Being left on a farm alone after having your mate beside you for fifty odd years is not without its repercussions. I have written about this before, but now, four years along, it is time to begin a thinning out around the farmyard.
I had a friend staying with me recently who walked around the property with me and asked ‘Sue, do you think you’ll ever use a lot of this stuff again?’ As we walked, I looked at container upon container of nuts, bolts, hinges, screws, washers, hose fittings, drill bits etc. etc. – all neatly sorted and labelled. This was the tip of the iceberg. Outside was old rusty iron – lengths in all shapes and sizes, drums, implements, discs, tynes – scattered and left where they had been needed or put aside for later. Warren was a metal-smith. He loved inventing and fabricating things that made his work easier. I know the things he made. I will keep them of course. In fact in one of the old sheds that he built, I intend to set up a museum of all the amazing things that were crafted here in the blacksmith ‘shop’ over the decades – since the farm’s establishment in 1889.
So the sheds are being tidied at last and I am accumulating a fascinating array of tools and gadgets that have been made with great care and pride in workmanship. I love to think of the generations of Grocke men at work at the forge – coals aglow and the ringing out of metal on metal as objects took shape.
I have been loading up all the superfluous stuff onto a trailer and have taken two loads away to a local scrap metal dealer. Gone is a good deal of the heavy ferrous material, dead batteries, wheel rims, and ninety kilograms of brass which my friend and I picked out of the general mass. This was fun. A bit like gold prospecting. I had taken a magnet down to the job and when in doubt used it to determine whether the piece I’d picked up was brass or not.
I don’t want to lose the character of the farm – the feeling of age and history. Old hand-hewn posts and rafters, forged gates of all shapes and sizes, rusty hooks and chains that secure them, farmer-built ladders, pig troughs, shed doors. I don’t know who will be here after me, but I hope that whoever it is, will value it all as I do. Who knows? Six generations of the Grocke family (the sixth, my grandchildren) have loved and cared for this little patch of heaven. At this stage none of them can guarantee it would be their forever home.
And for a hundred and thirty four years, through all those generations, there have been sheep dogs sharing the stake. The first I knew, as a young wife here, was Brownie. 1967. There has been a line of wonderful canine characters since then that I could, and will, write about in future blogs – those hard-working, tough, faithful and indispensable graziers’ off-siders.
A short blog for now, but within the next couple of days I hope to put up a poem I found in my archives recently. For any of you who enjoy poetry, you may find this one interesting. I am often amazed as I discover them anew. This one is very deep.
But for now, I hope you are keeping warm and cosy, and have some-one to love.
Warmly,
Sue
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