LESSONS FROM THE COUNTRY: homespun wisdom to help you make the most of a tricky year
Have you recently taken up jam making, or thought about getting a brood of chooks? Country woman Georgie Robertson muses on some lessons from the bush to help her city sisters when times are tough.
Every morning I go for a walk around our farm. It has been frosty of late, the early morning sky brindled with fingers of winter. I breathe in the smell of dust and eucalyptus and am alone with my thoughts, before the busyness of the day unfurls and sweeps me in its wake. It gives me time to reflect.
It has been said that crises release memories, relinquishing the collective wisdom stored from eras gone by. Lately, I’ve had vivid flashbacks of my grandmother, her relationship with the land and her stories of adversity. A farmer’s wife, she was moulded by the Depression and two world wars. I remember her simple tastes, her grit and her frugality. “Watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves,” she would say.
In these economically challenging times, there’s been an increased interest in living simply and more self-sufficiently, picking up lessons from our grandmothers and our neighbours in the country. While the idea of keeping backyard chickens and stocking up on mason jars may have seemed quaint even a few months ago, many of these old-fashioned practices are now enjoying a resurgence. The desire to grow, to produce and to make things from scratch is coming full circle. And for mums like me, living in the country, our experiences and memories of handed-down traditions are becoming more precious, more useful, and even sought after by our city sisters.
My memories of childhood visits to my grandparents’ farm are coloured with an overriding sense of do-ityourself. There were always preserved vegetables from the abundant garden – no scrap wasted from the pickling jar. I remember shavings of hair falling to the ground as my uncle sat perched on the kitchen stool and Grandma expertly ran the clippers up around the nape of his neck. She was famous for her ability to create something beautiful from the simplest of ingredients – except for her beetroots preserved in raspberry-flavoured Aeroplane jelly – I could never bring myself to admit to her that these, I utterly detested.
What snippets of survival can I glean from these memories, rising like smoke from the fireplace? Here
I pass on just a few …
In times of economic hardship and when grocery-store shelves have been emptied of staple products, home food preservation can offer year-round produce and involve children in an activity that benefits the entire household. It provides a sense of accomplishment, a sense of handmade, of tasting your own hard work, and a tonic in uncertain times.
Picking up a needle has gained fresh appeal, not least for the opportunity to do something that doesn’t involve a screen. While our mothers learned to sew from their mother or grandmother, paradoxically, my own daughter
“The desire to make things is coming full circle.”
is learning these lessons from the internet – everything from threading a sewing machine to guides on pattern making are available digitally. There is something meditative in losing yourself in the rhythm of the thread, allowing the mind to wander and unpick life’s knots just as your fingers do.
Gardening and caring for vegetables, herbs and flowers leads to an understanding of where food comes from and a deep respect for nature. It shows us there’s constant change, growth, rebirth and renewal. A small garden on a rooftop or balcony can yield abundant produce. Even if it’s just a tiny sunflower seed in a corner of the garden, it instils hope and it gives us something to look forward to each day. We get up and check on it. How’s it growing today? Does it need watering? How can we nurture it?
Claire Hull from GinGin Garden Club in Trangie, Central West NSW, heads an online community inspiring gardeners to turn brown thumbs green by learning from the more experienced growers in the area. Reports are that seed sales for April were up over 200 per cent compared to March, and the average order value also increased by 42 per cent. So there’s a bountiful city harvest to come.
As the pandemic forced hair salons and other non-essential businesses across the country to close, the internet has been awash with home-haircut memes. While I’m not suggesting whipping out the salad bowl and trimming along the bottom, many a country kid has had to endure a quick tidy-up with Dad’s shears or clippers before the neighbours dropped in, and no-one has been any the wiser.
Finally, as well as the eggs, there is much to be said for the stress-relieving power of chooks. They are funny. Each of them has a different personality and they are incredibly social. There are likely to be some hard life lessons learned, if any of your dear feathered friends falls prey to the heathen rats, foxes or the neighbour’s cat. But the store-bought version simply can’t compete with the golden goodness of a homegrown egg. You can taste the difference. This became obvious to our city cousins when, during the height of the pandemic, demand for urban chickens went through the roof as householders turned to backyard chooks for egg supplies.
These are simple enough ideas, which seem somehow right for this new decade. They spring from qualities like simplicity, resilience, capability, grit and grace. What do we really need to be content? Perhaps more importantly, what don’t we need? A few chickens and a veggie plot or two? A redirection of energy into making, rather than consuming? An emphasis on contribution, rather than taking? All lessons from our country grandmothers, learnt afresh.