THERE IS ALWAYS A WAR ON A FABM

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 56, 19 July 1940, Page 12

THERE IS ALWAYS A WAR ON A FABM

The Man On Vhe Land Is His Own Man-Power Committee

| By

THID

IVE us milk!" cry the housewives. "Give us cream, give us butter, give us eggs, give us cheese!" And the retailers, the schools, the city milk suppliers, and the exporters, and the dairy factories, and the ships, and the nations overseas, and the government at home. And so the dairy farmer-gets up early in the morning and goes to bed late at night and by Heaven they get their milk and their butter and their cream and eggs and cheese, for which they pay good money .. . but not so expensively as the dairy farmer pays in his sweat and the rheumatics of his joints and the toil of his wife and his children and in the years that go by in a. set pace of milkings every morning and evening and ploughings in autumn and spring and seeing the turnips come away and putting the cows on them until there is only a hardbake field with brown dead leaves trampled underfoot beside the rusty munched tops of the roots. ‘gain The Cry Goes Up Then a.war comes, and the dairy farmer hears them again: "Give us more milk!" cry the housewives and the factories and the schools and the soldiers in the camps and the exporters and the government and the Reserve Bank and the ships and the nations overseas. " ... and cheese and butter and eggs." And so the farmer gets up a little earlier in the morning and goes to bed a little later at night so that he can put more super on that grazed-over paddock and cart more swill from the byre to those bare patches in the new pasture and cut the plough deep into the earth that has been at rest, grub more gorse, and wonder when he has time how in the name of the kingdom of cows he can give them more milk and cheese and butter and the rest. All the time he grows older and his cows and pastures with him and his wife too, and thinner, and his family out of school at. 12 or 13 or less and all toiling too in the byre or behind the plough on the rattling stinking. tract6r, among the dust behind the bumping harrows or the runaway spiralling of the tricky discs, or in the garden, or up along the live hedges where the new. growth twists prickly out to blitzkreig over the valuable soil. In The Towns In the towns it is not milk at all, that is the worst of it. It is not cream or cheese or butter; it is overseas exchange in figures in books, and bottles that arrive miraculously every morning before the newspaper, and butter that’s not-too-yellow and oblong and wrapped up tight in paper that tears and lets your finger-into the greasy soft stuff beneath,

But on the farm it is work, work, work, and still work; and little time at night for politics and not much more for sleep. Up at three or four or earlier if there is morning delivery to be caught, and then a cup’ of tea (for the wife has been about and kindled the stove) and then out to the byres to put sweet hay for the snuffing cows to scent before them while they give their milk, and the boy is out and the dog getting in the cows over the wet long tips of grass and clover and feeling the places they have lain to get the warmth of the sheltered earth into his early-morning cold hands. Then the milk comes, squirting in the pails and by now daughter is up looking after the breakfast, cutting the school lunches, while the wife comes out to the dairy and starts the fresh lathery gallons pouring over the cooler, washes the pails as they come in, directs one lot of skim to the calves and some to the cats and some forthe puppies under the house, and sees that the separator hums at the right note and watches the signal wire to see that the water tank is well supplied. Breakfast At Last Cows out and hoses in and hard brushes, and the drains flowing out full with the muck of the byre and the barrow rumbling and screeching with its load of manure'for the steaming heap where the sun has trickled thinly round the corner of the high ‘stable building through the gentle cold hazes of the winter morning. Breakfast soon, but first the cans must be lifted to the runabout truck, and 10 gallons of milk is heavy with no breakfast yet and the train to catch quickly-there is the whistle: down the line! At the station the train. waits -uninterestedly for a few minutes~ before it

rolls on to the city where the housewives not yet out of bed will be waiting soon for their milk and their morning paper: and then back again to the farm, and breakfast at last. The hired man is up now, out of the sheets the wife launders for him and with his sox darned by her of nights and his belly full of her good porridge and eggs and bacon and fruit still left from the autumn picklings in the unpruned orchard. The Day’s Work -Then the long day, with the fences to be tightened and the gaps to be mended and the hedges to be trimmed and that blasted binder to be fixed ... wood for the wife’s washing and hot water for the sore on the foreleg of the old draught mare . . . the bridge to be mended and the hard lugging of the beams into place and the splitting drive of the long spikes ... it is time we started again on that well before it falls in, but the bull has jumped the rails again . . And all the time there is next spring to wonder about and whether it was wise to sow in the damp autumn and whether in spring it might not be playing safe to sow again if we can decide whether it is time the turnip paddock had another crop in it... whether to ring the agent and buy that stuff now or wait and hope that the price will come down ... whether to sell the unborn lambs forward or wait and see how the market goes . . . whether to forre the farm to carry more cows and ri.« the possibility of a bad season... , whether to make it easier for the cows by dropping some of the sheep, and whether to conserve the land for the future or drain the last out of it while the war is on. (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) The Cows Again Morning tea, dinner, afternoon tea, break the long day but at four o'clock the cows are in again and by the time it is all washed down and the clear water has taken the draggling stains of spilt milk from the concrete and the cooler is shining bright again and the smell of the byre and the tractor and the dogs and the horse and the sweat of a day’s work are washed off and tea eaten, it is just as much as anyone can do (except when lambing time comes); and the farmer reads the morning paper for half an hour and must be in bed quickly or the alatm clock next morning will drag him out in a temper that is bad for the mild cows. The next day the hired man enlists, In the Army they do not go for 16 hours every day and they get leave, although there is no farmer's wife to mend and wash for them, and no soft thick scones and sweet tea to flavour the dust in their throats morning and afternoon, And when he goes there are no more men to be hired and still they want more milk, more milk, more and more and more, and it is hard with no help with all the acres crying for a man to nurse them and all the miles of fences shout-

ing for support and all the animals unknowingly demanding time and labour, time and labour, time and labour all day, all night, all week, all month, all year, all a long life. Listening to Daventry And in the city they cry for more milk and cheese and cream and eggs and butter and they are even afraid in some places that they wor’t get them because the farmers are listening to the Daventry News. As if farmers with 80 cows, and 500 acres and 300 sheep and a wife and a family of five or six, and no hired man to be had for love or money eitheras if farmers ever have much time to listen to the Daventry News. There is a war on, yes, but it is here; right here, between the byre and the paddocks, between the plough and the stubborn earth, between the farmer and his wife and their family and the farm and the weather, the crops and the animals: and in the city in the afternoon, nice young ladies (very well-meaning) take tea together, and wonder (for they are very thoughtful) whether the wool you can get nowadays, is quite fine enough for the brave boys in camp.