When September Is Gone

Evening Star, Issue 23373, 16 September 1939, Page 3

When September Is Gone

For all its cold and. its storms, for all its anxieties and its tribulations, the month of September has its immense consolations. “ Once September’s over,” says the farmer optimistically. “ After the thirtieth of September,” echoes his wife wistfully. “ Why are you so anxious to see September go?” asks the uninitiated townsman. “Is it because of the equinoctial gales or because you’ll be done with lambing then?” These, too, are advantages, but it is not for them the farmer’s wife longs so ardently. It is not even because, with docking almost over, she can have some faint idea of what the percentage for the following year will be; it is not because shearing is now within sight, and with it the end of living upon faith, hope, and charity. No. the subtle attraction tjiat the 30th of September holds for tho farming community is that upon that date the bank balances; after that, your banker will look the other way should you happen to overdraw a few pounds.

Hence the strenuousness of thoso last, weeks of September. Somehow the account must tjieu bo made to balance even if upon October 1 it is once more with a debit side. “If you were to take a few pounds from your Sayings Bank account, I could put it back after the 1st”; “I’ll collect all the skins in the woolshed, and that ought to even things,” suggests the farmer. So speculative docs his eye become as it roves round looking for something else to sell that his wife has her nervous moments lest she should find tho family put up to the highest bidder.

September is therefore a perturbed month. Let it pass without such calamities as a letter from the bank or a remonstrance from the stock firm, and hope looms bright upon the horizon. Only two months more till shearing, and the first of the sheep farmer’s harvest will be garnered; a little longer and the store sheep will be sold, the lambs be shorn, and the farmer be not merely solvent but positively wealthy. But, lying darkly between, are those cold, dull days when lambs will insist on being born in a hailstorm and ewes in flinging themselves suicidally into the nearest swamp. “ Never mind, September will soon be over and then we can buy it,” they eay to each other, whether the desired purchase be a hundredweight of flour or a new pram for the baby. Small wonder that October be a popular month in the sheepman’s calendar, vieing in its kindliness with January that brings the wool cheque and February and March with their sales of lambs. If yet there is small fulfilment, there is at least the promise of cash in hand—a promise substantial enough to melt the heart of even a banker.

Sheep farmers and dairy farmers alike lift up their eyes to the calendar and look ardently forward. But cream cheques are so much more frequent in their appearances that they have almost lost their glamour. Almost, but not quite. As the dairying returns rise, as the profitable months succeed each other, the farmer says so often, “ Not till after the 20th,” that eventually when he is gathered to his fathers those fatal words are found written upon his heart. “ We don’t send our accounts in at the beginning of the month, because it’s no pse,” the grocers will tell you in the dairying centres. “ We render them as near to the 20th as possible and then they are certain to bo paid.” Those monthly cheques are heavily ear-marked. Grumble though they may at guaranteed prices, the farmers have at least -found this advantage—they are able to reckon with fair accuracy whether the month’s returns will just cover expenses or whether there will

Written by M.E.S., for the ‘ Evening Star*

be enough over to give the house another coat of paint or the wife a new hat. Sound though their arithmetic may be, it is a curious phenomenon that tho iast items on the list ol necessities are seldom covered when tho cheque actually arrives; tho farmer’s wife knows tnis, and sees to it that her own requirements come amongst the first on the list. . For all that she is continually foiled, for it is a recognised slogan of the farming community that “ the farm must come first.” That is why you sec so many farm kitchens without modern conveniences and so many milking and woolsheds equipped with them. But tho blame for this peculiarity must not bo laid entirely at the door of the man of tho house; the woman embraces the role of Christian martyr only too readily. And how can we blame her? Houses, after all, are non-productivc essentials ; cow sheds earn tho precious monthly cheque, without which all would be lost. Therefore she is as eager as her husband to sacrifice her own and his comfort in the home and to say optimistically: “When the farms right we’ll be able to see to the house —and probably the children that come after her will do so. But it is unlikely to fall out like that in her own time. Meantime, September has dawned once more—a September that promises to be unlike any the world has known before. But that at the moment is not the concern of the farmer’s wife; she is merely thinking in terms of bank balances and of household necessities. Once the fatal date is safely passed, the family ’finances may be once more regarded as floui’ishing and the family cheque book be no longer a mere ornament thrown carelessly to the back of her husband’s desk. The crisis has passed; the bank has balanced; now the farmer may cease to do so._ On the contrary, he may overdraw without imminent danger of disgrace or repudiation. The next bank balance is six months off—six splendid, prosperous months. Long before it looms in sight there will be cheques pouring in (thus he speaks in his thoroughly exhilarated moods) that will offset any little extravagances of the moment. A new kitchen sink? Why not? The old one has only been leaking for two years, but still—the end of September has safely passed and no one need worry about trifles like an overdrawn account.

This year it seemed as if winter had come to stay for ever; promise of spring receded rather than advanced with tho calendar. July was unkind, but August was positively vicious; if winter comes, spring can be very far behind indeed in the high country. Will the winter never end? ” groaned the farmer; but his wife said secretly within her heart: “ Even if winter stays for ever, the calendar can’t be put back. The end of September must come—and then the bank balance is over.”

Then she reaches for the catalogues that she has thrust out of sight during the lean months and plans what she will buy for tho house and for the children when October is safely here. She makes three lists; the first contains all the things that she wants; the second is taken from it, liut it is shorter—it tells only what she needs: the third is almost diminutive—it states what she feels that she can no longer do without. It is from the last that she ultimately compiles the list than is sent to town on October 1 So widespread among the farming community is the custom of shopping upon this date' that one wonders precisely how the banks stand the strain upon their resources. So imbued in the farmer’s mind is this idea that all expense must wait until that date is safely past that deaths are rare in the farming community during August and September. No considerate man or woman would dream of involving the family in the expense of a funeral until after the bank balance on tho 30th.