On the Farm
November 14, 2013
One measure of getting older is that one sees a bit less of grandchildren. Two of them are in their early teens. The other one is still friendly, is not scowling and is still only ten. The two thirteen year olds are like bean shoots. Each time we see them, I feel like asking for their names. They have changed into modes of extreme vacillating personas. One minute they are on their bikes and next they are skyping in secrecy with the bedroom door closed. When they sit on a chair, if you can call half way between the chair and on the floor ‘sitting’, their knees look like rhubarb sticks.
How are things, I’ll ask, trying to be as nonchalant as they would so desperately like to be? FinejustfineIamdoingOK, they answer in the rapid speech that has gained enormous world-wide popularity. I have noticed that the cadence or the lilt at the end of each sentence is now becoming a bit jaded. Not before time. I could hardly believe that even newsreaders had fallen for increasing the last few words of each sentence into a slide going upwards. “Thirty thousand people have died in battles between rival forces in Syria.” The “forces in Syria” would move from middle C into F minor higher up the scale. Or, “A man was stabbed by a reveller at a party in Ashfield”, again a celebratory kind of upward singing end in “paaaarty in Aaashhhhfffield!”
It must be difficult now to face a world so fast and restless. I remember Tolstoy with his war and peace. Things were slow and one would relish the words while slowly eating mother’s ladling out of mashed potatoes and rookworst cut in equal pieces so the children would not knife each other over an imagined favour to a rival brother with a piece of sausage one millimetre bigger. 😉 At least we talked without machinegun rapidity or a nauseating lilt at the end.
The first picture is two of the boys in our farm’s lounge-room, playing chess. I am not sure they still play that game. At least they know the moves and might pick it up when they get bored with skyping.
The next picture was taken by the Agent selling the farm in 2010. The room was magic. Such lovely proportions and the open fire used to be on almost day and night during the 5 months or so of winter. I know it would go through a barrow full of fire wood a day. I was quite manic swinging the axe around. Later on I used a hydraulic wood splitter, petrol driven, with a force of 22ton. Now, that was really manic.
Tags: Grandchildren, Skyping, Woodfire
Posted in Gerard Oosterman |
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
I was always amazed that the farm house in Finland where Helvi grew up in only used a fraction of the firewood that we used to burn in Australia. Yet,in the winter when I was there (1965), it was often minus -30c. and their lounge room huge. Yet, a fire was only lit in the morning and within half an hour allowed to die out and the same in the evening. The chimneys were complicated affairs with all sorts of baffles and channels directing the flow of heat. It even had an area where bread was baked and shoes allowed to dry out. Off course, the old farm houses in Finland are sturdy double story structures made from pine logs filled with moss in between. Windows are double glazed during winters.
The open fire on our farm in Australia was basically a straight up galvanised pipe up the brick chimney. Inside the opening was a heavy cast iron pan that the wood was burned in. No matter where I looked, the fireplaces everywhere were totally inefficient and most heat just goes straight up the chimney. We never found a bricklayer who understood building a proper fire place chimney.
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Yes and these houses in Australia without any of those fine tunings to their chimneys are so abysmally cold with a gale blowing through them from the open chimney. My landlord has recently covered the chimney in the living room. Speaking of wood for fires, knowing the timber is such an art. However, I am no longer keen on fires. Walking around the streets here on cold nights I find the atmosphere is stifling result of the number of home fires burning.
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You cannot have been far from where my brother’s farm was, Gez. I went to his wedding there. My oldest was with me and my grandson. Their two children were bonny little boys. The home was a comfortable place with a small holiday cottage that was very simple where we stayed.
The upward inflection at the end of sentences is very North Queensland and in some places Sydney. In NQ it is imperative we added ‘…eh, you know’ at the end of significant sentences and with an upward inflection of enquiry, whereas in truth the statement was done and dusted. Protocol almost demands the apparent question-that-is-not-a-question be met with a silence or a nod. Whether to nod or not is a skill that can only be developed by studying context. As for gabbling, wellmateitwouldn’tbeastreamofconsciousnessotherwisewouldit. 😉
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Where was the wedding? Our farm was at Brayton near Marulan. The hugely irritating singing voice of Marion Ives of the ABC News is a prime example of that rising intonation that is now well into its second decade but, thankfully now into its death throes…
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I see checking on Google Maps you were 35 kms, Gez., from their farm at Bundanoon. I was there 1992. Seems as if there is new development around there. I remember the railway line was not far from the front gate…
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I love trains rumbling past.
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When he drove us into that property over a railway line I remember thinking how much he would love that because we grew up on a railway line.
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Love the lounge room, the lounge and the carpet. I assume you had a blockbuster and not just an axe to swing around.
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I think these pictures have been up before, as I remember saying something about my green plastic laundry basket on the table…(the men don’t notice things like that)…the wine glass must be mine too…
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Yes, a big Fiskar blockbuster. We let the old settler’s cottage for holiday and week-end. A mother with 5 children used to come here regularly and split fire-wood. She loved and enjoyed doing it and yet she was petite but quite sinewy. May be that’s why.
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The trick is in knowing how to use the block buster. Having a good eye helps a lot too. The type of wood is also very relevant. I’ve had some wood which was ‘unbustable’ !
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Yes, scribbly gum is almost impossible to split by hand. The log splitter with the petrol motor was the way to go. Almost all our firewood came from our 40 acre native forest but still supplemented by buying as well.
The chimneys were straight up without baffles, very inefficient. The slow combustion in the kitchen was better.
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I was going to say something about the chimney !
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