My dear former farm,

Though I have left you, I want to thank you for all you did for me over the past 6 years.

You taught me many things about caring for the land.  How to put back more than I took out.  The art of growing a tree in the right kind of dirt, the ways of composting and mulching to improve and protect the soil.  The planting of windbreaks, of nut trees, of fruit and vegetables for my family.

 

The necessity of you made me do something that my family had tried in vain to get me to do when I was a younger man – learn to properly use tools.  When you need to constantly build fences and animal enclosures, pirate ships and cubby houses, scarecrows and fire pits it forces you to finally learn how to use drills and circular saws and everything in between.  As for farm equipment, everything from the use of a humble shovel to mastering the subtleties of tractor usage became a daily activity.

 

You provided me the true experience of food.  Just how incredible so many things taste when they are straight out of your garden and grown by your own hand, rather  than having been grown on another continent and then shipped thousands of miles, put in cold storage, handled by dozens of people etc etc.  I never knew just how intense simple things like watermelon or mandarins could taste when it’s so fresh and been grown right!

 

You brought back to me the pride of properly caring for livestock.  To see the ducks growing, the chooks laying and the goats frolicking in their field in their thick winter coats – all given plenty of food, water, space and shelter to keep them at the peak of happiness and health!

 

You reminded me of simple pleasures that I had forgotten from living in the big city for so long.  Things like there is a night sky absolutely full of stars, the joy of swimming in a dam on a hot day or climbing a tall gum tree, the relaxed freedom of rambling around a paddock in a clapped-out ute.

 

You were the first farm that was truly mine.  When standing upon your ground everything felt right, I felt truly at home.  I felt a connection to the land that fellow farmers and country folk can relate to but rarely speak of, something almost spiritual.  Something sadly that your average gardener of city-dweller can never truly understand.  Just like someone cannot truly grasp the feeling of parenthood until they become one, nobody cannot truly grasp what it feels like to stand on the ground of your own farm, feeling the earth beneath your boots and surveying how you have shaped and changed and molded the land around you for the better.

Thank you for everything you taught me and gave me.  And most importantly thank you for giving my two children a safe place to spend their first few years of life – no matter how far away we may go there will always be some Mallee dust in their veins.

 

It broke my heart to leave you, but I know we leave each other better than we found one another and I never forget the life lessons you taught me.  You will always have my thanks and my love.