CHRISTMAS!

18 Sleeps until Christmas!!! Ding Ding Ding!!  Is that sending you into a frenzy of mental note making? Such as;

·         Write Christmas cards and letters, and actually get them to all of the recipients this year,

·         make and hang a pudding,

·         dust off the Christmas decorations and pray you don’t find dead mice in them,

·         take the kids to the Magic Cave,

·         timing and booking your next hair cut and dye to make sure it’s fresh for the day, and for the hopeful week or two at the beach after, and

·         purchase a good supply of batteries for Christmas Day…. and what else….

·         Oh, and shopping. The SHOPPING!!!

Ah, it all sounds too hectic.

We put a lot of effort into Christmas don’t we?  Even the ‘simple’ affairs require some planning. I like it big though. It’s a fantastic time of the year, and just remember, someone was born in order to give us this privilege (I suspect it was John Sands or David Jones!).

We like the lead up to Christmas in our house. Little kids mean big excitement, and there are lots of local events such as ‘Carols by Candlelight’ and the street parade to fuel those feelings. There’s the daily fight over the Advent calendar chocolate (you’re no match for the estrogen monster kids, back down now if you know what’s good for you!), and then the count down in the unit of ‘sleeps’ and an abundance of Christmas music.  And if you’ve got a joker in the house, singing carols with alternative lyrics. Although, I’m not sure our kids will ever know what TAA was or, who Wonder Woman is, and what she lost!  

On Christmas eve, there’s the special sacrificial offering to FC of one of Daddy’s favourite beers, and one of Mummy’s favourite biscuits.  You know it’s appreciated kids, and I’m just waiting for someone to suggest that Santa actually really loves a bottle of champagne for the trip home. He’s probably a bit flash too, so best it be Bolly!

The traditions vary from family to family, but the sentiment is always the same. Unity.  It’s about coming together and celebrating life, breaking bread and sharing the day. It’s about remembering those who can’t be with us for Chrissy, and not punching the ones that can.  It’s about making ridiculous jokes over slightly blackened pork, pudding and bon bons. It’s about still laughing at the Uncle that manages to find a $10 note instead of a coin in his dessert, even though you’ve seen it 30 times before. And, it’s still funny. I still love it, and I can’t imagine never looking forward to it.

Then there’s the post lunch snooze off between the Dads.  It might be from staying up all night to put together trampolines and bikes that ‘have instructions written in foreign languages’ or ‘need another hole drilled here!” Or maybe it’s because the little people of the house wake before you’ve even entered that deep REM sleep to see if the big man in red has been?  Sometimes I feel that jolly old man gets far too much credit.  Did he get up at 2am for the toy sale? Did he suffer the trolley rage and smashed ankles in the race for the last of the good cheap ribbon?  No, nor did he have his perfect parked swiped at the last turn, or his feet swell up to look like puffer fish trapped in Langdon’s new season summer sandals. (Actually, maybe that’s why he has to wear those awful black gumboots – there are no elves, he’s been hitting the toy sales and has fat feet like me!)

So whatever your normal Christmas is, it would seem that it is nearing, and FAST!  Indeed there are only 25 days to taunt the kids with, ‘don’t do that, Father Christmas will put you on the naughty list’ and, ‘LOOK, did you see that? There was an elf checking up on you!’   So excuse me whilst I go find merriment in the house of May, and here’s fingers crossed for a successful district harvest, a safe and happy summer for you all and a very happy holiday season, because love it or loathe it, Christmas is coming!

Farming…

If Forest Gump was a farmer, instead of the analogy about life being like a box of chocolates, he’d say, ‘life is like harvest. You never know what you’re going to get’.   And you just never ever do.

I know from the outside, it seems as though farmers are hard to please. One day asking for rain, the next day praying for it to stop. But let me tell you, one night of heavy garden soaking rain, or one unusually hot and windy day, can wipe millions of dollars from the state’s annual harvest.  If you think this doesn’t affect you, and unless you have a diet of air, then I’d suggest you ask your mother at what stage of pregnancy she gave up drinking. Because I suspect not only did she not give up, but indeed she upped consumption in your formative growth period.

 You see, food security affects everyone. Even if you are grain free in diet, consider that farmed animals are often fed from cereal harvests. And consider that the price of this feed goes up, so thereby, so do your meats and by-products.  The canola oil in your pantry is affected, the beans and lentils in your stew and the chick peas in your Dahl so too bear cost fluctuations.  So paying twenty cents more for a loaf of bread might be your cost, but what cost does a farmer accept?

Sometimes the cost is too huge and to heartbreaking to relay. Forgiving any unforeseeable weather phenomenon, just plain dumb luck or poor business management, modern day cereal farming in Australia has enough hurdles to make primary producer’s lives difficult as it is.

For many broad acre farms, the end of year summer crop is the primary income. That is, the success of a whole year of work and financial outlay relies on one result. Harvest. In part, it’s the driving of those big ol’diesel guzzling monsters over the paddocks and crossing your fingers and toes that the crop coming into the box passes for top grade, that it doesn’t need to be cleaned and that no dopey snails follow it in.  Now it’s not as simple as skimming a lawnmower over a lawn city folk, no sir!

First there’s the fire risk. Do the maths.  Most days the boys work 12 hours as a minimum, lots of hot moving parts and plenty of chaff flying about. Plus, the best reaping days are warm and dry with just a little bit of breeze to blow the debris off the plant as it flies in the front of the header. So there’s the CFS on speed dial.  (On the Yorke Peninsula in  2009, over the period of just one week, nine header originated fires needed the assistance of CFS appliances and neighbouring farmers evoking the farmers unwritten code of ‘all hands on deck’).

Secondly, there’s the silo system. This is where most farmers are relegated to deliver their grain. After waiting in lines (for hours sometimes) to get their trucks unloaded, the driver then has to often argue how good their grain actually is in order for it to be registered at the right grade.  That’s if they have their own truck, if not, they have to spend a few hours on the dog and bone just finding a carrier who’s free to do the job, and then relay to them the importance of them also being the farm’s pseudo grain-quality negotiator. The current system which is being used to judge the quality of the grain at the major silos has come under much scrutiny and considerable disappointment of late, and the fight continues.  Every grade counts, being knocked down just one grade could cost you more than $1000 a load, or an entire sale.

Thirdly, there’s marketing your grain to the right buyer. A mission which has been made ever so complicated with the abolishment of the single desk trading system and the influx of fly by night traders (and the old boys are all still saying, ‘we told you this would happen!). Who to trust, when to sell,  are the prices going to move, shall we sell some in advance and lock in that good price and hope we actually reap what we’ve promised, what’s the fluctuating dollar doing? Now the average farmer needs a smart phone as a necessity and a degree in commerce and marketing in order to market and sell on the run. There’s hardly another way.

Don’t get me wrong, our boys love the lifestyle. Love the work, and they do it well. They live every little boy's dream. They drive trucks, loaders, headers, tractors and get dirty every day. But the culmination of the whole year’s effort pivots on so many factors that they cannot change by will or by force. The crops look okay this year. Not out of this world fantastic, not buy-a new-house-and-book-a-holiday type okay, but good enough to give the boys the feather of confidence back in their cap and book themselves up for another year of crazy in 2012! (…and Mum might get last year’s new pergola by next year!?! *Hint hint*)

So you see, it’s not as simple as pop a little seed in the ground, get a little rain and then sell it in an old hessian bag down at the markets.  So excuse the men of the land for a while whilst they almost lose their minds trying to wrap their seasons up. Fingers and toes crossed for good grain, good prices, and sane farmers!