HOME ON THE FARM

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 728, 26 June 1953, Page 15

HOME ON THE FARM

HE little farm at Otipua, near Timaru, was a derelict ruin when the Alleways bought it a few years ago. Today it’s different. The story of how their labour of love has turned it into a thing of beauty is told in Jasmine Farm, a series of talks by Norah Alleway, now being heard from 3YA at 7.15 p.m. on Tuesdays. The scene was set in the first talk broadcast this week

(June 23). "Go past the store, up the tarmac road, and| on your right you’ will come to a let-! ter box at the bot-, tom of a_ grassy road. . . One of the first things to catch the eye is the gate. It is a cartwheel. . a wheel of beauty.

The "house is not beautiful-small, the usual verandah, red iron roof and tiny windows. . ." And so on, round the garden, across the lawns, past the lily pond, How did it begin? Mrs. Alleway takes you back to the wet Sunday when they sat in the car under the "drip, drip. drip" of the branches and first saw the place. She tells how they decided to buy it, how the shift went, and she ends up alone on Monday morning, her husband gone back to business in town, leaving her to wrestle with (among other things) the milking of a cow she didn’t know how to milk! "Somehow (she says) it got done, and we evolved a way of life." Mrs. Alleway will take up the story of Jasmine Farm again on June 30. "Making a Garden," the second talk is called, but before a garden was made or started the farmlet had to have a name. There was talk of "Churchill" before she thought of Jasmine Farm, for "the church was on the hill just above us"; but Churchill had a warlike ring, and this was to be a place of peace. Then-where to begin? That old car body under the trees must go, the "sentry box" must be screened, the drain cleaned, old tree stumps cut down-and even then they had barely started. But soon the flowers were blooming and "our garden is now almost as we want it." Mrs. Alleway will go on to talk about the sort of life she and her husband lived at Otipua. "We expected to be busy very busy; but this place consumed our whole life. The farm became a kind of Moloch that devoured our time, al] our money, to whom we even sacrificed our friends!" . City-dwelling listeners who have ever had a yearning to go "back to the land" will learn from these talks that there's rather more single-mindedness and hard work required than in the romantic picture sometimes painted. But they will! find, too, that for those willing to. pay the price the reward is considerable. Jasmine Farm is to be heard also in 3YA’s Mainly for Women, -starting in the afternoon session on Tuesday July 14. r