The biggest change I
I suppose the biggest change in the past fifty years has been tractors.
When I started farming, I came in right at the very end of that last generation of men who lived close to the land. Horse and plough. When I started we had two Clydesdales and I’d walk along behind ’em all day.
I remember one year I ploughed Dad’s property at Flowery Gulley. Seventy acres. I averaged two to three acres a day. I was out there for thirty-seven days. Didn’t work Sundays, of course.
Didn’t have an ounce of fat on me, either. Arms like leather, they were. Plenty of time to think, just me and the horses.
Now, when my son was just outta school he was driving our first Massey Ferguson and he come in around afternoon tea. “Having a break?” I says, but he’d done the lot. Thirty acres. By cripes, that’s a lotta land.
Doctors have got him on this rotten diet now, the poor coot. He reckons they let him have sawdust as a treat.
