Afterthoughts on Food

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 660, 29 February 1952, Page 20

Afterthoughts on Food

by

SUNDOWNER

FEBRUARY 8

DON’T often get further in the Journal of Agriculture than the beginning of the women’s section, ‘but cookery and gardening: were so cunningly mixed in the January issue that I was into meals for seasonal workers before I pulled myself up..It was a brief look forward that carried me a lono wav

back. The cooking and managing

marathon of my youth was feeding threshing-mill gangs for one, two, three or four weeks according to the weather, and I can hardly keep myself believing still that it actually happened as it did. My own part was only transport and distribution, plus a boy’s greedy share in consumption; but when I think what my mother and sisters went through, and the mothers and sisters of all my contemporaries, I don’t know what shames me most-the task of itself, or the cheerfulness with which it was done. Families in those days were seldom less than half a dozen-in my own case it was a baker’s dozen. The mill-hands were another dozen, the stacks from a mile to three miles away, and the access nothing that would today be called a road. But all thase people were fed five times a day, three times on hot meals, and at the morning and. afternoon breaks on home-baked bread, freshmade scones, and home-made plain, but appetising, cake. Conditions, of course, fluctuated from farm to farm, and they could be rough; but they were not rough in general, and if they were it was the roughness the farmers themselves endured in their own homes. Supplies went sometimes on a sledge, sometimes in a basket held on the bare back of a horse, but they usually arrived hot, with plates, pannikins, knives, spoons and forks, and I can’t remember many accidents on the way or unpremeditated mixtures. One fact I do remember is a threshing season that rain stretched out to six weeks-a calamity and a ‘trial for everybody, since payment (with one exception) was by the hour worked, and the rate, I think, about a shilling. I have seen quartermasters feeding armies, chefs catering for hotel guests, and stewards organising the eating on ships-all with humiliating efficiency. But in those cases there is a system to fall back on that is continuous and the development of very many years. The farmers’ wives I am thinking about had to improvise, to spring into action at short notice, to count the cost, to let nobody but themselves go aungry or wait, and forget about rewards and fairies. Even when we allow for big families-a mother and perhaps two or three half-grown daughters-it was efficiency at a level that no one today would ever thinks of demanding or havé any chance of getting. ~~ >

FEBRUARY 9

2! ad \V HEN people tell me of things they said and did at three, four, or five, I decide that they are consciously or unconsciously deceiving themselves. For most of us those early years are a blank, or if not a blank a thick mist in which, though we may see something,

we see nothing clearly and accur-

ately. 1 would not dare to repeat some of the things I think happened to me during my first

five years unless all my elders and contemporaries were dead. But here are some remarks made to me, or to others in my presence, by a four-year-old girl during the last three weeks: "Go away, Grand-dad. We are talking about God and the world and that." args eu * pe ;

"Drink up your milk." "I am waiting for the cream to rise." oe " wk "Why don’t you. say ‘Excuse. me’?" "Why should: I?" "You were rude." "No, I wasn’t." "Will I tell you what you did?" "Yes, tell me." "You rattled your tummy." %* % % "I am unhappy. Why don’t you do something about it?" * * * "What are you screaming about?" "I was afraid of Tip." "A big girl like you! You known Tip won’t hurt you." "T knew, he was hungry. I thought he might eat my leg." * * Ey "Well, have you finished your theological discussions?" "What does that mean?" "Your talks about God." "God doesn’t interest. me today." ae ate ~~

FEBRUARY 10

bs +o " J-OR néarly 20 minutes a speckled owl has been sitting on a post a, few yards away from my window wondering whether to go to bed-it is 9.30 a.m. and bright sunlight-or add another course to his breakfast. Through my binoculars he looks half asleep, but he turns his head warily -at- intervals, and

I don’t think the sparrows who are watching him will

take any real risks with him. They seem however to be taking what would be a risk at night. At first only two seemed to be aware of him. Now there are five ranged on the wire about ten feet away from his post, chattering and edging a little closer, but not ‘flying over or round him as I once saw native birds flying round a morepork. This, I think, is the German owl, which sees better by day than the morepork, and probably does some of its hunting by day. I don’t remember having heard a morepork in pine trees, but I hear this introduced bird nearly every night, and now and again in late morning or early afternoon. I wish the backbirds would gather to greet him, but they are too busy’ eating our apples and tomatoes, on which they started this year before the first colour appeared. Pd te

HAD this note today from a doctor "who digs into history: I ynderstand that you find it difficult to teach Elsie the meaning of ‘Whoa!’’ I suppose there are always rare teachers of cows and. also cows of rare unteachableness. Anyway, things were not always as they are

with you and Elsie. Here are two extracts from old Canterbury witnesses to support my remark: (a) From Reminiscences of J. J. Buchanan (1851): "Mr. Hill drove the first wheeled vehicle in Christchurch-it was an ordinary cart drawn by a strong heifer in harness." (b) From Reminiscences of Se A Thomson (Christchurch): ‘‘Archdeacon Mathias used to convey his family to picnics and places of entertainment in a light cart drawn by a little yellow cow with a short tail, and it was astonishing the speed at which she travelled."

FEBRUARY 13

What this correspondent means to convey, I think, is that I must go on with my plan of converting Andy to harmlessness and use. At present he is as the Lord made him, and the day

cannot be very far ahead when

there will be no room for both of us in the same pad-

dock. But if his mother is "whoa’’deaf can I be sure that he will not be? I have seen bullocks (and cows, too) in harness, and even saddled and ridden; but they were in most cases not well fed. Andy has not had an empty belly since the first gallon of Elsie’s milk distended it, and I am not going to starve him to keep him meek. At present he works off his surplus energy on a clay bank or in sham fights with his big sister. He is not yet four months old. But all I have taught him in fourteen weeks is to lead and be tethered. [f he is to learn to pull and to carry, to steer, stop, and stand as I tell him, we will both have to do’a little more than exchange looks of admiration. (To be continued)