never pay up front, and never offer a totally unreasonable amount of “roots” in order to get the job done. I did, and we now have a heart shaped piece of concrete by the swimming pool fence into which are scratched the words “One Root X 200”.

A banker friend out for lunch one year casually asked if the debt had been repaid. When told that it hadn’t, he quipped,

“What about interest?”

Nice one, Dave. Needless to say I have not invited him back for lunch since.

Daylight Saving

Here are my chickens in March getting up an hour later than they usually do in order to exercise in the daylight before they go off to work and lay eggs for our family.

They have told me they are voting No to daylight saving as it has completley thrown their body clocks out as you can imagine. I for one am sick of their squarkings and cluckings on the subject of how they are so exhausted because they're going to bed so much later because of daylight saving. I've heard a couple of them of moaning on and on about missing the News at 7pm on the ABC. "Get a life!" I cried "What's wrong with listening to the radio?" Honestly, the chickens of today.....

We're No voters here on the farm, but I'm not going to get worked up about it if the Yes vote gets up. I'll just shut up and get on with it and load black cows in the dark and put up new curtains every year.....or whatever.

We have two daughters in their early twenties living in Perth and voting today. One is voting No. (Beautiful girl....) The other is voting Yes (Quite a nice girl....) The one who is voting Yes rang this morning to ask how to do an absentee vote in the city.

"Don't tell her" her Father shouted across the kitchen. "Tell her it can't be done."

"Dad!" she shrieked.

"I was thinking I might split the money I got from Krudd three ways for you kids" he continued "but I'm not so sure if you'll get any if you vote Yes" he joked.

"Dad!" she shrieked

"You vote Yes if you want to, darling" I interjected "and enjoy getting up in the dark to exercise with the chickens before you go to work. Or alternatively exercise at the end of the day in the gruelling heat when you get home. Enjoy, my darling. Enjoy......"

At least we can all laugh about it.

And my final gripe. It's not Daylight Savings, it's Daylight Saving, just as it is Wimbledon not Wimbleton. Got it?

Great....