It’d been years since it rained around here

Well, good rain that is

In the recent seasons the ground below the soil was so dry that any rain would literally wash the hard work away.

That’s the way it is on this land, the land that my fathers, fathers grandad settled.

He came to this place half way around the world on a wooden ship from his homeland with a new wife and a new baby, in search of a new life.

The irony is never lost on me that they fled their home and family because of a famine caused by the soil being too wet causing his crop to rot, along with his hope. That same irony would’ve slapped them in the face like a coarse leather glove. The land can be cruel.

Growing up here I learned to read the land by my father’s eyes. To describe him as a man of many moods would overstate how he was.

Never angry, well he was not the shouting type. You knew by the look in his eye when it was best to just leave him alone.

Neither was he ever delirious with joy. It was hard to make him laugh. It’s not that he wasn’t kind, but this life made him hard, because you have to be to live on the land.

I think of it in the way an office worker or tradesman work most of the year to earn a few weeks off to relax and unwind, to be ready to jump back on the treadmill for another year.

On the land one good season can give you a year to rest your mind at least and worry less about how you’re going to get through another year. It just might take ten years to earn it, or it may never come, it’s exhausting.

One good crop and the optimism kicks in, maybe we’ll get two years in a row?

I won’t allow myself to get my hopes too high, let’s just enjoy this moment. The work is done, for now. By work I mean the worry you get until the crop is in the trucks and gone.

We’ll start again tomorrow, getting ready to go again.

For now I’ll savour this moment, my hands washing the dirt away in the cold water from a bore that was dug by fathers, fathers grandad all those seasons ago.