Gregory Hay Farm

Hi All

We settled into life at the farm very smoothly, Ashley and Wendy made us feel at home and Tony really liked the mechanical side of his job. He hated the endless hours on the tractors because of his bad knees, however as with any job you take the good with the bad!! The little house was great for the three of us and I enjoyed having a home with a toilet :). We were getting paid fortnightly and were catching up slowly on the debts we had created while Tony was not working. The farm was a reasonably small operation considering the comparison in size to surrounding property's. The farm mainly grew crops of Rhodes grass and sorghum and occasionally they grew oats. All crops were flood irrigated from the Gregory River which ran right behind the compound where the houses and sheds were. This often required Tony to go and check waters and start syphons in all hours of the day and night. This was done on average twice per paddock, per crop and they were trying to get 4 or 5 cuts a year. The Hay Farm supplied the local stations as well as keeping the AA Co stations in stock, it was very rare for there to be hay on the ground, due to such a high demand.

In our pay package, we were being supplied food from the farm, so this saved us many trips to town, as well as freight costs if we were buying our own food. The only things we had to buy were our little naughty treats like chocolate and chips all well as formula, nappies and other things for the baby. This was a great set up for us as I would just go to Wendy's every few days and take what I needed. The farm was also only located 2 km's out of Gregory so I continued to work for Jo. Mickalee was only little and enjoyed sitting in the pram behind the bar while I served. Due to Gregory being a tourist area in it's own right, because of the river it was also on the road to "Lawn Hill national Park", and "Adels Grove", so many tourist called in. A considerable number of them were "Grey haired no-mads" retiree's who are apart of one club or another. I had heard of "S.K.I" (spending kids inheritance) and Tracy informed me of one other day S.A.D.S (see Australia die soon). So as you can imagine a lot of them were grandparents and were delighted to see a baby, some times I worked for 2 hours or so and didn't see her, she was passed from one person to the next. They loved it and so did she.

I think it was approximately 3 months after Mickalee was born that we decided condoms were uncomfortable and we needed to consider something a little more permanent, so I went to the R.F.D.S. clinic and got a pill script. I filled it at the chemist when I was next in town and bought it home. For some reason or another we went to the pub the night I returned from town and had a I had a few drinks. As you can imagine after 9 months off alcohol while pregnant and 6 weeks breast feeding it only took a couple to tip me over the edge. On returning home tipsy I told Tony that I thought having another baby would be a good idea. Considering it took 6 months to conceive Mickalee I figured in my drunken state that it would take 6 months the second time. I am warning you it was more like 6 minutes. I did a home pregnancy test in the July of 06' and it confirmed I was pregnant!! Hooray!!!!

Bye for now and happy blogging
Bec