The farmer wants a wife
You bet . Most of us on the farm wait too long to find one. So , it's not easy to find a woman for this unique and tough job .The farmers wife has to be someone very, very special. I was 42 before I introduced wonderwoman from the big smoke to a world even she could not always cope with.
You see, for starters there was always something EXTRA to add to the days work ; It's as true today, as it was over 15 years ago . We are not like the city folks who get all worried when something a bit different from yesterday happens - a mere flood or a drought comes along - The greens think they are telling us all about nature , but we have to work with it every day or we are just "outa here" .
Didn't those kids listen when Banjo was being read at school .We love the country -do the Greens love it better from a distance ?
After 15years she's still a wonder and still a wondering - more work than any family has ever put up with ever - its wonder she puts up with it because some days , quite frankly, I can understand if she feels just like a slave .You nearly have to grow up here, to really understand .
Coming from the city, she could never quite work out why I couldn't tell her when I would be home again - I mean "it wasn't as if I went far away" . And to her, it seemed like something out there somewhere was, well, more important than her , and turning up for tea on time . Amazingly, she soon learned to cope with the individual needs of all the new offspring , the constant cleaning and feeding and then to top it off , go back home to deal with the poor neglected ones with clothes on .
The big problem came when, after adapting to all the extra work I expected her to do as routine, I would then expect her to cope with double the trouble on days we should have had off . It's enough stress to make you both of you think of trading each other in - let alone that dash farm.
Luckily we don't live on how we feel sometimes out here . Love is never easy.. is it? (We've been watching- "As Time goes by" ( series 3 Episode 2) and "The Cosby Show" Season 3 last episode disk2 Brilliant stuff on that subject !Why do we do it instead of selling up and making a killing? We do it because its family and family is the biggest and the most precious enterprise in the country .
You forget as part of a farming family that you nearly have to born here to survive the stress here . For those who come from the city, its always much harder for them - they have so little time to get used to the idea that something close to slavery still exists .
-Who else expects their whole family to work for nothing and like it .
-Who else expects their wife to do the impossible every day and even more on those every other days.
-Who else expects their dearly loved partners to deal with a myriad of demands that she doesn't even know about when the day begins .
-Who else expects the joy of sharing to be marred by years without adequate rain or income .
-Who else expects to work for nothing and like it.
Only very very very very very special women can can handle being a farmers wife .
(You don't think what I am saying is true in Australia today - well get in touch with one, please . )
Now looking back on 15 years of hard work with a wonderful woman , I realise we men have these incredible expectations of them .
If only people from the city would really listen to us and pay us a decent wage for our work ( only a few cents more and we would make money instead of eating into our families capital resources ) It's not about how big you are, or how smart you are . Our bottom line isn't hard to reach in economic terms - just need to stop beliveing that all good comes to those who work hard ( cause you ain't seen nothing yet!)
Please do not patronise us (Classic is " we need better technology" sorry not us my friend) - or try to solve our problems for us ( we don't need lectures on conservation from the silly shallow political football games on environment . Why should we accept it when the city projects its guilt over how it uses the environment onto us ? ) Learn to re respect us and listen to us - give us our basic needs to keep us from going mad . Get close to us and know how we operate , before you criticize what we do.
Uno, we as families may choose to be slaves sometimes, but we don't appreciative being always treated like slaves.
You see, for starters there was always something EXTRA to add to the days work ; It's as true today, as it was over 15 years ago . We are not like the city folks who get all worried when something a bit different from yesterday happens - a mere flood or a drought comes along - The greens think they are telling us all about nature , but we have to work with it every day or we are just "outa here" .
Didn't those kids listen when Banjo was being read at school .We love the country -do the Greens love it better from a distance ?
After 15years she's still a wonder and still a wondering - more work than any family has ever put up with ever - its wonder she puts up with it because some days , quite frankly, I can understand if she feels just like a slave .You nearly have to grow up here, to really understand .
Coming from the city, she could never quite work out why I couldn't tell her when I would be home again - I mean "it wasn't as if I went far away" . And to her, it seemed like something out there somewhere was, well, more important than her , and turning up for tea on time . Amazingly, she soon learned to cope with the individual needs of all the new offspring , the constant cleaning and feeding and then to top it off , go back home to deal with the poor neglected ones with clothes on .
The big problem came when, after adapting to all the extra work I expected her to do as routine, I would then expect her to cope with double the trouble on days we should have had off . It's enough stress to make you both of you think of trading each other in - let alone that dash farm.
Luckily we don't live on how we feel sometimes out here . Love is never easy.. is it? (We've been watching- "As Time goes by" ( series 3 Episode 2) and "The Cosby Show" Season 3 last episode disk2 Brilliant stuff on that subject !Why do we do it instead of selling up and making a killing? We do it because its family and family is the biggest and the most precious enterprise in the country .
You forget as part of a farming family that you nearly have to born here to survive the stress here . For those who come from the city, its always much harder for them - they have so little time to get used to the idea that something close to slavery still exists .
-Who else expects their whole family to work for nothing and like it .
-Who else expects their wife to do the impossible every day and even more on those every other days.
-Who else expects their dearly loved partners to deal with a myriad of demands that she doesn't even know about when the day begins .
-Who else expects the joy of sharing to be marred by years without adequate rain or income .
-Who else expects to work for nothing and like it.
Only very very very very very special women can can handle being a farmers wife .
(You don't think what I am saying is true in Australia today - well get in touch with one, please . )
Now looking back on 15 years of hard work with a wonderful woman , I realise we men have these incredible expectations of them .
If only people from the city would really listen to us and pay us a decent wage for our work ( only a few cents more and we would make money instead of eating into our families capital resources ) It's not about how big you are, or how smart you are . Our bottom line isn't hard to reach in economic terms - just need to stop beliveing that all good comes to those who work hard ( cause you ain't seen nothing yet!)
Please do not patronise us (Classic is " we need better technology" sorry not us my friend) - or try to solve our problems for us ( we don't need lectures on conservation from the silly shallow political football games on environment . Why should we accept it when the city projects its guilt over how it uses the environment onto us ? ) Learn to re respect us and listen to us - give us our basic needs to keep us from going mad . Get close to us and know how we operate , before you criticize what we do.
Uno, we as families may choose to be slaves sometimes, but we don't appreciative being always treated like slaves.
Who else in the whole wide world (Nobody!) is expected to run some of the biggest and most efficient high tech family enterprises in the country ( see the list here ) and still be told that they are not progressive because they can't make a buck ( only Australia and New Zealand) . Should we all give in and conform to the confining brilliant economic simplicities of our city accountants and dumbing down schools of mere description ?
No need to because , as efficient and not "extract at all cost" producers we offer the country a model of survival and resilience of place ( ecosystem ) people and product under great pressure . All we ask for the future is that the many outsiders really listen to us and respect our uniquely different , less demanding and less quick fix approach to ecosystem and economic management .So what if we are slow - a least we produce the goods - thats more than you can say about some Go the independents
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