Growing up in the city, Mary did not expect to end up living on a farm. For her and her friends, partying on weekends and shopping were the best activities. All that changed at university when she met Michael. The two of them hit it off, almost immediately. It wasn’t long before they were talking about marriage. Mary had some hard decisions to make then, she knew Michael was headed back to the farm.

Ten years later, Mary and Michael had 3 wonderful children. Tara turned 11 last summer, Robert is 9 and the baby, Trudy, is 6 in a few weeks. No one has time to think of parties right now though because it is harvest time on the wheat and sheep farm. Every morning, Michael is out of the house before dawn and doesn’t come home before ten o’clock at night.

Mary prepares the meals for the workers. Some days it is a hot roast or something equally delicious. Other days, it is cold meat sandwiches. The children have their own responsibilities to take care off, feeding the chooks and other small animals, and then they have to deliver lunch to the work crew. Michael bought a small four-wheeled motorcycle and built a cute little trailer. This way the children could travel across the farm without him or Mary worrying about them.

As the oldest, Tara has the task of keeping the younger children in line and this isn’t always easy. The 3 of them roam all over the farm when they have free time and have great fun. Sometimes they like to play pretend, a dragon has come to the farm and they have to slay him. Other times they work on building forts and cubbies. Life on a farm is never dull. On her next birthday, Tara will start learning how to drive the farm Ute and will start helping at shearing and lambing times.

Shearing a sheep is interesting, but it can be very hard if they won’t stop wriggling. Tara thinks lambing is better because you get a little lamb as a result. At lambing time the family quite often have half a dozen or so lambs in the back room of the house because the mothers have either rejected them or died. Feeding and looking after them is the responsibility of the youngest child. Trudy will have this job at next lambing time. Before now she has been deemed too young. Not any more though.

Robert is the odd one out. He doesn’t have a lot of interest in the actual farm work yet. Michael is hoping this will change as Robert gets older but Mary is not sure that will happen. All Robert cares about right now is football and building things like his fort. He thinks farming is boring and he doesn’t like the early mornings. He is quite happy when he gets to ground up some t=of the wheat for the family’s own usage though.