"DON'T CALL US POOR"

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 98, 27 April 1935, Page 18

"DON'T CALL US POOR"

PLEA OF FARMER'S WIFE

A WILLING SPIRIT

A farmer's wife, writing to the women's supplement of the "Sydney Morning Herald," objects keenly to the widespread talk about "poor farmers' wives," and states her case as follows:— We're small fanners; but who dares to call us poor? I'm just having my lunch, and I'm eating scones, warm from the oven, spread thickly with honey we robbed from the hives yesterday, and topped with clotted cream from the scalding pan. Poor! Huh! Who says we are poor? Certainly we have no bread in the house today, because , the motoring trippers who called in" as they were hastening to somewhere bought all our home-made bread and thought it "marvellous." But our scones are just as marvellous. Certainly we haven't the mcney with which to buy a honey extractor, but we've drained the honeycombs in an old milk pan at the side of the kitchen stovs, arid the slight flavour of wax is something which is always lacking in city jars of honeyto our mind. Certainly we can't spare the money just yet to buy a separator, but we're not sure that we want to, because the quarter-inch slabs of cream skimmed, off the pans of scalded milk seem to us more attractive than the limp concoction offered in city hotels and cafes as cream. Tonight we are to have roast thicken. The old Black Orpington rooster, who has seen his days of usefulness, is to be the basis of it. But we know the trick of wrapping him in several layers of greaseproof paper, tying him in an impenetrable parcel, and boiling him for an hour before we roast him. If you should drop in to share the meal; you would say you had never tasted chicken like it. For dessert, the windfall apricots and plums—just not quite ripe enough

to be eaten raw—will be stewed, xni served with cream and bran. (Yes, we believe in roughage for ourselves, as well as for the cows.) After a winter, when most of our fruit-dishes consisted of stored pie-melons and apples, these summer fruits,come as a welcome change; but still we're not poor. "GREATEST LUXURY." Our greatest luxury is our coffee. It's a bit extravagant, but we do love to go into the lounge (why not use city names) after we've finished the washing up, and have our little cups of coffee with blobs of cream floating in them. Is this poverty? We have no radio, because it always seems more important to buy some new harness or some fertiliser instead, of buying a radio, -but we have the same piano which we bought secondhand when we were married, and I can still play accompaniments for my husband, and still enjoy helping him to learn new songs, so what time would we have to listen to radio? The children are excited because the plough mare is due to have her foal today. We live'near to Nature here (but fifty miles from Sydney), and it Is commonly said that our children are "splendid." They'will never have college education, but they know how to help a mare or a cow or a sow in difficulties, and their talk is clean and sane and understanding/Are we poor, when we have pride in our cattle and In our children? ! Poor? While I'm writing this, I'm looking out across the tree-tops, because the house is built on a hill. The wild wattles are just fading and exchanging places with the vivid reds of the newborn gumtips. In the distance is the haze. and smoke of Sydney. I laugh to think of the restrictions of the city-dwellers compared with' the freedom and expansiveness of our life here. Poor! Why, in Australa the very word ought to be blotted out of all dictionaries. For all who will work— really work—there is abundariee. The climate is kind, the soil is grateful for attention, and land is available for a song to men whose grandchildren will bless them if they can take pride in the pioneering spirit which gave birth to our nation. Poor! The only poor are those who are poor in spirit, and they are not to be found on the small farms. Don't call us poor!