Australia Farming Problems

WELCOME TO OUR BLOG, Menfranco general blog. In addition to our own posts about, my life story, and some DIY posts, we are going to publish some world wide public issues that we are writing, about what is happening in the world today and other stuff. 

From our article, Farming Today Is Still a Risky Business

(Blog No:1. This article was published the first time in August 2018)

Now look at this piece of land it is so dry, there is almost nothing for the farms animals to eat. No farm animal can live here for long, unless you hand feed and water them manually. When things like this happen, it is very hard for the farmers to survive.

Australia farming and their present problems

Dear readers, this blog contains only one third of my original article, we will write the rest of it in our next blogs. but let us start our article, as it appeared in hub pages. This article is the beginning of several articles written in Australia, so, they have an Australian point of view. 

So, I am writing this article, “Farming Today Is Still a Risky Business”, because everybody is talking about it. The problem is the drought that is ruining farming and there is no end in sight. Now I want to say that I am writing this article for two reasons: One is to talk about the farmers problems that the drought is causing, and the failure of the government to help them; when they know that these things happen in Australia easily, because Australia is the driest continent on earth.

Now, this farmers problem gives me the opportunity to talk about the Australian government failure to help the farmers and other people, because they are in the same position as the farmer, according to the present, Social Security System, which I believe it is faulty; but it can be improved.

Now, let me explain, the farmers and some other people are cut off the Social Security System, because they own properties, so, the assets-test eliminate them to receive help, even when they need help like the farmers today. So, this article is going to be the first article, followed by several other articles about the Australian politician’s failure to help people in need.

We may argue that the farmers are rich people, so, they must be the last people to receive money from the government. Okay, you are right; but when the farmers reach a stage, where they cannot run their farms anymore, because they have no money; I believe that the government should step in and help them, even if it is a free loan, to be paid back when the farms produce enough and the are in a position to pay that loan. This is only a suggestion, and there are other ways that the government can help.  

I believe that what is happening to the farmers today, it has happened before, so, I want to point out that this is the same old failure that most governments have. You see, what is happening in Australia now, brings back my life-time memories, which are two folds: one is that farming is a risky business, because the nature of farming is risky, since the weather and other things influence the outcome, as we can see from this drought that today is crippling the Australian farmers; the other is about how the government fails to help the farmers even today, when help is urgently needed.

I believe that today we are more advanced, so, these things should be easier to understand and control, if everything can be worked out and organized, before these things happen. Now, I may have started to write this article for the farmers, but there are other things and places that the government is failing to do the right things, so, I will be writing several articles, to point out what I believe can be done to fix them; but let us go back to talk about the farmers.

Anyhow, I want to compare what I know from my life experiences, to what is happening now in Australia. I must say that it is like when I was young, the Italian government wanted only to collect the land tax from us farmers, because we owned some land, even when the land did not produce anything; they still wanted the land tax, and that was hurting us farmers. You see, we old people will always go back and compare present happenings to the past and then have our say, therefore, let me tell you part of my life story, to compare the past with the present.

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Compare old and new farming problems

When I was young, I have been working in our family farm in Southern Italy for twelve years, I gave up farming because we worked hard but made very little money. During the time that I was working in the farm, I remember two very bad years for us farmers; one of this was in 1951 when we had a drought and the wheat and other crops completely failed. We harvested what we could, but there was no much in it; the second time was in 1960, this time was too much rain, we again harvested what we could with the same result, we made about twice as much as the seeds we used for sowing, now that is bad because a good harvest is ten times plus what you sow, at least that is what we believed then. Anyhow, also the farm animals did not do well, because there wasn’t enough good food to go around; so, these events made me think to give up farming, since it is too risky, and you work for next to nothing.

But not all farms were the same, so, let me explain, some people that had more land and more money than us, had enough money to keep going, but I could not do that because my family didn’t own enough land, so, I had to find another way to earn a living. For this reason, I migrated to Australia hoping for the best. In Australia I switched job and instead of farming, I worked in the building industry; but in the back of my mind, I always thought about the farmers and their risky business.

Anyhow, most people in Australia were and are thinking that farmers are rich people; well, some of them are rich and some are not, when everything goes well, it is okay, but they are still running a risky business, and their business can lose money easily.

Now, the worst part of running a business and losing money; it is when people think you are rich, and therefore, nobody cares about you, even if you are starving. As it happens, farmers are at the top of this disadvantaged list, because farming is very risky; you see, most time it depends from the weather, but the farmers have no control over the weather, then, they own a lot of land, (they might even be paying tax because they own this land, (like we did in Italy in the fifties) but I don’t know much about this issue). The farmers are self-employed, so, they don’t qualify for help from the government, because they are self-employed and because of the assets-test. I believe that the assets-test should not apply in special cases, if you cannot make any money even if you work hard to earn it, the assets-test should not apply. I believe, that this is what is wrong with the assets-test today, they don’t consider if you can make money, from what you have? And how much money you can make from your assets? We are going to say something about the assets-test later, where we will be talking also about the assets test for rental property owners. To do all this, we are going to write several articles, so, we invite you to follow us.

Now let me go back to the farmers issues, because life problems never come alone. You see, it is the federal government that can help the farmers, but the federal government is having trouble today, as we will explain in our next blog. 

See you soon. 

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This is Menfranco general blog 

Australia farming problems

IS TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with; Life problems never come alone 
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Other links from same author

http://manneedsgod.co.uk

http://frankmenchise.com

http://diybrickwork.com 

http://publicreligiousforum.yolasite.com

http://rentalsbrisbane.net

http://menfranconewworldorder.yolasite.com

https://sites.google.com/site/menfrancoreconciliation/

https://sites.google.com/site/prayersofreconciliation/

https://sites.google.com/site/godintheuniverse/

See you soon in our blog, Life problems never come alone 

See you soon.

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Describing my farm life

WELCOME TO OUR BLOG, Menfranco general blog. In addition to our own posts about, my life story, and some D.I.Y. posts, we are going to publish some world wide public issues that we are writing, about what is happening in the world today and other stuff. 

Anyhow, today is the 2nd of November 2020, we have realized that we have not posted for a while, so we have decided to post once a month if we can. 

Taken from our Hub Pages article My life in the farms 

This photo belongs to a large farm, and it is here just to see it and dream about it. But when I was young we had only a couple of cows. It was better than having nothing, so we could only dream of a farm like this.

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My life in the farms

Describing my farm life 

In the farms of those days; because there is nothing much to talk about, farmers’ people are usually taciturn; and when you compare this way of life of the farmers, to the towns’ people way of life, you can feel at once the difference. You see, when you are in small towns, people converse a lot with each other, but in the farms there seems to be a great silence of human voices, not only because there are not many people to talk to, but also because those people that are there are not interested in talking, since they are there to do their job and run the farm. So, we who happened to be living in the farms when we were young, we had to keep ourselves to ourselves, and this is how and why we became dull later in life.

So, whoever has happened to have lived in the farm as I did would have to become dull, particularly if one was as young as I was and the few people around me were much older than me, because as I said those people in the farms were there to do their jobs, and therefore, they could not care about the young ones’ developing social skills, because it had nothing to do with the running of the farm, and because they didn’t know anyhow, so, they would go about doing whatever they had to do, after all that was the way of life in the farms, and people accepted it as being normal.

Today while I am writing this article, I hate the way of life that I had to live in the farm when I was young, because it made me then a dull person, not only then but for most of my life.

Of my shortcomings, I became aware even more, when I had to leave my farming life behind, since I had to start a different way of life somewhere else. And since then, right through my entire life I have tried to catch up with the rest of the community, but it seems to me that I have never been able to catch up completely. So, this is the reason why I hate that way of life; it is because such a way of life, can only breed dull people; and so I became dull in the end; but I was not alone, because all those youths which ended up like me working in the farm at a very young age had to become dull like me.

But this is not all that I could complain about; because, there were times when we went to town, while we were there we could feel that the town’s people, would ridicule us for being what we were, and this would hurt us very much, because it was not our fault for being what we were.

This is a sad story, But let us try to turn this negative aspect of life into a positive one; because whatever we do there is a positive side to it; in this case the positive side is that we have learned that we have to work hard to earn a living, and we have learned to accept things the way they come to us. Now, by using what we have learned, let us turn negative into positive wherever we can, that would be the only sensible thing to do in life.

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Turning negative into positive

Dear readers, life can be extremely hard for every one of us, and I have had a large share of hard life myself, for that reason I can cry my heart out for the consequences that it created, but I am not going to surrender and continue to cry my heart out forever; because I believe that we must try to overcome our inner pains, therefore, from now on, I am going to try to turn this negative event of my life into a positive one, that is the only way to go about with these things, when they happen to us.

Now the story of my life has many sides, one of which is that I had to work in our family farm, when I was young, and there were some future problems attached to it. Because I worked in the farm, when I was very young, during my life I have felt disadvantaged for a long time, feeling disadvantaged is a negative thing, and I have felt hurt even more because I was living in the farms without knowing the consequences that could follow me, so, even today my heart wants to cry out, but I am not going to let it happen in this negative way. Because I have made up my mind that I am going to fight back, and try to turn a negative experience into a positive one, I believe that this is the only way that makes sense and I am going to do it anyhow. I know that what I am saying here may sound ridiculous , but I am going to do it anyhow, as this is the only way that I can think, how to break away from my negative feelings these days.

Now, I am going to make an effort and break away from my old farm life and try to live a normal life, therefore, I am going to turn negative into positive, as this could be the only way to deal with my life drawback; so, in our next article, I will be talking about, turning negative into positive.

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The town history and heritade

WELCOME TO OUR BLOG, Menfranco general blog. In addition to our own posts about, my life story, and some DIY posts, we are going to publish some world wide public issues that we are writing, about what is happening in the world today and other stuff. 

The town history and heritage 

The photo above is the main street of Genzano

Looking at old history books, we must admit that there is not much written about Genzano di Lucania town history. However the myth says that Genzano is very old and it was named from a legend that tells us that a young guy called Iens (yens) fell in love and eloped with a young princes called San, they went to live in the caves in the chasm, which today are below the town of Genzano, and then, they started to build a small castle, where the old town of Genzano is now, the name is virtually the two name of the lovers put together Iens-san (yensan, or jenzan) I am saying this because I know that in strict dialect of the town even today it is pronounced Yenzan with no G at the beginning and no O at the end. I know I have said this before, but I want to explain it a bit more to make sense.

(For those people that can read Italian, I am going to paste here a couple of links that modern writers have written about the history of Genzano di Lucania: One of this is Ettore Lorito, and here is a link that may get you to see his writing works,Scrittori e poeti, another writer has these two link, here,Arch. Pietrapertosa - Storia e dintorni - Genzano di Lucania, this writer has two links and both are very interesting,

http://ass-gentius.blogspot.it/ , let us hope they work)

Now let us talk about more recent history that a recent write has discovered in the archive of Potenza; this writer is Ettore Lorito and you can find his writings, if you follow the link of (scrittori e poeti, (as shown above)) one of the first times that Genzano is mentioned in the archives is that of two brothers Secondo and Donato who were Christian martyr in the year 258 AD, as they were beheaded in Genzano ordered from council Valeriano, which I guess was a Roman council for that part of Italy. This seems to be the oldest written record found written about Genzano history and not much else; so, let us go back to the Greek chasm story.

Because in this article we want to describe to you the chasm on the other side of Genzano that we call the Greek chasm, we have to say that this chasm starts about fifty meter from the fountain Cavallina, or perhaps I should say that at the beginning of the Greek chasm is where the fountain Cavallina is, then suddenly the chasm becomes very deep and a real chasm that is hard to go into it, and nobody goes there, unless you have to go there and know the way how to get there; anyhow this part of Genzano is called the Greek chasm, so, by this name it is understood that a very long time ago there must have been a colony of Greek people living there.

About the Greek people and whatever happened to them nobody knows today, as there is no trace of them and there are no records to check with. So, we are forced to assume that there was a war, or something like that and they were driven out. Or perhaps they mixed with the rest of the inhabitants of Genzano and nobody remembers, or perhaps, as time went by lots of other things happened that changed the shape of the chasm; so, it became impossible for them to live in the chasm, because of the erosion and other natural factors which slowly changed the shape of the chasm, and the use of the chasm, there might be other factors as well, but let us now talk about the more recent history of this place. 

This is all for this post see you next time soon.

My life in the farm

WELCOME TO OUR BLOG, Menfranco general blog. In addition to our own posts about, my life story, and some DIY posts, we are going to publish some world wide public issues that we are writing, about what is happening in the world today and other stuff.
-
Welcome to our blog, menfranco general blog
and this post, my life in the farm.
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My life in the farm

-Horses are very strong and friendly farm animals, we used them to draw carts and to pull the plough when we were ploughing the fields. They sometimes seem very clever too, one is almost tempted to talk to the horses if there is nobody around.

My life in the farm

Dear readers, this post is the continuation of our last post, The human side of farming. Now, these posts we are posting, is my life story and I am writing these life story articles and publishing them in short stories, so, this article is the continuation of our previous article ‘my farm life chapter’; in this article, we are also talking about my farm life in the farms of southern Italy when I was young. Anyhow, here I would like to remind you that I am going to tell you my life story just the way that I have lived it. Now, apart that this is my life story and a true-life story, I need to point out that in those times life was very different from today; for this reason, to understand some of my points of view that I would like to make here, one should try to compare the present way of life in the farms, which people are living today, to the time when I was young.

From my life experience that I am writing here I can assure you that life in the past was much harder and boring than today. I am saying this to you dear readers, because today you are living in this new and wonderful era of electronic devices, and you can choose to listen, watch or play with these electronic devices; and in doing so you may be able to enjoy yourself, and at the same time you may be able to learn something useful from them, if you put your mind to it; which is a good thing. But in those times, there was nothing similar, in fact we could not even guess that these things were going to come up and they would help humanity live a better life. So, we lived our boring and dull life and we did not even know that it was boring, in fact we thought that we were doing all right, since everybody else was doing the same things.

Therefore, I would like to say to the youths of today wherever they are, I would like to ask you this; could you just imagine a world that has no man-made electronics devises? A world with not even a single push button devise that you could amuse yourself with. Here I am talking about what we see today everywhere we go; we see people with their mobile phones doing all sort of things, which is wonderful, if we think about it. And then, you could compare this new way of living that we are living today, with the old ways of living, while you are doing that just ask yourself, how could anyone live in a very isolated environment where silence of human voices reigns supreme days after days, except for a few phrases every now and then. I suppose all this is hard to believe today, because wherever you go there are these electronic devices that sing to you talk to you or inform you about many things that are happening in the world. I could only say that this new way of living is a lot better that is was in the past.

Anyhow, in those times there was nothing like that, because those electronic devices that we have today, they had not been invented yet, so, life was completely different then, it was very quiet and boring and that’s how my farm-life was like when I was young, and this sort of life I had to endure in my long stay in the farm during my youth. So, let me describe a bit more about this life in the small farms of Southern Italy in those days.

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The small farms of those days

Now, let me describe a bit more how life was then. In the small family farms of those days there was no electricity for a start, so, we had no electrical devices of any sort not even a portable radio to listen to, because those devices had not come out yet on the market, and even if there had been a portable radio on the market we would not be able to afford one, you see, there wasn’t any money around if you were farming in those days. I know that today it would be hard to believe what I am saying, that in those times, we the farmers could not afford to buy anything outside the bare things needed for surviving, but it was so, believe me and I had to live with it.

So, I had to grow up in this lonely environment mainly in the company of our farm animals, which they don’t talk back to you when you say anything to them, they just listen and everything ends there, even if there is a certain understanding between you and those animals, so, you may feel that you have some sort of friends, but these friends is as if they are not there. Therefore, as I grew up and became a teenager I started to realize that I was falling behind to the rest of the normal town community, in a social way. In order to understand what I am saying here, I need to explain that even though I was working in the farm every day, we were allowed to go to our home in town ones or twice a week in the evening and when we were not too busy in the farm we could also spend every second Sunday in town with the other members of our family that were permanently living in town, this is the way of life that every farmer had to endure all their life then, and this is how I was able to see and compare that I and the other youths that were in the same position as I was whished that we had a better life, so, I started to believe that we were all in a disadvantaged position, but at the same time, we could do nothing to improve it.

As I have said above, we were all in a disadvantaged position and becoming dull, as long as we were in that position there was no way of improving ourselves; here I mean everything at all could have helped us a bit, even the way of knowing what was happening in the community, which the other boys in town seemed to know everything and we seemed so dull when we were compared to them, also the ways of expressing our self clearly was not easy, since we were forced to live a lonely and taciturn way of life and therefore we did not speak much.

There were times that I wanted so badly to have a radio like the people in town, so that at least I could listen to a proper way of speech, or perhaps even a song or two, and I could improve my knowledge that way, but it was not possible. Therefore, I was stuck in that lonely world, where one is stuck for good with one’s own company and thoughts day and night for ages; this is how we used to live our young lives then, and there was not much that one could do to improve it, so, let me explain a bit more that situation:

In the farms of those days there were only a few people staying and working there, and they would go on about doing their farm duty. So, they didn’t care to talk to you, if you were much younger than them. So, as you can see, it was a very lonely place to be in such farms when one was young, as I was.

Those people which usually are staying in the farms don’t talk very much, since in their isolation there is nothing much to talk about; so, they are used to be taciturn, and there were days when only a few necessary phrases were exchanged between us; so, conversation was very low indeed. Therefore, this way of life that I was living then could only result about not being satisfactory for me later in life, because I was very young and my needs would have been better served, if I had been in a more sociable place to learn a more sociable way of life, and in doing so, I could have overcome some of my personal shyness that usually follows the people that don’t talk much. So, this staying in the farm when I was young became later-on a great disadvantage for me, because it only made me grow more isolated, and in the end, it made me feel even more isolated from the rest of the world; and in this isolation, I had to grow up.

There were lots of times when I was alone and nobody would be near me to say a single word, and this was happening to me many days. So in my isolation I would start thinking and learning things all by myself in my own way, anything at all that came into my mind, or things that would happen in the farm, and when you are by yourself for a very long time and think by yourself for a great length of time, you don’t need to express your thoughts in words to yourself, therefore anything that you learn may start being stored within your own mind in a different way, you still learn things, perhaps even more accurate than when you learn with words: The only drawback is that when you have to speak out, lots of times you would not know what to say; not because you don’t know it, since in your mind there is a very clear picture of what you need to say; but because you find it hard finding the right words to express yourself. So, this is one of the great disadvantages, which I and those youths who were unlucky like me, as they ended up working in their own families’ farms at a very early age. I am sorry to say it, but we had to put up with the hard consequences which have followed us for the rest of our lives. Now allow me to describe a bit more the farm life of those days.

I believe that this post is becoming too long, so I will continue with my story in our next post called, describing our farm life. See you then.

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Menfranco general blog 
My life in the farm
IS TO BE CONTINUED
Next time with, describing our farm life

The human side of farming

WELCOME TO OUR BLOG, Menfranco general blog. In addition to our own posts about, my life story, and some DIY posts, we are going to publish some world wide public issues that we are writing, about what is happening in the world today and other stuff.
-
Welcome to our blog, Menfranco general blog
and this post, the human side of farming
-

Farms are very lonely places, it may seem great for a few days, if you are living in a busy city, because they are very quiet places; but in the long run, they are too lonely for young people, if they have to live there all the time. But that is what has happened to me, when I was young.

The human side of farming

Dear readers, this post is the continuation of our last post, how the farms were run then, so, let us continue. Now let us look at the human side of farming, so, let me go back to my own life in the farm, and my experience as a young boy. If we want to understand that better, one needs to see how the ways of living had been set up, from the generations before us for their own needs for one reason or another.

Anyhow, at the time when I was young in Genzano every family had a dwelling in town, no matter to which group of people or families one belonged, we all had a home in town even if it was only a room or a few rooms that we could live-in in the town itself. But the farmers’ families not only had a home in town like everybody else, where their women folks elderly people and children lived; but most of the farmers had also a rustic farm building in the fields, where the farmer would keep his animals, and with the help of his workers if he had any workers he would work his fields from there. The farmers’ children especially those that were to become farmers one day would start working in the farm very early in life, or as soon as they would finish their compulsory schooling years, that in those times were just the primary schools.

The compulsory primary schools in Italy in those times were up to grade five; now, today it would seem that you could not learn much in five years, but in those times, we were taught to read and write, we were taught the four main math operations, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, which are the base of just about everything, we were asked to solve simple problems with them at least ones a week; we were also taught about our human history, even if it wasn’t in small details, it covered old history up to the Christian era, middle age history up to the discovery of America and modern history; it wasn’t a lot, but it gave us just enough to understand that the world changes and one Era ends and a new one begins. Anyhow, now let us go back to tell you my farm life story, because this is the real reason that I am writing this article.

Now, some of the youths whose families were better off financially would start to help in the farm only during summer for a year or two, and then as they became older they would start staying in the farm full time the whole year. But I wasn’t that lucky and at the time when I left school the first time, I was only 10 years old and I was going to be 11 years old during that year, when I had to start full time for the whole year in the farm. At that time young boys were only required to attend school up to grade 5, and I had already done so, so I went to help in our family farm full time. Then a few years later the schooling laws changed, and all the youths had to attend school up to grade 8, or be at least 14 years old to leave school. So, I and a few other boys of my same age were the last of the little educated youths. (Now just to make it clear to our readers during my life, I have read many books and every now and then whenever I have been able to I have tried to continue to study; and even though I have not been to college, I have studied and done some courses in building and quantity surveying. But now let me go back to my farm life story.)

Now you can imagine how I felt in the farm when I was young; I was perhaps the youngest boy around for miles so to speak, and I was of that age when young boys like me would start thinking and wandering about how best one could find a way into society, because one becomes aware of the need to be social and friendly with people, otherwise one would become shy and withdrawn just like I did.

Anyhow, this old way of living in the farms was very hard especially for me, because, since the great loss of my father when I was 5 years old, my family had lived mourning him and a life withdrawn from society; so, now that we were all over that period of grief that any family can have, I felt that somehow, I was a bit more withdrawn that the other boys of the same age. I needed a break more than everybody else, but it was not to be, because I was needed to help in the farm, so, I ended up working in the family farm and I became more isolated than ever, and that was no good for me socially.

My helping (working) in the family farm when I was young was no good for me socially, since there is nothing to learn socially in the farm except farm things, which in the end they might even be put to good use, but only from those persons that would be able to practice farming during their whole life timelifetime.

Farming life of those days was so hard and boring, especially for me at that particular time of my life when I was young. So, nowadays when I think about it, it makes me feel so hurt and unhappy and I ask myself why this had to happen to me, and I feel so hurt that I would like to tell you a story beginning with, ‘When I was young’ just to show you how much harder life was then compared with today’s ways of life.

Now let me add this observation here, while I am editing this article, I have come to the conclusion that no matter how hard life is for anyone of us, we should not despair as we could always try to do better, you see, today I am able to write this article even though I have not been trained to write when I was young, just because I have not given up and I have tried to improve myself whenever I could.

Now that I have explained the ways of life in the farms of those days, mentally I am going over the farm life of my ancestors, who had lived the same hard life as I did and they did not lament about it because they did not know better; and then I think about what it would be the farm life like today compared to old times; you see I want to compare all those things together, just to have a clear picture of what is happening to us. By comparing the farm life of these generations, I have come to the conclusion that I and those youths that as me ended up working in the farms when we were young, we were the last unlucky ones, because today even if a young man ends up working in the farms, they start when they are older and they cannot be as lonely as we were, because today they can have the company of electronic devices, like the radio and the mobile phones, so one can always keep in touch with the rest of the world community.

I think that I have said enough in this post, so, see you in my next post, “my life in the farm”, where I will tell you a bit more about my farm life. See you there.

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Menfranco general blog 
The human side of farming
IS TO BE CONTINUED
Next time with, my life in the farms   

How farms were run

WELCOME TO OUR BLOG, Menfranco general blog. In addition to our own posts about, my life story, and some DIY posts, we are going to publish some world wide public issues that we are writing, about what is happening in the world today and other stuff.
-
Welcome to our blog, menfranco general blog
and this post, how farms were run
-
How the farms were run in the fifties
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This harvester, was one of the machines that would help farmers collect their harvest quicker, if you compare it to when everything, had to be done by hand, by still there was a lot of work to run a farm the old ways.

How the farms were run then?

Dear readers, this post is the continuation of our last post, my farm life chapter, where we were about to explain about how farming was done the old ways. So, now let me explain how these small farms in southern Italy were run until the fifties, when things started to change a great deal, because of the new farming machine that were coming out, like the tractor and other machine that were very effective in replacing manual work; now, because these machines helped the farmers run their farms with less manual workers, the people that were employed in the farms had to find other jobs. Now, this is just one explanation, but let us describe how things were done then, to understand the whole situation and what was happening to us young would be farmers.

When I was young during the fifties, before these farming machines became affordable to the average small farmers, all the farmers used to have mixed farming, because it was necessary to have mixed farming then for many reason, today mixed farming is practiced to a much less extend, and I will try to explain the reasons, why this has happened. But to make it clear to you dear reader, I should describe the different way of how the land was (had to be) used in the old days, and how it is (would be) used today: In the old days to till the soil people used to do it all by hand, just like what we still do today in our own small home gardens, so, they would dig the soil in very small plots with a hoe, or something like that. But on normal fields in the farms the soil was tilled by ploughing the fields with horse power, or other strong animals. Therefore, there was a need for a lot of people to be fed to work the fields, and there were a lot of animals also to be fed to work the fields.

So, this need to feed so many mouths required a lot of produce, and also a variety of produce, for this reason mixed farming was required, because it was the only way to produce all this variety of foods that were required, in order to feed the animals and for other reasons as well, in the old days for this reason and also for other reasons as well, the sowing fields had to be divided into a three-year-rotation, not only to achieve these variety of foods, but it was also necessary to rotate the fields then, in order to keep them producing, otherwise the soil would become tired and produce very little, in other words if we would continue to use the fields every year they would produce next to nothing and therefore it was not worth working them, for this reason, our forbear had devised this three year rotation, which worked thus;

One year a field would be fallow land, so, it would not be used at all, or used very little growing broad beans or something like that, then the next year it would be sown with durum wheat, and the year after that the same field would be sown with oats or barley, or other light seeds, and the year after that to fallow land again. So, in realty there was only one third of the land producing durum wheat each year, which was the produce that brought in money to the farmers.

When I was young, a lot of people used to work in those farms, as I have said already, and it was hard physical work, specially at certain times of the year, and there was no much money to be made, with the exception of every now and then when we had a really good wheat harvest; but when the harvest was lean everybody would suffer, and all one could do, was to start all over again for another year, and so, one would be hoping and perhaps praying God for a better harvest next year, yes in those times people were a lot more religious than today, so, they believed in God and prayed God, and all the saints that they could think of, hoping that they could or would help them produce good harvests.

Anyhow, there were too many years of lean harvest when I was young, some average and only a very few years we had good harvests. But somehow people kept going on, and they were so used to poverty that they accepted it and seemed to be happy just the same, because they did not know of a better life. But one should keep in mind that the main harvest is only once a year, and one year is a very long time, when there is not enough money to go around, even to buy those things that were really necessary to live a modest life.

For all the work that I did in the farm in my youth, I earned almost nothing, but I was able to eat plain wholesome food, and buy a few cheap cloths to keep warm in winter, which sounds very bad these days, but then when there was nothing better that one could do, even this hard and unpleasant way of life would have to do, as long as one could live a healthy life; perhaps living a healthy life was the only thing that we could achieve easily then, because the air was healthier in the country, the life was very boring but at the same time it was not mentally stressful, compared to living in towns these days, and if there was any complain about a stench that came from the farm animals, it was something that would not harm anybody, it is only natural that all animals smell of something, we smell also of something even if we don’t notice it.

Anyhow I believe that I have said enough in this post, so, see you in our next post, where we are going to write about, the human side of farming.

See you soon.

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Menfranco general blog 

How farms were run
IS TO BE CONTINUED
Next time with, the human side of farming  

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Some personal and religious links: 

http://menfranco-re.blogspot.com/

http://ifyoubelieveingod.blogspot.com/ 

My farm life chapter

WELCOME TO OUR BLOG, Menfranco general blog. In addition to our own posts about, my life story, and some DIY posts, we are going to publish some world wide public issues that we are writing, about what is happening in the world today and other stuff.
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Welcome to our blog, Menfranco general blog
and this post, my farm life chapter
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My farm life chapter
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This is a wheat field about to be harvested, it looks like that it will produce plenty of wheat this season, if the entire field is the same as we see it in this photo.





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A youth in the farm, I guess with his father, dreaming his own dreams, the picture says more land, this could also have been my dream, if I had more land, I could have stayed in the farm all my life. But in Italy, there are lots of small farms, so, land is pricy and hard to buy, for this reason, I had to leave farming.














My farm life chapter

Dear readers, this post is the continuation of our last post, farm life can be very hard, and it is a chapter of my farm life experience and views, so, here again I am going to lament about my early childhood life in the farm, which has been one of those facts of life, that to most of us could happen during our life, so, whatever I am telling you here is the story of my life and nothing else. Now we can also say, that no matter how negative a story could be, and there are plenty of negative in my life story, there must be also some positive things that would happen, and those experiences could be used from us later in life, when we can; therefore, let me tell you this other chapter of my life story, the way that I have lived it, and how I see it now.

I believe that to give you a better picture overall, of what life was like in the farms of my native town of Genzano di Lucania, when I was young, I need also to tell you about many other things as well, and the town itself, then the ways of how people used to live in those times, what was happening at the time when I was young. So, let me talk about the town and the population first.

From my memory, I believe that the town of Genzano di Lucania, early in the twentieth century had reached a population of about 7,000 inhabitants, in the forties when I was young the population had grown to about 8,000 and reached 8,389 in 1951 inhabitants, and this is the highest number of people on record that I know of. Even though some people believe that there were near 10,000 people living in Genzano, but I am not sure about that.

Anyhow, today the number of people that used to live in Genzano does not matter anymore, as we don’t attach much importance to this issue. However, let us tell you about it; in the seventies, it had shrunk to only 5,500 inhabitants or there about. The reasons for this population shrinkage, it was because lots of people had to emigrate somewhere in those times. The reasons why they had to emigrate will be fully understood, when I explain what happened to the rural community of this town including myself. Today while I am writing this article the first time, the town of Genzano has 6200 inhabitants or there about.

My native town of Genzano is known as Genzano di Lucania to distinguish it from another Italian town Genzano di Roma. Anyhow this Genzano di Lucania these days has a territory of about 21,000 Hectares of land, if I remember right, and about 80% of this land is arable land, and it is mostly used to grow wheat, especially durum wheat; the rest of the land is used to grow grapes vines or olive trees and other farm produce, and there are also reserves or grazing land; as anyone can see from what I have said here, this town owes its wealth to the rural community that produces wheat, because this town is well known to produce lots of very high quality durum wheat, which the mills that make pasta rush to buy it, when it’s harvest time. Now even if the mills rush to buy this durum wheat, the price of wheat is not high, so, the farmers make only enough money to keep going and one should think that it takes one year to produce and harvest a crop of wheat, so, it is not that good for the farmers; there are also other things that must be taken into consideration, as I will continue to explain while I am writing my life story.

Anyhow, as I have already mentioned above, there are lots of other produce from the farms, because we used to have mixed farming, but these products are used locally, and if some of them are sold out of the town, they are not a great deal to make any difference, to how wealthy this town is, and if wealth may make much difference. But let us see, how everything was set up then, because, this may make some difference, to see if it is good or not that good to be there.

At the time when I was young, there were lots of small farms in Genzano, and although the most important and the largest crop that brought in the money was durum wheat, in reality they had to practice mixed farming for their own needs, this practice was a must to do, but it would cut down on the amount of land that would produce durum wheat, anyhow, I will try to explain how the farms were run at those times when I was young, in our next post, how the farms were run then.

See you soon.

---------------------------------------------
Menfranco general blog 
My farm life chapter
IS TO BE CONTINUED
Next time with, how the farms were run at those times  

-------------------------------------
Some personal and religious links: 

http://menfranco-re.blogspot.com/

http://ifyoubelieveingod.blogspot.com/