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Farm children
Oh the joy of being pulled out of bed at 4.30am several days a week, in all kinds of weather, to help in the dairy. Round up the cows, put feed in the bails, herd the cows into them, wash their teats, put on the milking machine. Move onto the next one. We had 8 bails in our dairy. Remove the milking machine, open the bail door, get cow to move out, hard work when she hasn’t finished her food and wants to stay. shut bail door, put more food in feeder, herd another cow into bail and repeat until all 150 or so cows are milked. took several hours. When finished hose all the dairy out, herd all the cows into a paddock somewhere on farm where hopefully there was feed. Mix up milk for calves, feed from bottles or buckets. Wash up buckets. Pick up any cow manure in dairy yard so next milking cows don’t cart it all over bails. Then when we finish race back to house, gulp down some breakfast and get ready for school, bus comes at 8am. After school, arrive home 4.30, grab a bikky and drink, get changed, off to dairy, milking is almost done, help finish up, feed calves again, herd cows over the road to a different paddock. Help shift big, long irrigation pipes in the paddock, dig weeds out, pick vegies etc etc til after dark. Back to house, eat tea, do homework, get ready and jump into bed. Weekends the same deal, instead of school other chores like weeding gardens, mowing lawns, always irrigation pipes to be shifted. This was the farm life I and most of my siblings lived from the age of 10 until we left school and got a job. Wasn’t much fun for us I can tell you. Farm life is just plain hard work. Most of our friends who lived on farms didn’t have to help out like we did, so they had a much easier life on the farms. My best times were when I had some free time I would jump on the horse, usually bareback and go for a long ride out in the back paddocks, just me and the horse. This was our life after we moved from living out in the sticks to a share dairy farm. Our father changed from being a reasonable man into a hard task master who expected all us kids to do as much work as he did on the farm.
tired after reading that think I’ll go back to bed 🛏 
